Archives for May 2008

Today—just as I was going through my content feeds—I noticed the same story posted on over 20 of my feeds. Words like “excessive” instantly came to mind, but that is being nice about it. Come on already—it is really becoming an issue! I saw this story about a GPS drawing more than enough to get the idea that it was cool, and the entire situation was becoming pathetic. If it is not about GPS drawings, it is the same old stories about Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. It is far too repetitive.

I am, somewhat, over exaggerating, but these problems are becoming apparent now as the overcrowded blogosphere continues taking in more repeated information. It is now like big news organizations trying to be the first to get an exclusive interview with Paris Hilton instead of a dedicated journalist doing research for an insightful piece about the world’s fuel consumption. I am most likely to appreciate the latter.

Even popular blogs seem to write about the same things that other blogs—even serious competition—have written about. Is it really this bad? Are bloggers becoming lazy? I mean, this is only the beginning! Things are bound to get worse as information overload continues to annoy us all.

Further more, I am expecting new tools and services to be developed that will filter though all the rehashing of content in an attempt to show readers the initial sources of content. Most blogs about blogging—like Performancing—within the blogosphere will tell you it is important to create original content, and right now, that sentiment is right on the money.

If your blog relies on posting content from other blogs without adding anything to the story (e.g. reactions or criticisms), the future might be grim for that particular blog—in other words, you should try making serious efforts to becoming more unique and original. Failure to do so might result in your blog being less valuable to your readers.

However, all this excessive reposting by popular bloggers provide opportunities for smaller bloggers to get noticed from creativity and hard work. If a smaller blogger has even one amazing article go mainstream, it could be the key to unlocking that door towards success.

So, please, turn off your feed reader right now, and try to think of some original articles you could write about which relate to topics that you have experience with. After all, you should be blogging about things you have experience with and are passionate about, and if so, then this should be no problem. When you are done, you should be writing about these ideas which you have come up with. If the finished product is well written and of value to the blogosphere, the views will come—people will link to your content.

In other words, if your blog is going to be great, one of the easier ways to start working towards that is by writing great original content! Not only will you be doing yourself a favor, but you won’t add to this excessive replication issue that is plaguing the blogosphere. Do your part, and the hard work will pay off.

Here is one of the simplest ways I know to increase the Google ranking of your home page.

Basically, you change the anchor text of your site wide home page link. This link is usually on the header or the sidebar. Most people usually have “Home” as their anchor text. Instead, use a more descriptive keyword. This is to help you get a better Google ranking for that keyword.

I tried this on my Heroes TV show blog. I had built some backlinks but it was still stuck on the 2nd page for the keyword heroes news. I changed the anchor text of my home page link from “Home” to “Heroes News”. Below is a screenshot of my new header links.

Within a couple of days, my home page had moved to the front page of Google.

Here is another example from my sister’s dating blog. Below is the screenshot of her sidebar.

This tip works because anchor text is one of the most important search engine ranking factors. So, change your anchor text to a more relevant keyword and see your ranking improve.

If you’re new to Performancing’s PMetrics web analytics service – or simply haven’t checked your stats panel lately – you might not know about some of the new “daily” features in the Dashboard section. You can see them in the screen snap below, in the green-highlit area.

Both sections show daily metrics that can be viewed in 30-, 90-, and 180-day windows, and offer numerous options to compare against:

1. Visitors
2. Actions
3. Bounce rate
4. Links
5. Domains
6. Searches
7. Traffic sources
8. Countries
9. Cities
10. Hostnames
11. Organizations
12. Web browsers
13. Operating systems
14. Screen resolutions

The “Daily visitors” feature refers to the number of unique visitors. The “Daily actions” feature refers to the number of page views. If you select one of the compare options, you get a chart that shows the Daily values (visitors or actions) visually compared to the selected metric.

These graphs give you a handy way to compare web site traffic trends and to see spikes. You can also see cumulative stats elsewhere in the Dashboard, if you chose a range in the date drop-down list at the top right.

Not signed up for PMetrics web analytics? Try out the demo, then register. The basic package is free and includes a 21-day trial of premium features – including the eye-catching Spy feature. Premium packages allow you to track more sites, at higher traffic levels, and start at only US$2/month.