Neil Patel and Todd Malicoat know a thing or two about Digg. As active members of the Digg community (in addition to their roles as leading SEO consultants) they’re afforded a unique perspective on the market. Having recently met with Neil and Todd at Search Engine Strategies, WebProNews had the chance to sling some burning questions.

How can businesses take advantage of Digg; if at all? For those already in the game, what’s being done correctly? Incorrectly?

Like search engines, Digg is controlled by custom algorithms. Hailed as “user driven social content,” its front page is (theoretically) populated with the most newsworthy of submissions; those having been “dugg up” by the community. In its purest form, manipulation of this system would be easy; hence provisions to control black hat hooligans and spammy shenanigans.

On your quest to reach the front page, Advantage Consulting‘s CTO, Neil Patel suggests avoiding “crews” or “circles” for reciprocal “digging.”

“I think, right now, what a lot of people are doing wrong is that they’re joining Digg crews, or groups. They [the algorithms] can notice patterns. If the same people are digging each others stories it’s not going to be as effective. [By doing this] instead of needing (let’s say) 30 votes to get to the front page, you might need 50…”

Stuntdubl.com guru, Todd Malicoat is quick to point out apparent sophistication in Digg’s algorithms… offering our key to success.

“It’s really fascinating to see how quickly the digg algorithm is evolving compared to search engines in the past. They’ve really caught on to a lot of the things that took Google, Yahoo and MSN a long time to catch on to… Just within the social spheres… they’ve identified what’s natural and caught on to that a lot quicker.”

Natural, eh? Founded on ideals of democracy, Digg owes it to their users to remain as natural (or seemingly natural) as possible. In short, just like SEO, it’s all about visibility rather than manipulation (on the white hat side, of course).

Patel’s closing advice urges us to consider why one might possibly get to Digg’s front page. It’s as simple as supply and demand…. yet, like many other aspects of social media, some get it terribly wrong.

“They’re taking their website and services and trying to get them all on Digg… submitting everything… they’re trying to monetize on it instead of saying, ‘how can I benefit the Digg community?’”