Digg is a social bookmarking site. It is currently one of the biggest and most popular bookmarking sites around, and can be utilized to generate spikes of untargeted-traffic (which by the way isn’t going to do you a whole lot of good), but more importantly, quality one way links.

There are a couple things you should think about before jumping into Digg. Realize that this is a social bookmarking site, and people will Digg things just because they are “cool.” If you’re selling something or monetizing your site, chances are that if you get to the first page on Digg and get a traffic spike, the visitors are just going to glance around quickly and then leave. They are there to look, not necessarily to convert into customers or click ads. That being said, who doesn’t like traffic spikes? I mean hey, they make you feel like you’re doing something, right? And of course, getting spread virally through Digg may be just the thing you’re looking for… publicity.

1. Signing Up
The first step, as with pretty much any social site around, is to set up an account. This is a simple ordeal with Digg. Just look at the top lefthand corner of the Digg homepage, and you should see a ‘Join Digg’button. Click through and fill out the info. Alternatively, you can sign up with your Facebook account, because Digg has integrated Facebook Connect with their site log in and registration.

2. Digging A Webpage
This is also pretty simple. If you are signed into your account, look at the top of the page, and you’ll see a bar with a couple options, the second-to-last being ‘Submit New’. Click on this option.

You should now be on a page where you submit the URL of the article or site you want to Digg. To make sure I get the correct URL, I usually like to open up the page in a new tab and copy/paste the URL into the box. But it’s quite fine if you want to type it out as well.

The rest is pretty simple. If your article or webpage has not already been submitted to Digg, it will open up a new page. Here you enter in a Title and Description. You choose a thumbnail icon. You choose the category which your article will be under. And Last, you type in one of those really annoying ‘Are you human?’things (one of the ones that’s even more annoying because it’s not words, and it’s case-sensitive). All that is pretty self-explanatory I think. No images needed here.

3. Some Thoughts and Notes on Digg
Like I said before, you probably aren’t going to get highly targeted traffic if you’re article gets a lot of Diggs and makes it to the front page. But there are a couple of other really good benefits from achieving such.

(1) Publicity. Just getting people familiar with you and your site. If you can somehow get people talking about your site, that’s good. The more known you are the better. And hey, you might just get some readers for your blog. This is a great way to get a whole bunch of people to read a really good blog post you wrote.

(2) Blog traffic and links. A lot of times, people will write blog posts about things that get onto the first page of Digg. They might review the site, or just randomly write what comes across their mind, or if the article is interesting enough, they might just want to tell the people who read their blog about it. This works two goods for you. It will give you free one-way links (always good), and it might even get you direct traffic from the blog.

(3) SEO. If you get popular within a major social site like Digg, it is a HUGE boost to your search engine rankings. All the internal links and stuff that go on inside of these giant social sites… search engine heaven. This is another great reason to do social sites like Digg, because they will greatly increase your authority in the search engines. And everyone knows that good search engine rankings are a one-way ticket to more traffic.

I think that about does it for Digg… Oh, one last thing.

4. Adding a ‘Digg This’Button to Your Blog Post or Website
You can also add a ‘Digg This’button that makes it easy to Digg your article if a user is signed into Digg when they view your site. (If they are not logged in, they will be directed to do so before they can Digg.) This will GREATLY increase the number of people who Digg your stuff (if any do it in the first place), because not many people want to spend a whole minute to go out of their way and Digg an article. A button at the bottom of the post makes it easy for them, and your chances of getting a Digg will go up greatly.

You have a few options when it comes to how to insert a Digg Button on your site. You can use the Digg Digg WordPress Plugin, the Digg It WordPress Plugin, or by bypassing the plugin path all together and coding it yourself. (A good writeup on how to do that can be found here at The Code Central.)

Enjoy!