real blogging tips

The many different ranking systems available for your blog or website can often times become very confusing. At this point their is no unified consensus about which rank is more important or more defining in its role. Rather at this point it is a combination that reveal the true picture of a blogs status.

Lets take a closer look at some of the rankings available and which ones can help you determine where you are ranked in this crazy messed up network we call the interweb ;p

Google Page rank:

Hailed by most as one of the most important ranks in consideration for the possible amounts of money that could be made through monetization. Essentially this rank will tell everyone how important you are according to Google. Their are a plethora of variables which will get you your rank, but for the most part its going to be relevant back links on similar content type blogs or website. While this is not the hardest to raise with work many attempt the short cut method which would be buying links through link exchange networks. Google tends to frown on this and generally will dole out “slaps” or penalizations to your establish page rank. blatant abuse can cause you to be banned from the search engine all together. Keep in mind John Chow has left behind Google while embracing the link exchange and word of mouth methods. Obviously he has been successful and is nearing ever closer to the 30,000 RSS subscription threshold. He will be the first to tell you to look at your own situation and make a wise choice as pissing off the 900lb gorilla can also have its downside for the small guy.

Alexa:

Well many would like to consider this the end all be all to ranking systems the constant change in the way they rank makes them less trustworthy at this point. Another negative to Alexa is up until recently and even maybe so now the rank you recieve is in part provided by surfers who actually have an Alexa bar. This can have a negative effect on your rank if your niche is not tech savvy. For instance I maintain a decent Alexa ranking all things considered, but a blog similar to reach as mine in say the Eco/Green niche is rank several hundred thousand ranks higher. And for no other reason that people who read my type of blog compared to the latter are more inclined to have a tool bar installed. For me I use Alexa to measure week to week growth and fall off so far this has worked great in tracking trends in my writing, etc. Try not to lose to much sleep if your Alexa rank is not as high as you would like.

Site-Rank:

This to me is a live version of PR. Although at the moment I can not swear that my pr would be what SR says it would be it again is a great barometer to mark growth by. They also provide many other stats which are equally important, and seem to be ahead of most other like genera ranking systems. I suggest that you keep an eye on this rank and Alexa to monitor your overall picture on things. This will help you determine if you are in fact on the right path for the next PR update or if your may be having a downward trend in the mean time.

Technorati Rank:

This rank can give you an idea where you rank amongst other blogs. It can do more combined with other ranks, but as you will see in the next section this also is not the most definitive ranks. This rank can give you an idea where your blog appears in the grander scheme of themes and who is talking about you. Because it is possible to buy your way to the top like in a social network I do not hold as much beef so to speak on this rank as others, but it is still one you should try to better if ranks are important to you.

RSS Subscriptions:

While all these other ranks may be important one thing if anything is a measure of your success is the amount of active rss subscriptions you have. Blog readers often times are the laziest people on the planet. Or so it would seem. To entice someone through the Rss subscription process is always so much easier to say rather than do. Many times most readers will just bookmark your site and not think twice about your shiny RSS Subscribe button. No matter how many times someone tells you all that matters are the above ranks they are wrong. Those ranks can give you a reading within a time frame about the stats they pertain to, but nothing other than your RSS Subscriptions will define your success or failure. Again I hate to be giving John Chow free press here but the man has a PR4 site and 28,000 Rss subsriptions. That should tell you that the ranks can skew the truth. Dig a little deeper and you see the RSS meter tells no lies.

What ranks are important to you? Do you use other ranking systems besides these to know where your site is in the overall scheme of things? Do you care? Does it matter?