• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Making It Up

as we go along

  • Home education: facts and contacts.
  • About me/contact.
    • Privacy Policy
    • Affiliate links and disclosure policy.
    • Read52 โ€“ the challenge and the books.

Is Google really the only game in town?

14th April 2012 by Jax Blunt 12 Comments

Tonight on twitter I caught the buzz about someone losing their google pagerank, due to having had normal links (ie not no follow) in sponsored posts. Hard on the heels of that discussion there was a groundswell of questions. What is pagerank? Why does it matter? What’s a nofollow link anyway*? And so on. And I went on to have an interesting chat about where traffic for blogs come from anyway.

You see, I’m not that convinced that Google and its pagerank are all that important for blogs. Sure, if you want to sell advertising, most companies are probably going to check what your pagerank is, but if you aren’t, why would you be bothered?

Would you be worried about losing your google derived traffic? Does it deliver you good, interested, dedicated blog followers?

It’s my suspicion that most traffic to blogs from search engines falls into two categories. There are the ppl who arrive at a single clearly targeted post – such as for example my camping list. For a while that ranked top of google’s search for a camping list, I think it’s still on the first page. And I’m sure for most ppl it’s quite a useful resource. However, if they are looking for camping resources I doubt the rest of the somewhat eclectic ramblings here interest them, and I assume they are in the portion of traffic which bounces away again.

The rest of the search related traffic is probably slightly surprised at where they find themselves. For whatever reason a post here is thrown up as a good match for what they are looking for, when it manifestly isn’t, and they probably bounce immediately.

Bounce rate is another thing we’re told to worry about. But actually, for a blog, a high bounce rate isn’t so bad. After all, you hope most ppl are passing by regularly, so there should only be one new post for them to read, they read it and then bounce away. You’re looking for a reasonable percentage of recurring visitors, and ppl who’ve arrived from a search engine probably aren’t going to join in with them.

If you’re looking at your stats, there are all sorts of interesting things in there. You can find out what percentage of visitors are new, or which come back. You can find out how long they tend to stay on site, where they come from (around the world), where they came from (referring site). My top referring site is twitter – measure of how much time I spend on there I suspect. But I also get a good number of visitors from posts I write on other sites, such as Emma’s Diary blog. (What, you haven’t read it? But I’m scintillating on there. Rivetting. Pop over and check ๐Ÿ™‚ )

And there are other useful places to pick up traffic. Stumbleupon. Pinterest. Facebook. Social networks with user generated links, entirely possibly delivering better quality traffic thaqn search engines? Ever wondered why google is putting so much effort into g+? It’s because they suspect social is the future of the web, and in that world, how is pagerank going to be relevant at all?

*It’s a link that has rel=”nofollow” in it, telling search engines they shouldn’t give weighting to it.

Tweet

Filed Under: Blogging, It's where it is, social media, Technology Tagged With: google, pagerank, statistics

About Jax Blunt

I'm the original user, Jax Blunt I've been blogging for 16 years, give or take, and if you want to know me, read me :)

Oh, and if you'd like to support my artistic endeavours, shop my photographs and art at redbubble

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. mamacrow says

    14th April 2012 at 10:33 pm

    I’m fascinated by my blog stats, but I’m not really convinced I BELIEVE them. According to blogger, I’m regularly read by people in Thailand, Russian, Brazil, Malaysia, France, Germany, Italy and many others.
    Not one of these people ever comment. America, Canada & the UK I can believe and in fact I converse with these people.
    But the Ukraine?! I don’t think so!

    Reply
    • Jax says

      15th April 2012 at 9:27 am

      Giggle. Hold a delurking day and exhort everyone to comment?

      Reply
  2. Another Goldfish says

    14th April 2012 at 11:33 pm

    I think I’d be hurting if I lost my google visitors, but then what I write doesn’t appeal to a mass audience.
    I’ll take anyone I can get at the moment!

    Reply
    • Jax says

      15th April 2012 at 9:26 am

      I don’t understand why you don’t have loads of traffic, I love your writing and your pictures. Bizarre.

      Reply
  3. Mark Ure says

    15th April 2012 at 9:00 am

    It depends on why you’re blogging. I generally blog to avoid boring people on Facebook and think the idea of raising money from it is a mirage not worth pursuing. If you actually want people to read what you’re saying beyond a few friends and the occasional stranger, then pagerank would be a good idea. It comes down to whether you want to express yourself or communicate.

    Reply
    • Jax says

      15th April 2012 at 9:24 am

      I don’t see how pagerank will benefit you there, probably better to join one of the myriad blog networks, they are yet another way to promote your writing. Basically I’m not convinced that search traffic benefits blogs.

      Reply
      • Bob says

        15th April 2012 at 8:01 pm

        If your writing sponsored posts then the person/company doing the sponsoring is going to want to know that their site is going to get seen so pagerank helps convince them of that. If your not going to write sponsored posts, take any sort of advertising in, sell any products through the site or intentionally write a post that is aimed at being searched specifically for then your right pagerank doesn’t matter as you have no real ‘need’ for google.
        People look for specific things when googling. If they are looking for hints on finding the LEGO fig they are looking for in blind packs then my post about it will help them greatly but if they are looking for daddy blogs they’ll find a site like britmums or whatever and find my blog that way. My largest referer by far is google and get about 80% of my traffic from it on average.

        Reply
  4. Cassandra says

    15th April 2012 at 1:27 pm

    As a commenter said above, one of my favorite things in my stats is the map in Google Analytics where it shows how many people are coming from different countries all over the world. I like to imagine someone in Tel Aviv, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, or Khathmadu sitting in front of their computer being helped by information I’ve put online. Such fun.

    Reply
  5. Melaina25 says

    15th April 2012 at 11:02 pm

    I looked just to see and Blogger is #1 and Google #2 in my referrals. You know I don’t pay attention to these things so I won’t be doing anything with links or not with links.

    Reply
  6. Bod for tea says

    16th April 2012 at 5:35 am

    Thanks for posting this, makes for interesting reading and I missed the discussion on Twitter. I’m really not that focussed on my stats tho if I’m honest. It’s interesting that a good swathe of my readers are from the US but apart from that I tend to ignore them!

    Reply
  7. Stuart says

    16th April 2012 at 2:27 pm

    Interesting read. I don’t worry about our pagerank, or check the data often. I’m not sure I think of myself as a blogger even ๐Ÿ™‚
    Stuart

    Reply
  8. Circus Queen says

    16th April 2012 at 8:58 pm

    I completely agree. I’ve not stuck with blogs I found through google. The blogs I obsessively read are all found through word of mouth in real life or online. As for my blog, the highest referrer by far is Twitter. Social has taken over.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Archives

Categories

Affiliate search on bookshop

Footer

TOTS100 - UK Parent Blogs
TOTS100

Copyright © 2021 ยท Lifestyle Pro on Genesis Framework ยท WordPress ยท Log in