Thursday 22 May 2008

What happens if you lose PR?

The perceived 'value' of your site goes down, but that is because many, many people (too many people) use PR as an indication of value - I think the smarter people will start to look at traffic figures and readership as an indication of value.

I believe in the long run, your content is the most important element, and the less relevant PR becomes, the less people will use it as an indication of value.

I think what is happening now is that bloggers must rethink whether they are looking for traffic or monetisation, Google is making it difficult to achieve both, if you want Google's SERP you have to bow to their rules. However this is not the only means of getting traffic. If you don't require traffic from Google, then SEO does not matter THAT much.
If you are totally traffic-oriented then you must be absolutely topical or mine a niche very thoroughly.
I have made a post on my main blog which examines closely the effect of losing PageRank on a website, I have looked at the statistics to work out if the PR drop (unjustified as far as I can see since the site in question does not pay for links at all) from a PR of 3 at the start of the year to a PR of 0 right now...

I have two blogs with which I have been more SEO conscious and these are designed around two niche areas. Of these sites, one has a PR of 2, and the other one is yet to be ranked. For these, I will be very careful about the content ensuring that posts are strictly in line with the niche, and careful about how I link to other sites, only choosing on-topic links. This will enable me to do very specific on-topic paid blog posts, and also sell text-links to on-topic sites. This is the more subtle paid-blogging which will replace the more blatant forms that we have become accustomed to.

The reason for this careful behaviour is that for these sites, I will require Google to send me traffic organically, one in particular reports on current events, and will frequently attract search engine traffic. This is not true of all blogs, and the key is deciding whether you need to model your blog along PR lines, or whether you can afford to ignore PR and plough your own furrow. Remember PR is not directly linked to traffic, it is only linked to traffic from search engines.

Tuesday 20 May 2008

Survey on Celebrities in Politics

The latest dNeero survey concentrates on the hotting up of the US Presidential election race. The survey is concerned with the celebrity endorsements of specific candidates. Does it help?, does is hinder?, can it even do the celebrity some harm??

Wednesday 14 May 2008

Google polices the internet

I was using my Google webmaster tools today when I noticed a link that I have not seen before 'report paid links' is what it said (I'm not sure if this link will work if you don't have a webmaster tools account - but if you don't - get one!!). Curious I clicked on it and there is a form giving me the opportunity to 'snitch' on someone who uses paid links to gain PageRank.
This is a fantastic way to destroy the effectiveness of your competitors websites!! (this comment loaded with ironic sarcasm - I'm not sure that there is an emoticon for that!). Personally I don't pay for links to my main website although I have linked from wherever I can including my own blogs, yet mysteriously my PR dropped from 3 to 2 and then 0 recently. (Not a blog, but a 'proper' website offering genuine information and a service to my clients). Have I been targetted by a competitor?? I was getting good search results for keywords, so maybe I have? I think that PR changes lately are all related to perceived paid linking, so it does seem a bit odd that this site with good stable content (and no paid links) has suddenly dropped PageRank completely - and I don't suppose there is any point in me complaining to the big G!!

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Pesquisando por papel de parede?

Um portal interessante que nós pesquisamos é o www.papel-de-parede.org, um site legal para encontrar informação sobre papel de parede. Todos os dados que você tem que ver sobre Papel de Parede voce pode achar neste blog , que publica textos atualizados diaramente sobre Wallpaper e fornece novidades para papel de parede. Encontrar informação a respeito de papel de parede pode ser às vezes difícil de encontrar na internet uma vez que nem todos os websites abordam temas como esses Wallpaper. Você pode procurar mais e registre-se no RSS para ter mais novidades Papel de Parede. Faça comentários a respeito do que você leu neste blog, desde que seja sobre Wallpaper. Por Final, queremos dizer que o www.papel-de-parede.org é um site completo que vale a pena a todos que se identificam com papel de parede.

Vocé também pode se interessar por um outro site que fala sobre papel de parede, que e sobre Crachas!

Procure também em outro portal sobre Wallpaper que pode ser bom também Cartao de Visita.

Monday 12 May 2008

Regular updating

Updating has become easier with the new blogger 'future post' facility, and I will be taking full advantage of the function. Having said that I am currently managing two web-sites and four blogs with varying degrees of success despite (apparently) being employed full-time. I have other projects that I would like to get off the ground, but in order to do that I would have to prune some activity somewhere.
Future posts will help to be able to make a raft of posts and then have them published automatically at a chosen time on a chosen date without having to visit the blogger dashboard. I certainly plan to take full advantage and use every means I can to keep juggling all the sites that I manage.

Thursday 8 May 2008

Extra money in your pocket

A rebate is on it's way into the pocket of millions of Americans, whilst some Britons are feeling the benefit of the '10p tax' issue, others (notably the worse off) will be suffering. If you have some extra money to spend, on what do you spend it?

Tuesday 6 May 2008

Who are you?

Latest survey on identity from dNeero.
This is concerned with the concept of identity, which is a crucial element of blog and website promotion as your readers/viewers/visitors may identify with the personality, stance or concepts put forward.

Monday 5 May 2008

PageRank

There is so much activity with sites and blogs losing PR lately that it is becoming very difficult to know what is acceptable to Google in recent times. I am sure that all the recent changes are to 'punish' those who Google think are paying for links. This could have a profound effect on the blogging world and those who have sought to 'exploit' the blogging phenomenon to place adverts either subtly or blatantly. It also surely has an effect on ANY web advertising. There are countless legitimate industry 'portal' sites that obviously accept adverts and obviously charge for the privilege - in many cases these sites are run by industry magazine publishers familiar with the concept of paid advertising. Will Google then slap all of these portals and all of those traders who advertise with them?
Where does this end?
Sadly, this ends with Google losing it's business model in a monopoly row - I say sadly because Google has been a fantastic model of what can be achieved with the world-wide web, but you can't allow one commercial enterprise that has it's fingers in the pie of web advertising (Adwords and Adsense) to regulate the traffic that may be driven to competitor websites. Google is too successful with it's search engine to allow it to manipulate search results with the objective of devaluing web advertising when Google itself promotes it's own web advertising products.
With the speed of change that the internet brings, I will be surprised if this is allowed to continue for much more than another twelve months.