Tonight as I sit at my computer and sip this glass of (previously cork-tainted, but now recovered) Biltmore Estates Pinot Noir, I was thinking about the long, rocky relationship I’ve had with Google as a blogger. I won’t get into the whole “no-follow is stupid” debate here (even if it is), but over the years Google and I have danced a little dance because of my being a blogger and at the same time being “sponsored.” To some degree, there were some unscrupulous characters out there who were paying people to help their search engine rankings out by linking to their site – but that was not the case here. I’ve worked with different sponsors, and I’ve never put anything out here for you guys that was dangerous or a scam, and nothing that I didn’t think was cool or interesting to people who might be visiting my site.
I’ve always tried to keep things relevant here, and still, because of my involvement with PayPerPost and having the “Hire Me!” badge on my site, almost a year ago to this very month I was slapped down from a PR (Page Rank) 3, which was pretty darn good, to a PR of 0 – essentially nothing. My blog has been around for sometime now – pretty much as long as I’ve been a customer of DreamHost, and through my story writing and other tech blogging, I built up a PR of 3 without much effort. But the “rank spank” as it became known, was hurtful not only to my pride, but to my wallet – because advertisers and sponsors wanted a page that got lots of exposure, and PR 0 web sites do not get nearly as many visitors as PR 3 sites.
Thanks to IZEA and their new venture SocialSpark, I was able to get back in the game using RealRank and their social media marketing community. I’ve got lots of visitors to my site each day now, and I’m able to blog as frequently or as little as I want, and not worry too much about Google.
However, I’ve recently decided to turn the other cheek, so to speak, and play nice by their rules. I’ve gone back and installed the Word Press “No Follow on Posts” plugin, which turns all my links to no-follow ones. Then, I dropped the StatPress plugin in the hopes it’ll speed up the site a little – and I think it has. Finally, I’ve installed Google Analytics to get accurate stats and to be able to see what Google sees, so to speak. The last step was to add my site to Google webmaster tools, and then use their webmaster form to have Google consider reinstating my page rank to it’s former glory. It’s not because I feel like I need Google, it’s just one of those wrongs I’d like to see righted. I’ll keep you all posted on how that whole ordeal turns out, and if it works I’ll do a post about how to do what I did.
Thanks for all your support, and for being a Raging Tech reader.