Earlier i wrote a post on how traffic from Reddit / Digg influences your Adsense eranings. The main idea is that you get lots of traffic, but no clicks, and your main goal is to get backlinks to improve your page rank.
I got to reddit homepage several times, and it helper to improve my page rank and position in Google search results. Here are some tips i experinced myself and also read at other blogs.
1. Unique article.
The article or post you submitting shouldn't be a copt of somebody else's - you'll get no votes for that.
2. Understand what people like.
Your article should be helpful, or funny, or amazing. If it's "how to do something" post, than it really should help dummies and maybe pros to "do something" better than they do. But you can also be successful with some funny pictures, stories or videos.
3. Choose demanded topics.
Posts like "How to make Daft-Punk-style bassline in Reason" won't get a lot of attention. The most popular Reddit topics (according to statisticsfreak) are:
- politics (30%)
- internet and PC (18%)
- bizzare (12%)
- social & other (10%)
- science (9%)
- entertainment (9%)
- bussiness (5%)
- tech (3%)
For Digg it's:
- indusrty news (33%)
- apple (15%)
- software (13%)
- designs (10%)
- linux / unix (7%)
- hardware (6%)
- gadgets (5%)
- programming (4%)
- security (3%)
- tech deals (2%)
- mods (2%)
- news (3%)
- sports (1%)
4. Write attractive headlines.
This one is not easy, a lot of articles are written about writing good headlines, even for reddit and digg. Well, some advices from me are:
- Make Top 10 Lists.
- Make "How to" Posts.
- Write simple, catchy headlines (though you can make big headline to attract attention by it's size).
- Use names (Apple, Google, George Bush, Paris Hilton, etc).
Making a good headline won't give you votes, you can only get them by providing quality content, but it can make more people click your link before it disappears from the 1st page of "new" section.
5. Understand the timing.
It usually matters at what time of the day / week you are submitting. No figures here, because my readers are from different geographical zones, but try to submit right before a lot of users are going to visit reddit / digg.
6. Submit to sub-categories.
There's a much lower competition at sub-categories, so you can get more attention. Submit your articles to the main reddit page and to the sub-category.
7. Check grammar.
No comments on this, i hope it's understood.
8. Make friends.
Add people to your friends list, vote for their stories, post comments. It can make people pay more attention to what you do, espescially if you are serious about getting traffic from reddit / digg.
9. Up-to-date info.
Be sure that your article is based on "fresh" infromation.
10. Be patient.
Perhaps you won't make it right now, try different stories, headlines, topics and time of the day. Getting to the top of reddit is quite easy, but don't be disappointed by a failure.
For deeper analysis and some additional info check 10e20.com and if you're an Adsense publisher, read my article about how traffic from Digg and Reddit influences your Adsense earnings.