Not a bad article on links here.
By this I mean incoming hyperlinks. Unfortunately, there are a number of truisms attached to links:
1. Everyone would like to have a perceived "higher" blogger link to him/her. Some of these "higher beings" will shove you in the sidebar and that's your lot, mate. You'd have to do something pretty spectacular or else have your writing take his fancy enough or rescue his daughter from a raging river or whatever, to score an occasional mention within a post.
On the other hand, he's more than happy for you to link to one of his posts. The more the merrier. The only benefit in visiting him, apart from the erudition you gain, is to leave a linked comment and make it fairly intelligent or witty. That will get you some attention from fellow commenters.
Generally speaking, he is not going to visit you, not because he is nasty or arrogant but because he has a full life of action and has just enough time to blog and visit a handful of the "in crowd".
2. You will be linked to by the growing circle of fellow bloggers of about your stature and this is like any community in that your contacts do increase all the while, the longer you go on and the more consistent you are. You're only as good as your content, your nature as a blogger and whether it coincides with what the visitor is interested in at the time.
3. Bloggers are interested in other people reading their posts. They're not as good at visiting others beyond a small circle of like-minded fellow bloggers and often plead that they have enough trouble just getting posts up without having to do the rounds. A member of a blog group of note once even wrote, on the forum, "If you think I'm going to sit at my computer visiting other people, well, I'm afraid I'm not going to ."
His notion was that he would run aggregators to himself and all traffic would be inwards. There are many tricks on the web to increase traffic and so he probably scores a good two to three times the stats I do but it's actually a very boring blog.
4. Some wiser heads than mine once told me not to worry about stats because firstly, most people read you on feeds anyway and that never registers. Secondly, the google searches will progressively make up a higher percentage of your stats as you go along [they're the bulk of mine] and as your topics of interest are more free-ranging.
Another wise head said that you can tell the blogger who is fixated by stats and it does affect the quality of the posts. The best bloggers are those who don't give a damn about it and say what they think, backing it up as they go. You have to know your stuff - no substitute for that. Well, there is one other way - to post nubile women all the time - that generates a certain type of traffic.
But does it get you linked to?
5. People will link to your post only if it is of interest and this is a hit and miss affair. The bloggers who maintain that they only post for themselves - I'm not totally sure how tongue in cheek they are about that. Of course we damn well want to be read and sometimes even commented on.
6. Sometimes we visit another blogger's site we admire and link and link and then he just ignores us and links to his same usual four or five. I'm guilty of this, most bloggers are. The only way round it is to run a policy of trying to spread your links, not artificially but if that blogger really does have something half decent to say. No blogger is perfect though and whilst the ignoring of a hopeful fellow blogger is hurtful, it is not deliberate.
7. One way round this is the blog roundup - I do an occasional Blogfocus and others host theirs too. Another way is to join a blog group but these are only as good as the people within them visiting one another and sometimes linking. This is a worry with our group just now and I know with some other groups as well.
Maybe the bloggers who do best are the ones who like other people and are interested in them.
In the end, it really does come down to a paraphrasing of the old maxim:
By this I mean incoming hyperlinks. Unfortunately, there are a number of truisms attached to links:
1. Everyone would like to have a perceived "higher" blogger link to him/her. Some of these "higher beings" will shove you in the sidebar and that's your lot, mate. You'd have to do something pretty spectacular or else have your writing take his fancy enough or rescue his daughter from a raging river or whatever, to score an occasional mention within a post.
On the other hand, he's more than happy for you to link to one of his posts. The more the merrier. The only benefit in visiting him, apart from the erudition you gain, is to leave a linked comment and make it fairly intelligent or witty. That will get you some attention from fellow commenters.
Generally speaking, he is not going to visit you, not because he is nasty or arrogant but because he has a full life of action and has just enough time to blog and visit a handful of the "in crowd".
2. You will be linked to by the growing circle of fellow bloggers of about your stature and this is like any community in that your contacts do increase all the while, the longer you go on and the more consistent you are. You're only as good as your content, your nature as a blogger and whether it coincides with what the visitor is interested in at the time.
3. Bloggers are interested in other people reading their posts. They're not as good at visiting others beyond a small circle of like-minded fellow bloggers and often plead that they have enough trouble just getting posts up without having to do the rounds. A member of a blog group of note once even wrote, on the forum, "If you think I'm going to sit at my computer visiting other people, well, I'm afraid I'm not going to ."
His notion was that he would run aggregators to himself and all traffic would be inwards. There are many tricks on the web to increase traffic and so he probably scores a good two to three times the stats I do but it's actually a very boring blog.
4. Some wiser heads than mine once told me not to worry about stats because firstly, most people read you on feeds anyway and that never registers. Secondly, the google searches will progressively make up a higher percentage of your stats as you go along [they're the bulk of mine] and as your topics of interest are more free-ranging.
Another wise head said that you can tell the blogger who is fixated by stats and it does affect the quality of the posts. The best bloggers are those who don't give a damn about it and say what they think, backing it up as they go. You have to know your stuff - no substitute for that. Well, there is one other way - to post nubile women all the time - that generates a certain type of traffic.
But does it get you linked to?
5. People will link to your post only if it is of interest and this is a hit and miss affair. The bloggers who maintain that they only post for themselves - I'm not totally sure how tongue in cheek they are about that. Of course we damn well want to be read and sometimes even commented on.
6. Sometimes we visit another blogger's site we admire and link and link and then he just ignores us and links to his same usual four or five. I'm guilty of this, most bloggers are. The only way round it is to run a policy of trying to spread your links, not artificially but if that blogger really does have something half decent to say. No blogger is perfect though and whilst the ignoring of a hopeful fellow blogger is hurtful, it is not deliberate.
7. One way round this is the blog roundup - I do an occasional Blogfocus and others host theirs too. Another way is to join a blog group but these are only as good as the people within them visiting one another and sometimes linking. This is a worry with our group just now and I know with some other groups as well.
Maybe the bloggers who do best are the ones who like other people and are interested in them.
In the end, it really does come down to a paraphrasing of the old maxim:
Link unto others as you would have them link to you.
I'm not that concerned with stats myself; I just can't see worrying whether a lot of people came by. The main reason I like comments, though, is to get links to other blogs. To me, my blog is a place to meet other bloggers who share similar outlooks or interests. I spend a lot more time reading blogs than posting, as can be seen by my sparse posting record.
ReplyDeleteMy thought for the day:-
ReplyDeleteSomething unpleasant is cooking!
I started my blog for my family and friends who always used to check out my webpage for the latest info. It sort of snowballed and I met new people/friends.
ReplyDeleteI am not too fussed about how many people visit me, but I do like the interaction with people who regularly visit.
I do have a very serious blog too and the google hits/searches on both scare me a little sometimes...
I think my message is: Be comfortable about why you blog and then you can focus on getting the appropriate feedback.
I agree we need to link more, I have been a bit lax in that respect lately.
Groups are always the same, people join for their own reasons and have to be encouraged to join in!
I agree with your previous commenters- I actually agree with almost all of what you say here. Links seem to me to be quite arbitrary and I tend not to get too fussed about them. The one thing I would add though is the blog carnival- its taken off more in the states than here but that's a good way of getting some regular links- I submit for example to the carnvial of cinema. I'd say one last thing as well- links are anotehr way (as well as comments) of getting some peer review of what you are doing- part of blogging is improving your ability to write and think (even if that's unconscious and secondary for most of us) and its quite useful to have someone you've never met say something about your post in that context- andd even someone you have met.
ReplyDeleteOften I find people like bits of my writing that I thought were ok, and dislike things I really worked hard on- but that's sod's law!
A last point and this is very personal is that I try not to write from the web- you see so many blogs which are collections of other people's links- and I really didn't want to do that when I started mine but wanted to always bring something from outside the web- I don't think I succeed all the time- but that's probably why I don't link as much as I should- its something I'm trying to work on!
Oh and the Blogfocus is great :)
I have a blog stats tracker from Ice-rocket, but I don't look at the stats that often.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that the numbers of people who read my musings is as important as the "quality" of readers (I hope that this doesn't sound too snobby).
The biggest group of readers of my blogs (about 30%) are people who have found the posts through Google. One out of five Google searches are for the names of my Blog - which is good. Another one in five are searches for topics on which I have written, also good; but 3 out of 5 are searches for, sometimes laughable, search strings:
dieting doom and gloom of winter poems
Why do wales have the biggest dick?
Wankers Anonymous
Farting and Barclays Bank
I don't think that the hundreds of people who find my blogs every week, from such searches are worth the stats that they create. The tens of regular readers who read my posts because they are interested in my musings are of much higher "value" to me than those who come to my blog from silly searches.
If there is one thing that I cannot abide is gratuitous links and link farm posts. Other than that, fair game.
ReplyDeleteMy life is so busy at the moment that it is hard to do cross linking with blogs that I like. That is too bad, as you know James, that was really what you had in mind when you set up Blogpower.
Supporting other bloggers by visiting and linking to them.
Great post James, for it highlights not only what's wrong with blogging, but human nature in general.
ReplyDeletePeople worry too much about the incidentals, here links, stats, to be free enough to be themselves.
And when one panders to the masses, they lose their creativity.
I recall one of your more successful posts being when you offended people over your views on homosexuality. Recall?
You stirred up a hotbed of emotions and the comments were coming in thick and furious .
Any writing that can stir such an emotional response is a success.
Had you known the feathers you would ruffle, you would have altered how you wrote it- which proves- taking risks works.
I don't like to be stifled by playing it safe, for that's living, or writing, for someone else.
I think gratuitous linking is wrong - there should always be a context - but no linking is just as wrong.
ReplyDeleteBlogging is an intereactive thing unless you have a huge ego which says, "Here are my pearls of wisdom, take them or leave them."
I'll leave them, thanks. The issue of writing freely is an important one though, unfettered by pressures from various sources.