September 3, 2007

Blogrolls

Arrrrrrrrrgh! I just lost a really good post about blogrolling. Silly me. I can’t remember all of the brilliant words I used, so what follows is a poor substitute. Go ahead and read it anyway, just because you love me and crave the knowledge I can share with you.

There’s a lot of debate among bloggers about the right way to do a blogroll. How you do yours depends on how you’re planning on using it, but be prepared to make some of your readers unhappy once you make your decision. That’s okay. It’s your blog.

I hang out with a lot of folks in the sponsored blogging community. Yeah, we make money from our blogs. Some folks think that sucks, but that’s another debate for another day. (Pardon me for a brief detour. You won’t mind if I pause for a colon cleanse, will you? Ahh! Much better. Now where was I? Oh, yeah - blogrolls.) Folks who monetize their blogs have a lot to say about blogrolls. That’s because the amount of money you can make from blogging is directly related to the worth you have been assigned by Google. No one knows the exact algorithm Google uses to compute page rank (I’m pretty sure that no one at Goggle even knows how it works,) but the links on your blog figure heavily in there somewhere. There are two primary schools of thought about how to get the best Google juice from your blogroll. One side says that links are counted every time someone clicks on the page where they reside. It therefore makes good sense to put your blogroll in a sidebar that shows up every time someone visits your blog. You get a little linkjuice for each outgoing link, and all of the folks you’ve linked get some linkjuice, too. The folks on the other side of the fence say that the Google robots were taught in bot school to ignore sidebar links. If you want your blogroll links to count for something you need to put them on an inside page because Google bots love to crawl around your pages.

I’m what’s commonly known as cyberstupid. I wouldn’t know a Googlebot if I met it on the street. I don’t know which way of doing a blogroll does the most good. I let practicality dictate my blogroll placement. I had one on my sidebar. Then I had two, to separate the blogs I was reading every day from the links that I swapped with other bloggers for their link value. My sidebar got ridiculously long, so I moved my blogrolls to separate pages. You can see links to them at the top of my right sidebar. I honestly don’t know if I’m doing things the right way. I’m doing things the way that works for me.

This post was inspired by my new friend, the Frogster, over at The Frog Bog. He recently installed a new blogroll and there were some people who were happy about the way he did it and some who weren’t. He’s a diplomat and smoothed things over, but my belief is that it’s a debate that shouldn’t have happened anyway. What you choose to do on your own blog is your business, no one else’s. If you agree to a link swap with someone, you’re obligated to follow up and post their link. They don’t get to dictate how you do it. If they choose to link you without having made an agreement, you have no obligation. Do what you want. The same rules apply when you link someone in a post. I started to say something like that in a comment to the Frogster’s post, but started talking about Google and link value and stuff and it got too long, so I turned it into a post. I chose to link Frogster in my post. No reciprocity required. It’s a small payback for the inspiration.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogrolls, Google, linking, page rank

April 12, 2007

The Do Follow Blogroll

Technorati Tags: blogroll, do-follow, no no-follow

March 1, 2007

Green Thumb Sunday

January 23, 2007

That’s what friends are for!

A big mahalo to two posties who gave me a hand today. I spent many hours putting together my two new blogrolls, only to have the script corrupt into an unclicklable mess. I posted this morning that I would look for the bugs when I got off of work, and then fretted about it all day while I was in Waikiki.

When I got home this afternoon I opened up my computer and went first to the blogrolls. Nope, it wasn’t a bad dream. They were still just long lists of links that wouldn’t link. I was more than a little afraid to go to the thread at PayPerPost where I’d offered to share my work. I noticed that I had PMs so I checked them out first. I was halfway expecting to find either sympathy or curses. What I found instead was a cure for what ailed me.

The first was from Mooger who explained why I’d had a problem and then gave me step-by-step corrections. Do you know Mooger? He’s a tech whiz who seems to pop up every time a postie has a code problem or other technical gremlins to deal with. He’s got two great blogs where you can get to know him better. In Just Some Thoughts he opens up his head and blogs about whatever falls out. Fun, funny, interesting and entertaining. Most of the posts contain links to interesting things he’s found while wandering around the net, like this very unusual Zebra Calendar from a recent entry. His other blog offers reviews of all things musical. Check him out for the latest in guitars, amps, software and more at Todos Music Gizmos. His reviews are direct and factual and seem to me to be unbiasd and fair. Mooger seems to be an expert at finding the offbeat and unusual. Who knew that you could have an amp in a vintage toaster?

After I finished reading Mooger’s advice I moved on to the next PM, still wearing my flameproof big girl panties and expecting some not-so-pleasant words. Instead I found that my friend CyberCelt had not only offered the same corrections I’d just read, she’d done them for me! Strangely enough, I had written some stuff about her a few days ago & had saved it for a final polish. Here’s what I wrote before she bacame one of my guardian angels:

I’m a Texan, you know, and spent a lot of my youth exploring the great outdoors. That’s why I got hooked on CyberCelt’s Texas RV Travel Blog the first time I visited. She loves to brag about Texas and (don’t we all?) and her pride comes through as she tries to entice you into checking it out youself. She did a wonderful job of decribing some wonderful fishing spots in the Texas Hill Country River Region recently. She’s also generous of heart and has reminded her readers about our obligation to help those in dire need. Make sure you also check out her Click and Comment Monday on CoolAdzine for Marketers and her blog monetizing strategies at Advertising for Success.

I hope you’ll go visit my friends Mooger and CyberCelt and tell them how wonderful they are!

January 22, 2007

My new blogrolls

My blogrolls are complete and can be accessed from my sidebar. Clicking on either Postie Blogroll or Good Folks to Read will take you where you want to go. If I’ve inadvertantly left you off, give me a shout. Feel free to copy either one from here if you like, but I find I get corrupted links that way. I’ve saved each as a Word document that will give you a result that should look just like mine. Leave a comment here or send me an email if you’d like me to send it to you. You can save that, then copy and paste it into a fresh post on your blog & you should be good to go. Installing your blogrolls inside your blog (instead of a sidebar list) will give you genuine incoming and outgoing links, so they’re good for your PR. If you’d like to be included, send me the name of your blog(s) and the link(s.) I’m not going to promise to add every one that comes in, but most of you should be able to meet my high standards. ;0)

Note: I will NOT add abusers or violators of PPP TOS. You know who you are, so don’t ask. If anyone notices that I’ve added someone that shouldn’t hang around in good company, I hope you’ll let me know ASAP!

EDIT: Sorry folks! I scrambled the whole thing when I edited last night. I’ll find the bug and fix it when I get home from work!

EDIT 2/29/2007: The bolgrolls are on the tab at the top of each page in my new domain blog!

January 21, 2007

Housekeeping for my blog

Sometime in the next day or two you will see your link disappear off of my sidebar. Don’t worry - I’m not erasing my friends. I’ll be replacing those unwieldy lists with a couple of links to lists that will be tucked away neatly inside. This will hopefully make my pages more appealing, and will also be better for you and for me, page rank wise. Search engines tend to ignore sidebars when determining ingoing and outgoing links. By placing links in the body of my blog, we’ll all “get credit” for our own links. I’m working on my PPP postie links today and will do my other links once this list is finished. If I’m doing it properly (I think I am) my postie list will be available as a word document when I’m done. Drop me a PM if you’d like a copy. You can install it too, and you won’t be giving me PR credit every time you link to another postie.

December 1, 2006

Blogs I like

Annulla Cooks
Babblings of Whimsicalbrainpan
Bestest Blog of All Time
Blather from Brooklyn
Books in Bed
CamelsbackandForth
Carolina on My Mind
Crunchy Carpets
Daily Dose of Denise
Denise’s Blogher
Eddie, are you kidding?
Fast Times @ Homeschool High
Greenery in Baghdad
Jagged Edge of Emsxiety
Little House on Wheels
My BlogLog
New and Unusual
Passionate About Life / PAL
Profile Directory of Bloggers
Reading Frenzy
Retro Food
Sassymonkey
Sassymonkey Eats
Sassymonkey Reads
Short Gut News
Short Short Fiction
Simpleminded Intellectualisms
Slimbolala
Sweet Tea & Synchronicity
the 3Rs - Reading, Ranting & Recipes
The Best Page in the Universe
The Four Square
The Impulsive Buy
The Midnight Oil
Thinking Out Loud
Tummy Troubles
Uncategorizable
Wide Lawns Narrow Minds
Wizened Wizard

All my postie friends.

This has gotten too long and cumbersone to keep in my side bar, so I’m linking you through this post instead. Let’s hope I do this right or you’ll all disappear and I’ll have to go back to square one!