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Smart PageRank Review

It’s that time again: Google PageRank rollout. Many of us were expecting it’d be done at the end of July, but since the changeover typically happens on a weekend, and since it didn’t happen last weekend, the next best guess would be this coming weekend. Everyone who tends to do so will want to be measuring their own PR.

When the PR rollout does happen, some bloggers will rejoice, some will wail, and others will say “meh”. Love it or not, Google’s PageRank metric does gauge something about your website or weblog – mostly about your incoming links, with several other factors added on to detect “good” things such as “natural” link growth or “bad” things such as naughty backlinking schemes, etc. And several ad networks use it gauge how much you should be paid for your blog whoring activities. (Hey, I do it too.)

Now PR (Google PageRank), if you’re not familiar with it, is a measure that big G came up with a few years back to tell you how important (or not) your website is. And as would be expected, lots of little blogger boys and girls tried to game their PR. Others just wondered how to do that or even just to determine that Golden measure. I mean, if you’re not using Internet Explorer (no truly serious, aspiring pro blogger should), you don’t have the benefit of the official Google Toolbar with PR indicator.

There are number of other options available for checking PR, including Smart PageRank. Smart PageRank’s service works like this. If your site’s URL has enough data for it stored in the various Google data centers around the world, Smart PageRank returns it – both for the www version and the non-www. it also provides some other information:

Your site’s value, based on their own formula. Obviously, this is mostly for amusement. What you think your site is worth is rarely the same as what a potential buyer might feel. Plus, a site’s value often depends on non-public factors like revenue.
Whether a claimed PR for a site is fake or real. This is useful if you are buying a domain name with supposed PR. There are ways to fake PR, and unethical domain sellers don’t tell you this. Unfortunately, there are a couple of pagerank tools that are completely unreliable, but buyers and sellers at SitePoint Marketplace and other domain/ site auction sites use them, not knowing any better.
The number of backlinks to your site, according to Google, Yahoo, and others.
The number of pages on your site indexed by Google, Yahoo, etc.
Buttons for display your PR, etc.

They also have:

A backlinks analyzer that lists the URLs of pages elsewhere that link to you, and what the PR of that page is. If you want to know whether each linking page uses “NoFollow”, that option is available. The Backlinks analyzer itself is worth your time to try.
A Firefox extension, the Smart Toolbar, which I’m assuming works similarly to the SearchStatus extension. (Time did not permit to try this.)
A suite of other SEO tools including domain lookup, whois, bookmarklets and more.

They do not, however, have a PR predictor tool – although many of these are not particularly reliable anyway. There are other ways to estimate future PR on your own, which I hope to cover here eventually. Have a look at Smart PageRank for the present time. Don’t forget to check your pages before and after the new Google PR rollout – which should be happening very soon.

The Only SEO Graph That Matters

With all the fuss about the pending August 2007 PageRank Update, I thought I’d try to refocus all the SEOs out there on the only thing that truly matters in SEO: search referral growth. It’s plain and simple. The ultimate goal of SEO should be to increase search referrals. This is often lost on those who focus their SEO efforts completely on building PageRank.

The golden rule of SEO: PageRank does not translate into Search Referrals.

So how have your SEO efforts been going? Not your PageRank building efforts;-) Your SEO efforts? When’s the last time you looked at a graph like this:

3 Reasons Why People Blog

Why do people blog?

In my view (you may wish to add to the list), there are 3 main reasons why people blog:

To get attention, to make money and to influence others.

Blogging for Attention

Blogging is an attention-seeking platform by nature. It is positive and negative – just as you seek attention for positive causes (raising money for charity), you can also seek attention for negative causes (as an extreme, attacking a religion).

If you’re a new blogger, attracting attention may seem like your first (and most important) step but it can’t be your end goal. All that attention is useless unless you have the means to convert it to your advantage, whether you are looking to make money or to change people.

Blogging for Money

Blogs are publishing platforms, and information publishing and networks are always a good source of income if you have mindshare and a profitable business plan.

We have talked a lot about making money and attracting attention here at Performancing – see the Blog Monetization and Blog Promotion sections in the Best of Performancing section.

Mind you, as Ryan said earlier, that blogging doesn’t scale well as a source of income unless you outsource it and focus your time on management.

Blogging for Influence

Attracting attention and making money off your blog is, in comparison, simple. Influencing public opinion, whether you are trying to change the views of an industry or of a society, is a different game.

While attracting attention and making money are themes that are often discussed in blogging, we don’t often talk about acquiring the power to influence others. Simply put, very few people / bloggers have the means to influence a mass audience, and it starts with the most basic of things – getting attention and holding peoples’ interest.

So tell me – why do you blog?

Carnival of Internet Pros #2

Welcome to edition #2 of the Carnival of Internet Pros (CoIP #2). In the last edition, absolutely no one actually joined the conversation (besides a thank you), so let’s take a different approach to this one. The intention of this carnival is to share our knowledge of working online for a living. I’m going to apply my copyediting and editorial experience and constructively point out one flaw in each post, if any. Essentially, if you were to send these articles to me for publication, these would be my constructive comments. Anyone can feel free to join in and say whether they agree or not.

Critiqued Entries

Keep in mind that I’ve intentionally glanced at these posts superficially and not read thoroughly. This is in fact what editors do for print articles, no matter how unfair it may seem. Only the first 10 items have comments. Articles are listed approximately in order of receipt.

Strategic Internet Marketing & Web Site Optimization by Jason Koeppe of Strategic Internet Marketing. There’s no explanation of where the data actually came from. What service? Or is this from a report? I’m not too inclined to trust this data without a bit more clarity about the source of data. If it’s there, I didn’t see it (no hyperlinks).
Writing with Inspiration by Marc Berry of Techne-eikon.com. A bit too many “I” occurrences. It’s possible to talk about yourself while reducing the use of “I”. Unless you have a large following, it’s very hard to get away with using “I” excessively.
How to Write Posts That People Will Actually Read by Sterling Camden of Geeks are Sexy. Well done. Strong title, great intro, thoughtful scannable formatting.
Get More Traffic with the Right Image Tags by Taylor of Super Blogging. Short and to the point, with a reference if you want to learn more.
3 Ways to Increase your Blog Stats by Ant of The Beef Jerky Blog. My only superficial complaint is that some “Technorati experiment” is mentioned, but there’s no indication of whether this is or is not WTF (Where’s the Fire). You have to click through to an older article to find it’s a chain-letter type of meme.
How to Assemble a Feedburner Alternative Using WordPress Plugins by Samir of Samir Bharadwaj. The site is attractive, as is the statue icon down the middle, but the fact that it moves while you scroll the page is infinitely irritating, distracting and ultimately unnecessary. I find it difficult to scan your page because of that.
The Truth About the Firefox “Pipelining” Trick by Egon of Egonitron. Being a geek, I like posts like this, though I’m not sure non-techies will know what Pipelining is. In fact, I hadn’t heard that term used for speeding up Firefox. But with technical tutorials, it’s never easy to choose a knowledge level to target. At some point, you just have to hope that interested readers will stick to it and read the entire post. At any rate, this is a well-formatted post, making it easy to scan, to determine whether I might read it later.
Ode To The Google PageRank Obsession by Madeleine Begun Kane of Mad Kane’s Humor Blog. Given that the Google PageRank is supposed to be updated this weekend (not last weekend like many of us thought), this is timely. Only two complaints. Firstly, the limerick’s title should have been in bold, to set it off from the intro paragraphs. Else it looks as if there’s a big weird gap of whitespace for no reason. Secondly, there’s this massively unreadable blob of hyperlinks that follows the post. While it’s topically relevant, the mass of blue links makes me want to run away.
The Ups and Downs of Amateur Blogging by ispf of Grad Money Matters. Almost the right balance of “I”, but maybe a few too many. Otherwise easily formatted for scanning. Consider putting in two headings, one for the “ups” and one for the “downs”. By heading, I mean use the HTML h2 or h3 tags.
Amazon Wish Lists with SimpleXML by Ramiro Gomez of SEO Expert Blog. This post is weakened by starting off with “I recently upgraded my server”. You want to tell both the returning and new visitor why they want to read this post. Unless the reader is technically-inclined, they won’t care about the first two paragraphs, and may not even bother reading further.

Remaining Entries

These are the remaining entries for this edition.

Blog Startup: Choosing a Domain by Ian Fernando of Ian Fernando.
The Key to Online Business: Do Something Small by Praveen of My Simple Trading System.
A Few Writing Tips For Your Internet Business Opportunity by Cade Krueger of Write To Right.
How to Drive Traffic to Your Website or Blog – Part 1 by Edith Yeung of EdithYeung.Com.
10 Reasons Why I Love Google by Jimson Lee of Speedendurance.com.
The Right Time To Show Your Blog’s Stats by Ramkarthik of Blogging And Make Money Online.
How to Influence Others by Terry Dean of Integrity Business Blog.
Top 10 Link Building Sites by Jack Humphrey of Blog Marketing.
Free Speech Hosting: 11 Web Hosts That Won’t Dump You at the First Sign of Controversy by Jimmy Atkinson of Dedicated Hosting Guide.
26 Steps to Blogging Success by Vandelay Design of Vandelay Website Design.
Do You Know Who Your Visitors Are? by Leo Dimilo of Idiot Affilate.
Golden Mantras of Effective Email communication Part 2 by Rajesh Shakya of Rajesh Shakya.
Effectively Get Things Done, Set Business Hours by James Mitchell of FocusMinded.com.
Blog Monetization: So You Want To Monetize Your Website? by Kevin of NicheSiteDomination.
The Story So Far by Yehuda Berlinger of Blogging Without a Wire.

That’s it for this edition. If you’re not here and you submitted before July 29th, then it’s likely your article does not relate to the topics covered in this carnival, or you’re trying to pimp your services/ products.

Pissed off at my comments? Agree? Disagree? Tell me so. Don’t forget to link back. And if you’ve emailed me to be a future host, rest assured that I’ll try to get back to you shortly. If you don’t hear from me within another week, feel free to send another message.

Remember to submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Internet Pros using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

A Bloggers’ Labor Union?

In the last few days there has been a lot of press about the prospects of a labor union for bloggers and/or writers. The conversation really took off yesterday with the TechCrunch article Is Blogging Ready For a Unionized Workforce?.

The basic concern is that most bloggers are working for pennies an hour while a handful of probloggers and blog owners are raking in the dough. In other words, most bloggers are working at slave wages. So maybe a union would help raise wages?

David Krug at Telegraphik suggests the need for massive reform in the way blog networks are run:

Bloggers are fed up with payrates, we want insurance, and we want to be able to set standards on how this industry — online publishing is run.

One of the issues that particularly has troubled me in the last few years is how blog networks pay their bloggers. Most of them offer a percentage of profits that a blog makes rather than paying by the post, or one of many what I consider more ethical alternatives.

Krug is voicing a concern with the way the free-market blogging industry has panned out. He wants to see some institutionalized method for improving the quality of life for bloggers.

I don’t see these reforms being successful through a traditional labor union (Note: traditional labor unions do not discriminate based on quality, and that’s the fundamental problem as I see it). In fact, I don’t think that the goal should be to improve the quality of life for *all* bloggers who want to join a labor union.

Rather, I do think that the free markets could willingly support and encourage the development of a “Premium Blogger Collective” that organized the very best bloggers on the internet into a union-like collective and then served as an authoritative central location for businesses and high quality publishing firms to find quality bloggers at premium rates.

Not only do I think that a free-market would support such an endeavor, but Google itself has now put in place the infrastructure to encourage the economics of quality. As a friend of mine put it, they’ve turned the “authority” and “quality” buttons way, way, way up on their search algorithms.

The key to such a collective would be to place high thresholds on blogger entry, ensuring quality bloggers, and gaining the confidence of publishers who are willing to pay a premium for good writing. If the collective were to be successful, it would handle billing and blogger payments, while using some of the profits for important things like insurance.

Despite my suggestions, I do want to provide the following warning. It is my view that the economics of blogging and even SEO just don’t scale well for the aspiring entrepreneur. If you’re serious about getting rich, then you need to become an owner, and you need to start hiring other people to do your work for you. The key to becoming rich on the Internet is putting your assets to work for a strong recurring revenue.

To back up this idea, let me leave with you with the following brief article from Andy Hagans where he diagnosed the fundamental economics of blogging and SEO with an elegant reference to investment guru Warren Buffett. The fact of the matter is that blogging and even SEO are, at a very deep level, bad business models. They simply don’t scale well. And in my view they certainly don’t scale well enough to give every blogger the kind of labor union support that Krug is calling for.

If you really want insurance, then start acquiring good assets and get yourself in the position to hire others. It’s that simple. That’s how business works.

Blog Post Tagging: Four Questions for the Perf Community

I’ve learned a lot from the Performancing community since becoming an active member in April. Some of my favorite threads have been the ones where I ask questions and seek your thoughts and opinions.

Collective knowledge is usually the best knowledge. Consensus usually develops around what works and what doesn’t work. So my hope is to make this a weekly feature at Performancing.

This week’s 4 questions are related to tagging:

Is it still important to use in-post tagging (besides category tagging)?
If so, do you automate this or do it manually?
For maximum effectiveness (i.e. technorati), do tags need to show up on the main page and category pages instead of just the post pages.
What plugins/tools do you use to make tagging an efficient process and strategically effective (targeted).

Building Community: Post often and give your readers something to talk about

A few months ago traffic at my Freelance Writing Jobs blog had stalled at about 1500 visitors per day. I wasn’t getting many new visitors and hardly anyone on the weekend. Page views were way unimpressive. I had been so busy blogging for others; I was neglecting my flagship blog with only a few posts per week and a poor design. After assessing the situation, I realized my problem: sporadic posting.

As its name indicates, Freelance Writing Jobs provides leads to freelance writers. Every day I offer a list complied from as many different job boards I could find. I only posted on weekdays and as I got busier, only several times each week. No wonder my traffic was so stagnant. I decided to act in an aggressive manner.

Before I changed my format, I changed to a more pleasing design. Because I’m not a techie, I let an expert handle that. Now I pay someone for periodic adjustments and it’s worth the investment. The biggest change is in the format. First, I hired someone to update the job list every day. This leaves me with little profit, for sure, but it’s a worthy investment because it ensures the daily flow of traffic.
I also added something else: daily “roundtable” discussions. Prior to that I had the occasional weekend blogger or rare post on issues affecting writers. The past few weeks have seen a surge in traffic and a rise in revenue. Here are some things I learned:

That I have a huge, intelligent community. Some posts have had 80 plus responses.
That if you title a post with a question, your community will answer.
That by posting every day, preferably two or three times each day, you will increase traffic and revenue.
List posts are great linkbait.
Controversy is great for traffic.
My community truly wants to take part in the discussion.

I always knew I had a great resource. Now that I added a way to get my regulars (and even some irregulars) involved, I have a great community. Post often and give people a reason to visit your blog. Involve them in the discussion and watch what happens. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Problogging Ain’t Easy, So Forget What They Tell Ya

There’s a lot of money made surrounding the idea that anyone can easily make five figures as a problogger. That’s a blatant myth. And it very well maybe one of the greatest v-Myths (virtual myths) ever sent ’round the Neterwebs.

If you’re considering the possibility of becoming a problogger and making a living for the rest of your life from the comfort of your own home, you need to take a long, hard, sobering look at yourself and ask whether you’ve got what it takes.

Oh, you haven’t heard about the hardships of making it as a problogger? Not sure what it takes?

Then check out this killer article called Con’s of Being a Problogger

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