The frustrating aspect of pagerank

Posted on June 27, 2007
Filed Under Thoughts & Ideas |

Rank

If you have a blog, you are probably very attentive of Google and their pagerank updates. When Google did an update last time, my two blogs got a pagerank higher than 0! JakobDK went up from 0 to 3 and JakobRecommends from 0 to 2. The second I realized this, I got excited, like when you get a small adrenaline kick. I recognize this from the times when my analytics stats were higher then usual. You have probably tried this yourself. It is a great feeling, and it kind of boosts your complacency. However, I am rather sure this can be a very frustrating and annoying aspect as well! How did you feel, the time you got to the front page of digg, and received over 10.000 visitors within a few hours, and the next week, you were down to your average 50 visitors a day? Or if you have been among the top 5.000 blogs on Technorati, just to drop back down in the pile? Needless to say, this might be a bit aggravating, right?

A golden rule from all the SEO experts and ProBloggers is to update your blog with a fixed frequency. Of course, this advice often comes from the guys who make a living, from their blog. As a fulltime blogger, one new post a day should be possible. However, if you, like me and almost every other blogger, have another fulltime job, and a lot of other things to do, daily updates are impossible.

Because of Google’s pagerank, Technorati stats, Alexa ranking, Analytics figures, AdSense account, etc. People have enough different rankings to keep up with. Knowing that daily updates are important, Bloggers often tend to focus more on quantity than quality. I guess this is why a lot of people have started a daily post called daily link love, which is links to recommended blogs. This gives them an easy way to do a daily update, as well as a possibility to give someone else an inbound link, wishing for someone to return the favor, so they can climb even further up the Technorati ladder.

I must admit, I like having a pagerank higher than 0. I like to check where I am ranking at Technorati, and I enjoy checking my analytics stats. But It seems like everyone is getting too obsessed with these rankings, and giving them too much priority. I enjoy reading a blog, when there is something worth reading, not because there is a lot to read. It is all about quality content. Furthermore, I enjoy reading blogs which has quality content, but a pagerank on zero. Knowledge known by few can somehow easily be more interesting that something which is shared by everyone.

Sure, daily updates might be important if your blog is your primary source of income. If you are able to make high quality daily posts, this will make a lot of visitors come back every day, thus more earnings from AdSense, affiliate programs, etc.
The rest of us, who aren’t full time bloggers should stop pretending that we are. Sure daily link love and posts similar to this can be a good idea. But a blog should be more than just a big site of links to other blogs which the owner recommends. If you don’t have anything to write for one month, then live with it! I have seen a lot of blogs shut down, mainly because the admin doesn’t have the required time to keep it updated. If this was up to me, I would let me let my blog stay online, and simply just wait. Just maybe, in a week or two, I have something I really feel like sharing. If your blog is online, and already has just a bit of content, why shut it down? The costs are minimal, and you have already spent time setting it up and writing. Does it really matter where you position in any of these ranking pages? Realize that you are not going to make a living of your blog, unless you are extremely good at it, and start doing it full time. If this is not an option, then think about the money you get from contextual advertising as a nice side effect of your blog, and not as the main reason for the blogs existence. If you really like blogging you should stop spending time at the ranking pages, spend more time writing quality posts, and you will see people come! Spending time, reading about how to increase traffic, SEO etc. is really useless if you have no content quality content on your page. However, if you are writing some really interesting posts, people will come and read it, with very little effort! (Steve Pavlina is the perfect example of this!). Surely a mixture of high quality content and Search Engine Optimization can have a synergic effect, but content should still be the top priority. SEO without content will do nothing, Content without SEO will work, a mix of content and SEO will work even better.


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Comments

4 Responses to “The frustrating aspect of pagerank”

  1. nongeek on June 27th, 2007 3:41 pm

    I agree. Quality content is the key to a loyal readership. It seems, however, that many people keep visiting some blogs just because there’s something new every day. It also makes sense.

    This article will be in my daily link love, if I someday decide to write one.

  2. Jakob Dupont Knudsen on June 27th, 2007 10:41 pm

    nongeek,

    Exactly. I think that is way a lot of people do this daily link love. They believe that if they just update their blog daily, visitors will just drop in, no matter what. Well there obviously has to be something more than just daily link love. I prefer to not do daily or weekly link posts, but just write a post when ever I trip over something interesting. I would be thrilled to get a link from your blog! However, I guess chances are that you won´t start a daily link love? :)

  3. shaun on July 20th, 2007 4:38 am

    I totoally agree with you. A lot of bloggers spend far too much time being a stats whore and not enough time writing good content.

  4. Posts of interest July 25th » Shaun Low on July 25th, 2007 6:35 pm

    […] Jacob Dupont Knudsen wrote an excellent article saying how some blogs focus too much on stats like Alexa and Technorati while spending less time writing quality content. Check out the full post here. […]

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