This post was originally posted Nov 7, 2006 – I have added a screenshot as the original subject site is no longer online – it is still just as relevant today as it was over 3 years ago. In places I have added some additional commentary or expanded on original ideas.

References to PageRank should be looked on as synonymous with Google Juice & overall site authority, and not just green pixels in a toolbar, though that can be a good visual indicator at times.

How a Blogroll can kill your PageRank

I followed a link from Digg a few minutes a go, read the story, and as I frequently do on any site I visit, I snooped around a little.

I actually do exactly the same every time someone writes a blog post referring to me and pings my blog. It is the polite thing to do, and maybe I can add something to the conversation. It also allows me to relate any comment to the person who is writing about me, either positively or negatively. Everyone is entitled to opposing views. What is often important is why they have an opposing view, and it isn’t always obvious.

Now about the site in question:

1. I have only read half of one article there, so I don’t know much about the site contents
2. The reason I am linking through to the site is purely from an SEO point of view
3. This is a very common problem, very easy to make, and honestly not too hard to correct.

With that said, here is the site Kerry Fox Live (Archive.org link – the site seems to have been offline for 2 years.)

Initial Site Analysis

So the first thing I notice is that it is a PR3 site.

The internal categories are mainly PR2

The archives are mainly PR2

The individual post pages are generally PR1 or unranked

A large proportion of the content is duplicate syndicated content from services such as Associated Press, without any wrapping

But the site has been around for 16 months

You can make a splog, chuck duplicate content at it, and get a PR4 or PR5 after a few months.

So what is wrong with the site?

Take a look at the sidebar

At a guess (I am seriously not going to count them all), only 20% of the links on any given page point to an internal page. (yes that sidebar is on every page)
There are 2 blogrolls, one of which seems to be websites and blogs he likes, and the other is a whole load of press related sites… news sources.

Every single one of those links is a live external link leaking PageRank to other sites. Those other sites are not reciprocating in any way.

Now I am sure someone is likely to point out that those links provide a service for visitors, and maybe add a little authenticity to the site.

What visitors?

We are looking at a news site with an Alexa rank of close to 2M – not 2k, but 2M

Now there are times you want to sacrifice a little page rank to other sites, especially if they are reciprocating, sharing visitors, or in the case of my blog, I like visitors commenting and joing my “community”. You might also do it in a carefully controlled way from a mininet to one of your own sites.

Solutions

Get rid of the blogroll on all internal pages. It is giving away too much traffic to other sites, not to mention PageRank.

Add nofollow to all the blogroll links that are not reciprocating, or you don’t want to be overly friendly with. (Update August 2010 I would probably tend to use javascript in some way)

Increase internal linking to compensate for all the leakage.

How to Increase Internal Linking

• Recent posts – 10 links
• Top Posts – 10 links
• Recent Comments – 5 – 10 links
• Tagging + Tag Cloud – 50+ links
• There wouldn’t be a need for as much internal ball linking if there wasn’t so many external leaks. The site is gaining very few comments.
• Related posts – 5-10 links
• Related reviews – 5-10 links
• Glossary links

Emphasis should be placed on the links you wish visitors to traverse

External Linking

The site has 2 visible external links to the front page. I am not sure how many to internal pages, but even if it did have external links, any PR given would immediate leak.

Just syndicating one article will generate loads of backlinks, far in excess of what you can achieve with a single blog post (unless you have 100k+ readers). Based on my analysis of “A” list bloggers, their average blog post might normally generate around 10 backlinks (showing in Google).

(update August 2010: – whilst many of the bloggers I analysed in 2006 have 10x as many subscribers by RSS & email now, the number of links they receive, other than from splogs & social media probably hasn’t increased)

Conclusion

It is not rocket science, just simple maths.

If you have 100 external links on every page of your site, you need lot of internal links to retain some (hopefully most) of your PageRank, and it would certain help if those people you give a link to on your sidebar reciprocate in some manner.

(please note that includes me – don’t put a link in your blogroll to my site – sure I appreciate the links, but I would much prefer just an occasional mention in your blog)

If you can’t get a reciprocal link, use nofollow, (August 2010 – blocked external javascript), or stick them on their own seperate page so they don’t suck your own site dry.

And finally… this site structure plagues a huge proportion of blogs. Other blog owners who do not have this problem, quite likely don’t even realise why.

Further reading:

Revenge of the Mininet | 3rd Party content | Blog Comments | No Follow

Update: whilst I am still a fan of article marketing, I no longer recommend any service that doesn’t provide a way to have unique passwords for each distribution site.

On April 30th 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor towards the victims of Virginia. 33 died at the US college massacre.

You can read more details on Steli’s education blog.

Steli has set up a support site for this initiative, where you can find various logos / badges / banners.

Here is an example, suitably sober and stylish

It is damn hard finding you!

I think one of the problems is that if you search for a domain name, it isn’t found, you have to search for the name of a blog, and hope for the best. It can be quite time consuming.

So I have decided this would make a superb group project (note this is not a meme but feel free to link through)

Instructions

You are only allowed to list one blog. I know some people have 10 or more, but so everyone gets equal benefit from this group project, you are only allowed to list one.

In my last post about the Bloggers choice award, I mentioned how important it is to have focus, so if your blog has been nominated for multiple categories, now it is crunch time, and you have to make a strategic decision which category you wish to target.

In the comments either:-

• Provide a link through to the voting page for your blog in the category of your choice

or

• Provide a link to your blog, and the category you wish to target – this is for those people who are not yet nominated, or are not nominated yet for the category they wish to receive votes in.

If the blog is NSFW, then please make sure you indicate that

You must subscribe to the comments by email (and expect to receive quite a few emails)

This isn’t a post for lots of discussion, so each person should only make one comment, with the specific details requested.

If someone posts a site that they think hasn’t been nominated yet, I will double check, and if it is not nominated, I will nominate it myself (make sure it is appropriate for the category and is a real blog)

When the submitted blog becomes available on the Bloggers Choice Awards site (nominations are manually checked by the staff), I will make a comment to this post with the details and a link to the voting page.

You have to agree to the following:-

To take a look at all the blogs currently listed, and the updates that are sent to you by email

Yep that is it…

There is no guarantee of votes, but this is to enhance the opportunity of being voted for by my readers, and bring each site some traffic, and maybe new subscribers.
Subscribing to the comments on this blog is not subscribing to an email list, or for blog post notifications. I have a privacy policy and stick to it

Remember you must subscribe to the comments

This isn’t gaming the system, just making people aware of other blogs in my blog community. Only vote for blogs you like, but visit all of them.

Thinking Blogger Award

A couple of days ago Lorelle gave me the honour of nominating me for the Thinking Blogger Award, that RT Cunningham had previously nominated me for.
I am shocked and humbled, and can only strive to make people think even more.

You can also read about who I nominated for bloggers that make me think, and why… I chose 5 totally different people for different reasons.

Bloggers Choice Award – Huge Marketing Mistakes

I actually made some serious marketing mistakes when I mentioned I had been nominated for the bloggers choice awards.

• I didn’t put a badge at the top of my blog
• I gave people 2 choices – Blogging and Marketing

This blog is somewhere in between a blog about blogging, and a blog about marketing. The competition is tough in both categories, with Darren Rouse and Lorelle obvious picks for the top blog about blogging, and Brian from Copyblogger nominated and thus could easily race into the lead for marketing. Maybe we should leave the giants asleep ;)

The Marketing Lesson?

Bite the bullet, set yourself achievable goals and focus

So what is happening?

I am being slaughtered on the best blog about blogging, Darren is screaming into the lead, with Lorelle an honourable second, and likely to retain that position.

Best Marketing Blog is still up for grabs, although Cord is currently leading by a fair bit more than a head and deserves some of the limelight.

Testing The Water

Lets look on it that it wasn’t a major mistake, and I was performing a split test. My readers have decided that I am more a marketing blog than a blog about blogging, even though the button in the original blog post for marketing was positioned on the right.

Focus

I know which topic I still have a chance of retaining a reasonable result from – there is a reason to pursue this award, because the awards site is gaining lots of links, and I am sure will continue to gain traffic. I have seen a fair amount of traffic from the site, and gained new subscribers.

Plan

• I am offering just one button (for marketing)
• I am presenting it to my audience a second time (in case they forgot) – follow-up is very important, just look at how many posts I have written about DoFollow
• The link badge will be placed in my header for a constant reminder

Making Another Marketing Mistake?

Well it could be….

There are a lot of links on this page to other bloggers but I have always linked out generously.
But there is always the benefit of using other people’s traffic. I don’t necessarily have to win, because if Brian decided to take part, he might send 10,000 people to vote for him, and some of those will no doubt be curious about who the other bloggers are who have been nominated and have a fair number of votes. That in turn would bring me traffic and possibly subscribers.

Another factor is that I would never write a post purely to beg for votes, there would have to be some marketing or blogging advice in anything I publish.

Ah well, lets take this to extremes, for instance did you know that Andy Beal has also been nominated for Best Marketing Blog?
The funny thing is that for some reason it is listed as containing adult content? Maybe Jordan has made some posts I wasn’t aware of, and started a “Nude” meme in honour of Vanessa Fox Nude.
Anyway Andy is languishing at the back of the field with only 3 votes currently. Then again SEOmoz is also slacking with only 3 votes so far. Note I have actually voted for both. You can vote for as many blogs as you like.

Time for a another “Buy it now” button

Maybe all this linking is suicidal, but it could also be “Standing on the shoulders of giants”

First off I should note that Mike wasn’t totally alone in this effort. I believe Dawud may also have been exchanging emails and encouragement in the background, and certainly Dawud’s previous blog posts spurred Mike into action.

Mike Sansone is an expert not only on blogging, and community building, but also on Typepad.

If you use Typepad, find out How To Remove Nofollow From Typepad

Even if you don’t use Typepad, give Mike’s post a Digg, because that is the best way for Typepad bloggers to find out about this.

Feedburner for as long as I remember have provided a daily updated feed counter that you can display on your blog. The way the feed count is updated is actually fairly complex as they mentioned in an announcement yesterday that some publishers might notice an increase due to algorithm change.

Maki decided to pose a number of tough questions to a number of bloggers about why they choose to use a feed counter or not.

Dosh Dosh’s Feed Count Meme

Here is the main question for the meme:

“Why do you display (or not display) the Feed Count for your blog?“.

Short Answer: Social Proof

Long answer: Social proof – but in a multitude of ways, not just to gain additional subscribers

• Subscribers – Here is what I wrote on my Bumpzee profile and in a few other places – “90% of the world’s human population are herd animals, not far removed from sheep and cattle” – just think about the effect branding has on people’s perception of quality. I chose not to display my feed count until I readed what I determined to be a reasonable number – 300 subscribers
• Advertisers – The ratings systems at many monetization services are a little crude, often relying on Bloglines subscriber counts. It is my belief that new users of RSS tend to choose Google Reader or Email subscriptions over Bloglines. Growth in Bloglines subscribers is an uphill struggle.
  When an advertiser comes to look at a blog, it is good to show that a blog has “reach”.
• Links – whilst it could be stated that the number of links a blog receives is at least partially related to the number of subscribers who might be inclined to link through, it is my belief that many people in a situation where they have to choose which site they should link to from multiple sources, would partially determine their choice based upon visible popularity. Often links come from people researching a subject on Technorati or Google Blog Search – in many cases they would want to link to authorities.
• Authority – Does this guy know what he is talking about? This affects both subscribers and links, but possibly also might affect other metrics.
  • Time on page (did they actually read the content)
  • Page views per visit
  • Return visits (without subscribing, such as following links on other sites)
  • Votes on Social Media Sites

  Social Media Marketing is all the rage currently, but visitors from social media sites are extremely fickle thus any indication of trust or authority you can display may have positive results. I don’t write my content specifically for social media sites, and there are certainly aspects of my site design I plan to change for andybeard.eu 2.0 to possibly improve conversion.

• Sex – If you want chicklets to say how big yours is, it is easy to copy and paste the HTML

Further Questions

How long did it take you to reach the current feed count? Was the growth gradual? Any notable external factors that had a positive or negative effect?

This domain was launched October 17th 2006, though 80% of my subscribers have been gained in the past 2 months.

For me it has been gradual growth, but the more popular your blog becomes, the more people reference what you write with links, the more direct and organic search traffic you receive, and your subscription rate tends to increase. For me it is typically 1% to 2% new subscribers per day. With a number of algorithm changes making stats jump around, plus the fact you can subscribe to a feed using autodiscovery without even clicking something on a site that can be tracked, it is very hard to determine precise growth numbers.

MyBlogLog has a very positive effect on this blogs growth, as do the occasional mentions on a popular blogs. I haven’t had any massive amount of social media traffic above a few 500 visitor Stumbles.
I should really delete half this post and make it more palatable for a mainstream audience.

Apart from displaying subscription buttons, what other ways (if any) do you use to encourage your readers to subscribe to your blog feed?

It is possible that visitors to my blog notice the subscription options at the top of the page, in the primary position normally reserved for advertising.
That section is going to be tweaked soon, but it will still be highly prominent.

In your opinion, what is the most effective way to increase your feed subscription?

Top 10 Ways to A Massive Subscriber List

• Take your existing mailing list of 1000s and import it into Feedburner as I discussed previously.
• Create a squeeze page that is primarily for email subscriptions to your blog, and use pay per click advertising to gain traffic.
• Create content aimed at being popular with users of specific social media sites (linkbait), and get involved on the sites to create peer groups, or find someone to help you.
• Write about newsworthy topics with your own spin / angle – Jason Calacanis has suggested that all you have to do is write about the top posts on Techmeme for a month and you could become an A-list blogger
• Networking – get friendly with A-list bloggers in your niche so they are more inclined to read your content and link to you.
• Get listed as a default feed option in a major RSS Reader or Ajax Desktop
• Optimize your site to maximise the percentage of visitors who subscribe
• Have content or services (maybe WordPress Plugins), that are continually updated with great features, such that users wait for updates with anticipation
• Become the external PR or Support Blog for a major corporation
• Target a popular niche with high adoption of RSS Readers

Size Isn’t Everything

Email marketers would much prefer a small list of highly targeted proven buyers than a massive list of tire kickers.

The same is true of blog subscribers.

• You are more likely to get links from top bloggers in your niche if they subscribe to your blog
• If angel investors and VCs subscribe to your blog, you might have a higher chance of raising capital for a new startup.
• You are more likely to be offered contract work by people who read your blog.
• For a company blog, the ideal subscriber is someone looking for your solution, who has a fat wallet.

I have always aimed my content specifically at very targeted groups.

The Meme

Rather than nudging people to take part in this meme, feel free to pick it up and answer the questions on your own blog. I believe Maki is linking through to everyone who links through to the meme, and anyone who pings me gets a followable link by default due to using dofollow, but I will add links manually to the post as well.

Chris Garret has already given his answers.
Daniel responded and pointed out that a low count might discourage people to subscribe.
Engtech puts a different perspective on things because he is hosting on WordPress.com – His feeds are split due to the lack of support by WordPress.com of adding a different autodiscovery feed.

Technorati simply can’t cope with new forms of blogging and RSS feed generation. I am not talking about splogs, which seem to still be rampant, and reblogs, likewise, but totally legitimate alternative unique content sources that are effectively blogs.

coComment

Not too long ago, coComment introduced the ability to be able to claim your coComment feed on Technorati, and went to the trouble of creating a very integrated claim wizard.

Within a few days, the very legitimate coComment feeds full of unique content were filling up Technorati links pages. It seems Technorati swiftly took action and decided that coComments feeds were not blogs, and silently nerfed them.

coComment feeds are not splogs, they are a record of activity all over the web that contain content directly linked to individual people, and real discussions.
Technorati could use coComment as a way to filter out splogs, because blogs that don’t get comments might be a good indication of splogs and reblogs.

Twitter

Twitter allows you to post a Technorati claim. I have claimed my Twitter feed, and so have a couple of my friends. Update: Paul has written about doing so here now.

Twitter also has a blogroll of sorts. There are links on the sidebar to the people you are following which are links Technorati can see.

The result if people claim their Twitter account in Technorati and their friends do the same is clear to see.

Now what happens if you are a Twitter user like Robert Scoble with 100s, actually over 1000 followers.

Not all of Robert’s followers have claimed their feeds, and Technorati hasn’t found them all, but that won’t take long.

Technorati Can’t Cope

coComment is very legitimate user generated content – if I fed my coComment feed into a blog, it would be looked on by Technorati as legitimate, so why negate it’s effects only days after it was introduced?

Twitter is actually less legitimate than coComment – you are limited to very few characters unlike blog comments which can often be longer than many blog posts.
Twitter has a Blog Roll of sorts, that is providing cross linking, and soon Robert Scobles Twitter might enter the Technorati Top 100 – you only need 3300 blogs linking to a blog to hit the Technorati 100 currently, Robert already has 1000 followers and I am sure he will easily clock up more very quickly.
The problem for Technorati is that Robert’s Twitter feed is legitimate content on a different platform, and that people are choosing to link to him from their “Twitter Rolls”

Blog Rolls

One of the reasons blogs that are part of blog networks gain Technorati rankings fast is their sitewide links to other blogs in the network.
As I pointed out recently when defending 2000 Bloggers, there are blogs that are part of blog networks that haven’t posted for more than a year, but due to blogrolls have very high Technorati ranks, without any links from within the content.

Widgets, Plugins and Themes

Various members of the WordPress development team used to dominate the Technorati Top 100 because of the default blogroll links. Nothing wrong with the links which are well deserved, everything wrong for Technorati counting them.

Currently the best way to game Technorati is to create widgets and themes with links to the author. Technorati picks them up as links from the blog.
Some of the widgets can do this in quite a collective way, such as community blogroll widgets that add 100s of cross links to all members of the community. Then again they are only doing the same as “legitimate” blog networks.

How to Fix Technorati

Technorati have to change the way they look on links completely, and only count links within content. That may mean their spiders have to start working in a totally different way, and current link totals will twist real results for 6 months.

Technorati should be counting alternative blogging platforms such as coComment and Twitter, but again, they should only count links from within the content.

Twitter is dominating Techmeme today.

I love Pete Cashmore’s timeline of blogging, Marshall Kirkpatrick did a “sitting on the fence” roundup, (i.e. unbiased reporting), and Brian Alvey put a unique perspective on things, (he should be thinking of adding a Twitter widget to Blogsmith for a USP).

The Best of Blog Awards is something different. The voting is unaffected by high readership, in fact if you have a high readership, you don’t even qualify to enter. Even this blog, just over 3 months old doesn’t qualify by a considerable margin.

I am sure many of my readers will qualify – you have to have less than 100 unique visitors per day. There are even real prizes such as free entry to BlogWorldExpo.

One additional point, this event is being run by OneByOne Media, who have a good reputation in the blogosphere, thus I expect the winners, and even the nominees to gain a fair amount of exposure from this event.

It is designed to be a complete all in one solution, with not only blogging but also more advanced features such as forums and Paypal support.

I thought I would give it a try.

Account Creation

It appears quite simple, fill in the usual details.

One major thing of note, it allows you to enter a company name, thus it is designed for business. That might seem obvious, with the Paypal support.

Hmm, the first bug was found… I tried to enter an email address with a “.eu” domain and it was rejected. That is certainly oversight and easily corrected, but strange for a UK company to overlook.

Second problem is in the terms of use

15 – User Conduct

The user shall not:
6. Use the Service as a forwarding service, gateway or advertisement to another website.

I understand the reason they implemented this clause (to fight splogs), but it makes the service effectively useless for any kind of business blogging. One of the core reasons to blog for a business is to send traffic to your core business pages.

• If you have an existing business site, you are going to link to it.
• If you are a pro-blogger of some kind, you are going to use affiliate links

It is good they have Terms on launch, but they may need to clarify them.

First Glance

Clunky URLS need to be fixed such as

http://plugins.terapad.com/index.cfm?fa=contentNews.newsDetails&newsID=3284&from=list

Legal Terms

I love the fact that legal terms are included for every blog by default. I wonder if you can adjust them and who owns the copyright on the finished version.

I have suggested in the past on the wp-hackers mailing list that some boiler plate legal documents be drawn up and shipped with WordPress. The developers couldn’t see a need, but having some legal documents is better than none at all, especially when blogging software collects email addresses etc.

Multiple Accounts

There doesn’t seem to be any restrictions on registering multiple accounts, although each blog is accessed by a separate interface. I would much prefer something that allowed you a single login for multiple blogs. Maybe it exists but I didn’t find it.

Thus I have created

http://andybeard.terapad.com (brand identity – I might move Web 2.0 discussion there)
http://plugins.terapad.com (for discussing plugins of various types)
http://keedz.terapad.com (my registered company in the UK – more brand identity)

Integration

Terapad seems to have plenty of integration options.

Google Analytics, Feedburner, Sonific, IndieKarma, Flickr, Meebo, Digg, Del.icio.us & Paypal

Widgets

Something similar to WordPress Widgets is promised. Currently you are provided with 3 entry boxes to place things on your sidebar, and one for entering things like analytics code.
I need to test those out to see what is allowed, such as advertising and MyBlogLog.

Permissions

Ok this part is actually quite impressive at first glance. It is obvious that this blogging platform has been setup with large projects in mind. Whilst the blog owner has access to everything, permissions can be set on an individual basis for every other major aspect of the site. Have a new site designer? Give him permission to change your CSS. Give volunteers the chance to moderate your forum.
Unfortunately there is no precise control of access to content, maybe for some kind of premium content. It looks fancy, but at the end of a day the features you might want are not there.

Transfer & Quota

It might seem like a massive amount, but it isn’t really. 2GB of storage is probably far enough, but 10GB of transfer isn’t a hell of a lot, especially when it is broken down into 330MB chunks per day. That doubles when you pay for a professional version but there isn’t a lot of information if you want or need a lot more transfer. Remember this is for businesses – you can’t risk your site going down.

Categories and Tagging

Categories are supported, tagging isn’t or at least not completely. They describe categories as part of blog tagging. You can enter additional tags for your content, but I can’t see anywhere that those additional tags are being used. Maybe they are meant to be used in the meta keywords at some stage, but currently they are not. I would like real tagging support.
Categories seem to be limited – no nesting and only one category per post.

Feeds

Yes, Terapad supports Feedburner. +1

I was going to point out no auto-discovery. That seems to have been fixed while I was writing this review.

The feeds are only for the blog, not for the forum or other parts of the site. I don’t think there is a feed for comments either, although there is a subscribe by email option.

Pages

There is support for pages as well as posts. Again really ugly URLS. There doesn’t seem to be the possibility to restrict access to individual pages, integrated with the shop module.

Shop Module

Frankly I am disappointed. It seems to have been setup for selling hard goods. It would have been much better to set it up for selling e-goods, premium content and membership sites via subscription.
I didn’t activate the shop, which requires a public certificate ID to be submitted to Paypal.

Forum

You guessed it… ugly URLs again and as mentioned previously, no RSS feed.
Fairly basic but one major saving grace, at least in my opinion. The forum offers threaded discussion.
It doesn’t offer profile pages, just raw URLs, and this are followable. No default sig is possible, which in some ways prevents spam. There doesn’t seem to be captcha support.

Conclusion

I am not ready to move away from using WordPress yet. It provides far more functionality, is SEO friendly, and I own the domains I host it on.
If you are in business, whilst there are technical obstacles you might have to overcome, WordPress on your own domain is a much better long-term strategy.
Maybe my opinion will change in a few months, and I will continue to monitor Terapad closely.

But then I am a technical user, and many people aren’t interested in the technical aspects of setting up a blog.
Pay someone to setup WordPress on Elance, or join a service like WordPress Tutorials for some professional help.