Lyndon Antcliff

Is this the thing that will destroy Digg?

January 4, 2007 By Lyndon Antcliff

Digg has spawned a number of clones. some offering interesting and unique information. Others duplicating existing sites.

With a CMS such as Pligg you can quickly and easily set up you own Digg type site. It took me 30 mins to knock up my own Pligg test. It’s quite exciting when you realise you have your own Digg. The official site for Pligg here. You then realise the essential factor of a Digg type site is traffic and if you havn’t got any it looks a bit sad. It needs to hit a critical mass of users to be useful. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of links that some guy found.

It’s easy to get caught up with the technology. However, I see very interesting applications for a Digg clone, some I am pursuing already. For example, you could apply it to a membership site and have people themselves voted for instead of the story. A sort of amihotornot 2.0

I was surprised to see the number of sites already out there and according to Alexa generating traffic – yes I know Alexa can be gamed, and I know an seo site will be skewed because more people have a toolbar. But it’s the only metric I can get my hands on, so for what it’s worth I have listed the Alexa ranking. I should have listed the PR too, maybe I will update the post with that in mind.

SEO Mozz has a story about the space.

Pligg: a CMS framework to build digg-like sites

A list of Pligg Sites and Digg type sites

Politcal 700k Alexa
http://riggd.com/

Marketing 35k Alexa
http://www.plugim.com/
6k Alexa
http://battellemedia.com/searchmob/
400k Alexa
http://searchenginepress.com/
91k Alexa
http://www.marktd.com/

Mormon 300k Alexa
http://www.sustaind.org/

Celebrity 400k Alexa
http://hahahollywood.com/

Video
11k Alexa
www.videosift.com
70k Alexa
http://scooptube.com/

600k Alexa
http://shakk.us/
133k Alexa
http://mootion.com/

http://www.thatschillin.com/
305k Alexa
http://www.meme-stream.com/

Sport
500k Alexa
http://talksoccer.com/

Games
157k Alexa
http://www.gamesnips.com/
500k Alexa
http://www.gamediggity.com/
200k Alexa
http://www.gamelemons.com/squeeze/
300k Alexa
http://www.leetdaily.com/
160k Alexa
http://devbump.com/

Business
200k Alexa
http://www.business-planet.net/
290k Alexa
http://www.bizzbites.com/
163k Alexa
http://www.valueinvestingnews.com/
82k Alexa
http://news.fatpitchfinancials.com/
326k Alexa
http://www.digstock.com/

Medical
1,000k Alexa
http://www.braindigg.com/

Design
23k Alexa
http://bad.webpagesthatsuck.com/
82k Alexa
http://pixelgroovy.com/

Cars
212k Alexa
http://www.motorpulse.com/
13k Alexa
http://www.autospies.com/

People
13k Alexa
http://wink.com/
1,000k Alexa
http://www.ravemyspace.com/

Property
http://www.realestatevoices.com/

Tech
305k
http://www.nooz.com/
88k Alexa
http://dotnetkicks.com/
58k Alexa
http://www.betamarker.com/

Current Affairs
67k Alexa
http://www.jossle.com/

700k Alexa
http://kick.ie/
800k Alexa
http://www.spymy.com/
500k Alexa
http://www.indianbytes.com/
266k Alexa
http://www.indianbytes.com/
442k Alexa
http://www.blogreporter.biz/
20k
http://www.news.articlesphere.com/
500k Alexa
http://www.news2.ca/
200k Alexa
http://muti.co.za/
68k Alexa
http://www.blogmemes.net/
7k Alexa
http://www.shoutwire.com/
18k Alexa
http://hubpages.com/
325k Alexa
http://www.qoolsqool.com/
139k Alexa
http://www.italknews.com/index.php
197k Alexa
http://www.livelocker.com/
91k Alexa
http://www.getgui.com/
300k Alexa
http://www.yunar.com/
617k Alexa
http://www.contentpop.com/
907k Alexa
http://www.scooop.net/
149k Alexa
http://popcurrent.com/
58k Alexa
http://www.betamarker.com/
85k Alexa
http://dotnetkicks.com/

Shopping
41k Alexa
http://www.dealigg.com/

Iwillsearchu.com

Who the hell does Quadzilla think he is?

January 3, 2007 By Lyndon Antcliff

Notes from the Webmaster Radio show, Net Income, hosted by Shoemoney with guest Quadzilla.

You can get the show at seoblackhat.com in podcast format.

First let me start by saying I love Quadzilla and his blog at seoblackhat.com The guy does not bullshit, does not waffle, he’s as bright as a button and got a good sense of humour. It’s just that he inhabits the dark side.

Here are my notes from the show. Mainly for my own use, but might as well share. There may be errors and ommisions, I suggest you listen to the show to clarifly,

Quadzilla History

Stockbroker
Venture capital
Sales

Internet marketing to go portable.
The desire not to work for the man.
Started in 2004

Once black hat never going back? (question from the chat room)
Never say never.
Pragmatic about algos
Gaming search engines is appealing.

Quadzilla makes money in the black hat space of search engine optimisation.

Shoemoney describes himself as a white hat.

Black hat is not illegal. It’s more advanced than white hat.
Black hat is more technical

Min Max the algos
How can we take what works for 10c to make it make a million

Simple problem and throwing a lot at it..

If something works to a very small degree what happens if we do it a million times.
Find what works, then murder it. When it stops working, stop and do something else.

Getting rid of Adsense will get rid of web spam

Google is reactive, filters their algo to achieve results.

Quadzilla will not reveal his black hat spam sites to Matt Cutts 😉

Quad has More than a 1,000 domains and less than 100,000

Quad has corporate clients.
Blue chip hires black hat

Concepts in black hat can apply in white hat.
Find something that works before they know how to ban it.
Before they even give it a name.

How would you go white hat
Buy an established website and improve the content
He would make less as a white hat.

Changes may come through law.
Particularly with the present knee jerk administration

Most efficient black hat technique.
What works a year ago will not work now.

Parasite hosting
Piggybacking on trusted sites via a redirect.

Ban blogger from the serps to improve the spam problem.

Quadzilla does not get involved in PPC.
Click fraud is not what quad is comfortable with.
Respectable black hats do get involved in click fraud.

You can make a ton of money in white hat ppc, you just need the right tracking software and the right traffic.

Bid shadowing is not black hat, it’s just playing the game correctly.
There are mystical things that make up the Google AdWords algo

Black hat techniques do not get any link love on the blog so he has stopped posting techniques.

Shoe builds a cool service and hopes people come to it. he is sick of hearing seo techniques, better to build quality traffic.
White hat seo takes 4 hours to learn
Title tag
Description tag is back in style
Test keyword density
Sprinkle the keywords
Build a quality product.

He posts blackhat techniques on his forum

No justification for charging a lot of money for white hat seo consulting

Hates the term link bait along with Brian from Copyblogger

Has a lot of respect for Greg Boser. he recommends Greg Boser for seo consultancy.

Prefers .com domain name, even though you pay a premium for a reasonable name, recently paid $25,000 for a domain.

On page optimisation is not trash but it is overrated.

A lot of opportunity to get vanity names from foreign countries like del.icio.us did
Go after short memorable keywords

Shoemoney thinks the name del.icio.us is ridiculous.

A poker site always has a .net name where the free game is and so people type in the name and go to the .com name where the real money is.

Poker is not done as a revenue earner, but will not be back in the US until a few years.

The difference between black hat and out and out click fraud.

Buying a hack site and putting your links in is sometimes described as black hat.

It’s just Min/Maxing the algos to get to get to the top.

How many times does the spam team in Ireland say we can get rid of 80% of spam by getting rid of adsense.

Quadzillas best forms of payment systems is making your own affiliate programme, as you can make affiliate links count for seo. SE are pushing users to the target of the affiliates. Don’t’ use something like CCbill for this.

Payments, wired payments are best. Not a huge fan of paypal and they do not fight hard on charge backs.

Shoemoney likes paypal, but hates the charge backs.

Paypal is basically a bank but not regulated like a bank.

Shoemoney has a guy who can find peoples private stuff if he gets ripped off.

Quad keeps track of techniques, he is given stuff by other people and asks friends to see if something works. When he finds out it works he hammers it.

He is IM’d tips and tricks.
He gives it out the tips to his list and they try it out.

He likes Clicktracks as a metric software.

he customises a lot of metric software, particularly for traffic trades.

Metrics can be a headache with so many domains.

Link bait is white hat seo of the future.

Quadzilla and Shoemoney get asked to do a lot of partnerships.
The best thing you can do is test. Test before showing it to someone.

He has heard that google tracks everything, even gmail. If there is a domain name in it, it may get tracked.

Not comfortable with phishing.

Quad has been banned from adsense and adwords. And questions from affiliate companies. He has problems when a huge amount of traffic goes to an affiliate account.

Shoemoney has experience with this with Commission Junction but tells Azoogle everything and they work with him.

Shoemoney does no black hat apart from a little adwords bot action.

Why show adsense to a bot?
if you are the New York Times you can cloak.
Off topic cloaking is not wanted by google. But cloaking where it is essentially the same theme is not really a problem.

Google no longer allows the use of images to increase clicks, although they have allowed a major hosting site to put hidden text.

You need to worry about yourself breaking the rules and not other people. look at what works for you. look to what see what works and apply it to your business.

Google have hit the tipping point with regards to their size and are starting to get bashed.

Google have not scratched the surface of what they can do.

Trust is supremely important. Don’t start with a fresh domain.
Take a site with some history, some back links and build from there.

You can also listen to the show from Shoemoneys’ blog

Or go to Webmaster Radio direct

“Who the hell does Quadzilla think he is?” was written by Lyndoman aka Lyndon Antcliff

62 posts on how to squeeze the juice from digg

December 27, 2006 By Lyndon Antcliff

2006 was the year of the digg. Virtually every website I read had a story, tips or a “how to game digg” story. Here are a bunch of my favourite blog posts regarding digg

Stundubl

Digg the new Google?
Social Media Optimisation notes from Pubcon
The Search marketers guide to Digg
Etiquette for submitting stories to Digg

SEO Moz

Digg Predictions
Linkbait Success Rates & Digg’s New, Tougher Algo
Everything in the Digg, Reddit & Netscape Algorithms
Elinor Mills Embarasses Self, C|Net with Digg Article
Those Pesky Social Bookmarking Buttons on Blogs
How to Get Banned From Digg
Why It Doesn’t Pay to Game Digg

Wolf-howl

Is Digg Rigged?
How to be a Dirty Digger
Getting Buried in Digg, Not as Bad as it Sounds
What?s One Digg Worth
The Secret Army of Digg Trolls
Creating the Ultimate Digg Post

Performancing

Why You’re Not Getting on the Digg Homepage

Pronet Advertising

Begginers guide to Digg from Pronet
Using digg and Netscape to get traffic
How Not To Get Your URL Banned From Digg
How to get the most out of digg traffic
More ways to make the digg front page
Traffic comparison of StumbleUpon, digg and del.icio.us
What you need to know about digg and Netscape
Why Digg gets Dug
Digg unto others as you would have them Digg unto you
The hypocrisy of digg and spam

Online Marketing Blog

Session: Social Media Optimization
Session : Link Baiting & Viral Search Success
SES Chicago Social Media Optimization Panel

www.10e20.com

And the List of Domains Ditched by Digg Keeps Growing

Bruce Clay

Digg Members Go Renegade

Fused Nation

Digg & your social marketing strategy

Search Engine Land

Site banned by Digg
The new Digg features, a submitters perspective

SEO Black Hat

AOL going Digg Style
Hoax Marketing Gets Front Page of Digg
Recycling Front Page Digg Stories
Humor and Drama in Diggville
10 Steps to Guarantee You Make the Digg Front Page
Forget the Digg Effect ? Check out the SEO Black Hat Effect!

Workboxers.com

The Year of the Linkbait

Copyblogger

21 Traffic Triggers for Social Media Marketing
The Force That Drives Social Media Traffic
News Flash ? People Are Gaming Digg!

SEO Egghead

How To Get Dugg More: Digg for WordPress Plugin

Forget Traditional SEO! Why Good Link Bait is Worth $50K
DiggBait 101: 8 Ways to Help You Get to Digg?s Front Page
3 SEO Enhancements That Won?t Require Ripping Up Your Site

Modern Life is Rubbish

How many Diggs do you need to make the homepage?
The Demographics of Digg
Top 10 reasons why ‘Top 10’ lists are so popular
What is Linkbaiting?
What is the average number of Diggs to make the homepage.

ventureskills.wordpress.com

The Digg effect and can Drupal survive it?

Download Squad

Why digg is destined for failure
Gaming Digg

Silicon Cloud

The Life of a Digg

SEOpedia

The Digg Algorithm – Unofficial FAQ

Pronet Advertising

Social Bookmarking Etiquette

Guy Kawasaki

How to Use Digg to Get Traffic

Problogger

How to build a Digg culture on your blog

Another list of Article sites

December 14, 2006 By Lyndon Antcliff

Actually it’s an edited version of my earlier list of article sites.

I have simply organised the list into seperate rankings and added hypertext.

Please note the page ranking may have changed since this info was collected. Also, I have not visited each article sites and so cannot report on the quality. If you would like to add to this list in the comments below or give a shout out for sites to avoid, please announce in the comment box below.

http://sbinformation.about.com , PageRank: 7

http://www.articlefarm.com , PageRank: 3

How to game Digg without Diggers finding out

December 6, 2006 By Lyndon Antcliff

Digg gets a huge amount of traffic and marketers and seo people salivate at the idea of squirting Digg traffic all over their sites. It’s not quite simple as submitting the post and waiting for the deluge.

Diggers are a canny bunch and they hate being gamed, conned, taken for a ride by clever marketers who want only to profit from their adsense farms. Understanding Digg and it’s users can go a long way in contributing articles to be dugg.

Rather than trying to game Digg, better to contribute to the community and get dugg in so to speak.

Here are some cool links to useful resources.

www.duggtrends.com
Suspicious Digging, Digg Corruption and Digg Fraud.

Why You’re Not Getting on the Digg Homepage
Gaming Digg
10 Steps to Guarantee You Make the Digg Front Page
DiggBait 101: 8 Ways to Help You Get to Digg?s Front Page
Top 10 Actionable Tips (Rules) That Make Me Top Digg User
Beginner’s Guide to Digg
Complete Digg Tools Collection
What?s One Digg Worth
Getting Buried in Digg, Not as Bad as it Sounds
The Digg Effect
The Digg Algorithm – Unofficial FAQ
Spam Digg For Only $20

List of article sites for article marketing. Page rank 4 and above.

December 5, 2006 By Lyndon Antcliff

List of article sites for article marketing. Page rank 4 and above.

http://www.advisor.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.allaroundsuccess.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.allfreelancework.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.amazines.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.answersaboutinternetpromotion.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.article-hut.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.article99.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.articlealley.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.articleauthority.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlebar.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlebeam.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlebin.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlebiz.com , PageRank: 6
http://www.articleblotter.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlecat.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlecity.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.articleconnection.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlecounty.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlecube.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articledash.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articledashboard.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.articledelight.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articledepot.co.uk/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.articledevil.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.article-ecommerce.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlefarm.com/ , PageRank: 3
http://www.articleforfree.com , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlefusion.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlego.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlehub.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articleintelligence.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlekarma.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlemaniac.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlemap.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlenexus.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.articlepros.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articler.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.articlesafari.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlesengine.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articleson.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.articlesoup.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlesphere.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articles-submit.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlesymposium.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articleteller.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlewarehouse.net/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.articlewheel.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.awebhostingprovider.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.awomaninbusiness.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.bharatbhasha.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.bigarticles.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://biz-whiz.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.blogwidow.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.business-opportunity.biz/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.businesshighlight.org/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.businessknowledgesource.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.businesstoolchest.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.chiff.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.christiannotepad.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.commonconnections.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.content-articles.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.contenttomarket.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.cyberindian.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.digital-women.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.dime-co.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.dk-article.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.dognewscenter.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.earticlesonline.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.easyarticles.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.e-calc.net/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.ezinearticles.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.ezinecrow.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.ezinefinder.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.free-articles-zone.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.freeinternetarticles.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.freezine-articles.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://freezinesite.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.goarticles.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.homebiztools.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.hotlib.com/articles/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.howtoadvice.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.ideamarketers.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.instantcashflow.org , PageRank: 4
http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.internetarticledirectory.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.iwantcontent.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.jogena.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.klienwachter.com/adarticles/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.linkgrinder.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.linksnoop.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.mailbiz.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.mainstreetmom.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.media13.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.miniguides.info/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.myfamilyliving.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.needarticles.org , PageRank: 4
http://www.neoarticle.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.nowlearnmore.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.onlinearticleconnection.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.organic-rankings.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.go-article.com/readthis/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.real-articles.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.rightbiz.com/articles/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.savearticles.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://sbinformation.about.com/ , PageRank: 7
http://www.searchguild.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.selfgrowth.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.selfseo.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.storebuilder.co.uk/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.submityourarticlesnow.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.submityournewarticle.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.tc-sales.biz/article/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.theleadingarticles.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.theselfimprovementsite.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.thewebbpage.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.tigrafix.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.timesofpakistan.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.tips.com.my/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.uniterra.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.uswebpros.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.webs-best-directory.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.webmasterslibrary.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.webpromotionguru.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.weeklytips.com/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.weeno.com/ , PageRank: 6
http://www.wellnesspro.info/ , PageRank: 4
http://www.workoninternet.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.writingcareer.com/ , PageRank: 5
http://www.xpressideas.com/ , PageRank: 4

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