I have more blogs than I can count but basically, there are 3 I really work with. One of them is an online diary where I address the issues of my life as well as blog stats. For over a year now I have blogged there about a blogging method I dreamed up. It isn’t perfect but it’s a method I could do all that time. The best part about it was I could measure improvement. This past week I altered the acronym I used to follow and replaced it with a new one. I’m a right-brained hippie so I need acronyms to remind me what I am doing half the time.
The new method is going great. To summarize, the acronym is ARC and it stands for: Analytics, Relevancy, and Conversion. These words have meaning for me in my goals of blogging. I never meant to make it a universal.
That’s where you come in. You are an individual blogger but have you defined your individual goals? Perhaps you want to make money each month as I do. Others out there may want to integrate more with friends in social media. Maybe you want to promote your company blog or website? The point is, there is no universal ranking system or method that can determine the importance of a website. You should, based on your blog goals and needs, develop a method that points you in the direction of success.
A lot of bloggers have the psychology that a Google PageRank toolbar determines a blog’s importance. That is a wide misconception. Google itself in fact is sending the message that PageRank should be ignored. Maybe we as bloggers should listen?
This is from a Google QnA forum on PageRank:
Q: My site’s PageRank has gone up / gone down / not changed in months!
A: Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.
(Source)
Here’s my final thought for now: Each blogger should take some time to identify what “meaningful gains” are for her/him and then create an individualized method to get there.
Thanks for providing some direction for bloggers!
I agree pagerank is irrelevant, traffic is more important and building quality articles that are SEO Optimized and get good search engine results. I have 3 posts on my blog that account for 40% of my blog traffic, if I could just create 5 more posts that targeted as well as those 3, I would have double the amount of traffic (800+ unique per day) in a month. But finding the magic niche and bullet for posts is not easy.
In terms of Adsense, it helps to outline the number if products available in your niche. If you pick a topic with a lot of products to hook into your posts, you are more likely to get paid clicks.
The beef I have with that Damien, is that I know I’m beginning to feel (as I’m sure others are) that our blogs aren’t ‘our blogs’ anymore because we’re either trying so hard to find the niche to write about to get the traffic or we’re trying so hard to write about things that will mean more adsense clicks… that we’re not blogging our heart anymore.
I think it’s pretty fair to say that the big guns just get bigger while the rest of us just have to work harder/bigger at it to get anywhere.
Pardon me. Just having a bit of a crisis these days… finding myself disgusted with a lot of things lately….
Hey, Fracas!
Let’s whip out our guns and compare barrel size!
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@fracas: This article was meant to be an encouragement to create and innovate your own routine. The only measure of success for me is my own goals.
I hope I didn’t come off as a braggart, I HATE posts like that
Catch ya on Twitter!
@John – I don’t think I have any guns.
@Damien – I didn’t mean it that way at all, and didn’t take your post that way… I was just pointing out how it’s gotten to a point where a blogger can’t just blog… we have to blog what will get traffic, make sure we use the right keywords, etc. etc. or we’re really just writing to ourselves… and that ends up making us feel like our blogs aren’t our blogs anymore. (If that makes sense)
Plus… at minimum wage (in SK for example) it would only take working 1 hr. a day at that job to earn what a blogger (who brings in $300 a month) is bringing in for putting in way more time than that.
I don’t know if people really ever think about how if they put in more time than that… they’re really making much less than minimum wage. I suppose if a person is looking at it as a bonus, it’s fine… but the extra time analyzing and researching and writing specifically to get traffic and thus earn money is really not worth it if a person isn’t earning real money.
So all of that has me a little veklempt when reading how shoemoney (for example) gets offers like 15K per sponsored tweet.
That’s what I meant about the big guns getting bigger and everyone else just has to work harder/longer.
@fracas, Glad to hear that. I think you bring a fresh perspective to blogging. It’s cool when Adsense or sponsored posts can pay out a little. Most bloggers won’t make a living at it. I know I definitely cherish my day job
Fresh perspective from an old broad? LOL.
I tell ya… if this old brain ever comes up with some brilliant idea to help all of us middle bloggers to get higher up that totem pole… I will happily share it. It’s one of the things that really irks me… watching so many of us try so hard. There are some really incredible people who deserve as much attention as the ‘big name’ bloggers… who in my opinion, aren’t always writing content that’s as good… it’s just that their followings follow them regardless, because of the ‘celebrity’ factor that’s so sickening.
Yay (and woot woot) all you regular guys and gals!
Just sayin’ hello – no idea what’s goin’ on ………..