Technorati thinks we still care. (How cute.)
September 8, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors, News and Opinion
A couple of years ago, Technorati was vital to bloggers. It was the only good search engine really good at indexing blogs. Maintaining authoritiy and rank on Technorati.com was a great way to build a readership, and drive traffic to our blogs. Technorati was also a good way to keep track of who was linking to our blogs.
Well, a lot has changed in two years. Google has become so invasive that it crawls nearly virtual “inch” of the blogosphere now. Bloggers can easily see who is linking to them by going typing in link:domainname.com (e.g. link:forthardknox.com) into a Google search, and receive a list of websites that have linked to the blog, sorted any way they like (click on “options” at the top left of the browser).
Google Page Rank and the Alexa rating are a much better way to track relevance and traffic of a blog right now.
And yet, this morning, I received this from Technorati, as part of a newsletter update:
Why Your Technorati Authority May Have Changed, and What You Can Do About It
Changes in Technorati Authority numbers – there are several reasons these numbers have decreased recently:
As our intent is to measure the influence and attention received on an ongoing basis, we stopped counting static blogroll links, and these links have now aged out of the authority calculations.
Due to the vast number of blogging platforms and custom installations out there (and some bloggers who felt we were using too much of their data), we now rely more heavily on RSS and Atom feeds than in the past. Bloggers can control how much of their content they wish to syndicate via feeds. Many blogs only provide partial feeds, we are not always able to get link data from them. Thus, links from these blogs may no longer contribute to your authority.
Finally, to make sure we always know about your updates, please make sure you are pinging us. You can ping us manually from our Ping Page, or learn about configuring your system to ping us automatically on our Help Page. Many blogging services and platforms have a preconfigured option for pinging Technorati and other services.
If you find links to your blog that don’t appear on Technorati, you may want to check that the other blog:
- is claimed on Technorati
- has a full-content feed
- is pinging us with updates.
So, let’s get this straight. In light of its increasing irrelevance, Technorati is increasing the effort that bloggers must make (and the effort they must convince their blogging friends to make) in order to achieve “authority?” They’re making it harder to do something that happens automatically on other search engines?
Whatever…We’d love to want to help you, Technorati, but I’m afraid we’re just a little too busy blogging.
Also see: Tracking Incoming Links
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Wanted: “Do Follow” Bookmarking sites that actually do follow…Anyone, Anyone?
June 24, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about social networking sites that are great for “back-links,” on Google.
What’s a back-link? This happens when you post a link to your own blog on another site (usually a social bookmarking site, or the comment section of another blog), which has a Google Page Rank of 4/10 or better, and that site or blog actually links back to your blog without using rel=”nofollow”, preventing that link from “counting” on Technorati or Google. (For more info on why this is important, see Using [and Abusing] rel=”nofollow to Preserve Page Rank.) Note: There is no code for “do follow,” it just happens automatically if there are no “no follow” instructions.
How do you know if you’re getting back-links? They’ll show up as trackbacks or pings in your comments section. They’ll also show up as links on Technorati, and (eventually) under a reverse-search for your blog on Google. If they don’t it’s probably because the site that linked to you is using the rel=”nofollow” code.
So, as you can imagine, a lot of bloggers are anxious to know which social networking sites will give them good back-links. There are a lot of “lists” out there. Socializer.com has one (click on the “Do Follow” link), and there are numerous blogs on Google that have lists, most of which are splogs (”spam blogs”). Many of the lists are out-dated, and contain links to sites that used to be good for back-links but aren’t anymore. I’ve actually tested a good number of the social networking sites on these lists recently and have not been successful in gaining ANY back-links.
So, here’s my question: Has anyone out there been successful in gaining back-links from ANY social networking site in the last 60-90 days? If so, please leave a link to that site in the comment section below, and we’ll check it out. We’re hoping to develop a list of sites that are useful for this purpose. If we’re successful in compiling such a list, we’ll keep you updated.
Also see: Better Ways to Get some Link Love>
WebWarrior: Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs
May 27, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
Last week, we asked for members of our FHK Facebook Group to nominate “WebWarriors,” who are politically conservative and effectively using Web 2.0. The first response we received was from Dan Schmucker, who nominated Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs, saying:
“She takes needed and courageous stands consistently against national governments lacking insight and the spineless media’s complicity in Islamofacism.”
Indeed.
Pamela is in the top 2,000 blogs on Technorati (under atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com), and has a Google Page Rank of 6/10 (under atlasshrugs.com), demonstrating that she is effectively using outgoing and internal links and categories effectively, and that her content is fresh and original, so that she’s had nearly 10,000 links to her site in the last six month, from over 1,100 blogs and websites.
Creative use of RSS feeds (via FeedBlitz) lets Pamela’s readers keep updated daily through e-mail, VOIP, IM or Twitter.
A quick Google search under “Pamela Geller” also reveals that Pamela has used effective online profile management through social networking and her contacts in the mainstream media.
Thank you, to Pamela Geller, for being our WebWarrior of the Week, and to Dan Schmucker (visit Dan on Facebook) for nominating her. As Pamela says:
“Western civilization hangs in the balance. This blog is part of the solution. Get your heads out of the sand and fight the Great Fight. The Jew may be the canary in the coal mine, but you my friends will be next. Changing the World one Word at a time…Citizen Journalist, Citizen Soldier” – Pamela Geller
Better Ways to get some Link Love
April 22, 2009 by Jenn's Tech Tips
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
Those of you who are weary of my anti-blogroll rants (sorry, Ben!) will be happy to know that I’ve decided to take a more positive, user-friendly, happy, less-angry approach to encouraging my fellow bloggers to attract links without the silly mile-long list of blogs in the sidebar.
We all know links are necessary to build page rank. (We all DO know that, right? Of course we do.) And hopefully, we know by now that scripted blogrolls are not the way to do that effectively (see Why Blogrolling is Useless, and Using [and Abusing?] rel=”nofollow” to Preserve Page Rank.
S,o what are some better ways to attract linksthat are also search-engine friendly (Word for the day: in the SEO world, these are called “white hat” techniques, as opposed to “black hat” techniques that will only work until search engines like Google find a way to block them)?
- Writing great original content that other bloggers and websites want to link to is always a good option (and the preferred one), then use your social networking skills to draw readers and bloggers to your content.
- E-Mail other bloggers, with links to your best stories, and ask them to link to you. You might suggest a link exchange, in which you also link to one of their pillar posts, or a recent post.
- Post an open invitation for bloggers to exchange links on a specific topic. For a good example of this in action, see Careerealism.
- Create images or content with basic html code that for other bloggers to embed in their websites. One of the most well-known examples of this in action is ICanHazCheezburger.com
Do you have other ideas? We’d love to hear them!
What the A.P. is Missing
April 12, 2009 by Ron
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
I was just reading an article at Tech Crunch asking the question, Does Google Really Control the News? While the story was not directly related to my thesis, it pointed out something that I had missed in the whole A.P. content controversy. We’ve argued that the A.P. benefits when bloggers quote and link to them because we send them more traffic. That’s certainly true as far as it goes but it’s not the end of the story.
Search engine rankings are based in large part on how many inbound links exist to your site, article, story, etc. Every link boosts your ranking even if only minimally. Links from larger sites with more traffic are more beneficial but all links help you. So every time a blogger links to an A.P. story, not only does that directly drive some traffic from the link, it also helps improve the search engine ranking for that story at the A.P.
If all of us stopped linking to any A.P. stories, the result would be significantly lower search engine ranking for the A.P., resulting in much lower total traffic for them. My particular site might be small but my impact is larger than just the traffic sent directly from my site because I also impact search engine rankings.
We hold more power than any of us generally believes but only if we act in concert. Individually we can do very little. I’d be willing to bet, however, that the loss of all blog links would do significant damage to traffic to the A.P. and they’d be forced to rethink their position.
Also see:
- Once Again: The A.P. Says It’s Going To Sue Aggregators
- Boycott the A.P.!
- The Washington Times Copies the AP – Starts Charging Bloggers to Quote Them
Trackbacks: Win-Win for Bloggers
September 9, 2008 by Jenn Sierra
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
As political conservatives, we’ve learned the importance of linking to other conservative bloggers, to promote conservatism online. Exchanging links helps us increase our own, and other bloggers page rank.
There’s another advantage to linking to other bloggers. If the blogger you’re linking to has “trackbacks” enabled, a link will be posted in that blogger’s comment section, and readers who are interested in related stories will be directed back to your blog.
Some bloggers, such as Ft. Hard Knox, Michelle Malkin, and Patrick Ruffini have featured trackback sections, and other bloggers show the trackbacks as comments. Either way, readers who are researching for information on the topic of your article are able to find you from the blog you have linked to.
Also see:
- Enough Already! We’re Blog UNRolling
- Why Blogrolling is Useless
- Using (and Abusing) rel=”nofollow” to Preserve Page Rank
Why Page Rank is Important
June 10, 2008 by Jenn Sierra
Filed under FHK WebWarriors
FHK’s TXPoet had an article that did really well today, in terms of traffic – most of that traffic was from the search engines. He posted the entire text of Krazy Kucinich’s attempt to impeach our President.
He had a very good scoop, obviously, because he was the first blogger to post the entire text, but another reason the article did so well is that FHK, through trial and error (a LOT of both), has been working very hard on increasing our Google Page Rank score. On a Google Search, as of the time of this writing, FHK is the second result under the search: Kucinich articles of impeachment text (right behind Rep Kucinich’s website). Earlier today, we were second only behind another blogger, that did not have the entire text.
How did we get Page Rank? You get that when other blogs link to you, and when you link within your own blogs to “pillar posts.” It’s also important, as we discussed here, not to leak page rank by linking to blogs that won’t link back or to blogs that Google considers spam…it dilutes your page rank, and lowers your page rank score.
There’s actually a whole career field dedicated to the study of this, called “SEO,” (Search Engine Optimization). The problem, of course, is about the time we figure out how to be successful in this game, Google and the other search engines seem to move the goal posts. It’s almost as if there is an agenda somewhere regarding what information is “legit,” and what isn’t…?
That’s why we need to get more right-thinking people active in this business. If we have the numbers, we’ll be able to influence what information is considered “important,” and “worthy.” Right now, we’re at the mercy of an industry that is not just “social,” in nature, but “socialist.”
Also see: Why Conservatives Need to Geek-Up: Download
