link juice - Tag Archive

My 7 Links – An interesting blogging idea

15 Replies Christopher Roberts

The other day I got an email from one of our commenters, Peter (from Computer How to Guide) in which he said that I had been nominated to continue his ‘7 Links Challenge‘.

After reading Peter’s article, I did a bit of digging and managed to find out what the 7 Link Challenge is, and who started it off.

The 7 Link Challenge (or My 7 Links as it is called by its founder) is where a blogger writes about seven articles they have written, and then nominates other (usually five) bloggers to do the same.

It is an interesting idea with three obvious intentions: firstly to create awareness of ‘posts gone by’ (old posts which have sunk into the archives); secondly to create a flow of PageRank, or ‘link juice’ between a whole host of different blogs, ultimately pushing everyone up the rankings – in theory; and thirdly to drive more traffic to different sites, by bloggers raising awareness of other blogs that they read or contribute for.

The goal of the challenge is

“To unite bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint endeavor to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again.”

I think Technology Bloggers could benefit from such a post, and I would like to dig back into the archives and find my seven articles, so I am going to give it a shot!

The seven categories bloggers are suppose to find an article for are: your most beautiful post; your most popular post; your most controversial post; your most helpful post; a post whose success surprised you; a post you feel didn’t get the attention it deserved; and the post that you are most proud of. I am only going to do this for my posts, so other authors with sufficient posts can do this too 🙂

My 7 LinksOkay, here goes…

My most ‘beautiful’ post

A bit of an odd name, but I guess this means a post you feel is brilliantly crafted/well written.

The thing is, if I don’t think an article is brilliant, I won’t post it, therefore I love all my posts almost equally. How can I choose my favourite? I don’t think I can, so I am not going to – no one post stands out for me. Check out all my posts in my writer archive to see which ones I like 🙂

My most popular post

This one was an easy one to pick, I just had to see which posts had been read the most, and which had the most comments.

That post was: Is your computer damaging your eyes? The post has had hundreds of views, 37 comments to date, and users spend on average over four minutes on the page, making it the overall most popular post that I have written.

My most controversial post

I hate to sound like I am chickening out again, but I am really not sure what to pick! I try to make sure that most of my posts stir up a bit of a debate, but again, no one really stands out for me. Do you think I have a most controversial post?

My most helpful post

I like to think that all my posts are helpful, either by updating you on the latest tech news, by reviewing a product, or by telling you how to do something.

The post that should be crowned my most helpful post really depends on who you are. If you are a blog owner who wanted to find out how to claim your blog with Technorati then that article was probably the most useful to you, again, if you were interested in new radiotelescopes, The world’s most powerful radio telescope is now functioning! is probably of more use to you. What do you think my most helpful article is?

The post which I was surprised by its success

There are a few posts which I was surprised with, either because they didn’t really get the response I thought they would, or because I was pleasantly surprised by the response.

I have chosen an article which pleasantly surprised me, as I shouted out to the community, and the community responded! That post was: Why would you turn comments off? you can read the follow up post here: Why you would turn off comments.

The post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved

At the beginning of last month I posted an article entitled Are you doing your bit for the blog? and I really hoped that it would receive similar community attention to what the ‘Why would you turn comments off?’ article did, but it didn’t, and that somewhat disappointed me 🙁

The post that I am most proud of

Looking through all my old posts, this one jumped out at me straight away, as I remember how stunned and please I was when I wrote it. There was no other post that I could be more proud of (yet) than this one.

What was it? This: Look what WE have achieved! after just two weeks the blog was doing so well, and I was just so pleased and proud of my creation 🙂

My nominations

Okay, time for me to challenge some people to find their seven articles. My nominations are:

  • Jonny – One of our fantastic authors
  • James – One of our friends from Windows Talk
  • Ari – Someone whose blog I have been following for many years now
  • Chadrack – A good friend of mine in the blogosphere
  • Lillie – Someone who has provided me with encouragement on many projects
  • You – If you have a blog, I challenge you too!

If you want to find out more about My 7 Links, click the link and it will take you to what I believe to site of the founder of the challenge.

Are you doing your bit for the blog?

17 Replies Christopher Roberts

Yesterday Jonny, one of our authors, emailed me to let me know about the post he had written on the site he writes for (the Bassetti Foundation) where he wrote about the community awards he picked up, praised the blog and talked about and linked to the posts he has written for us.

Jonny asked that I promoted the idea of the community a little bit more through an article, which is exactly what I am going to do!

It is time for the poster again 😉

Technology Bloggers needs your help!The idea of a community blog is that everyone benefits. It’s in our slogan:

“Read | Contribute | Benefit
A whole community of technology bloggers”

The three keywords there are contribute, benefit and community. We are a community blog, designed in such a way that everyone is able to benefit.

If everyone is helping to improve the blog, the better the blog is, therefore the more we all benefit. Basically the more we all put in the more we all get out.

I really do try hard with this blog, I give it my all, and I feel that if we all did a tiny bit more (like Jonny has) we could make this blog so much better – and it is already really good! A better blog means more benefit for all!

Let me explain.

PageRank

If all of our readers, writers and commenters (I know some of you are all three!) were to write a post like Jonny’s, more PageRank/link juice would be flowing into the blog. This would increase the blogs PageRank overall – not that a high PageRank is anything to really fantasise about.

If the blog is of a higher PageRank, more flows back to all those commenters and writers who have links on the blog, therefore they get an increase in PageRank too – a benefit directly derived from Technology Bloggers.

Traffic

PageRank is maybe not the best of examples, so let me give you another example, using traffic. If you write about the blog, include it in your bio, tweet about it, post about it on Facebook and generally share it via all your social internet channels, then the blog’s traffic will increase.

More people (traffic) means more people reading the content, more people commenting, a bigger, better and stronger community, more opportunities, more articles etc. it also means that for those writers who are adding AdSense to their posts (like Alan) the chance of making more money increases.

More people means more articles getting read, so writers are getting better exposure/greater publicity. Commenters links are more likely to be followed etc.

Brand

Having a bigger, better blog and community, make Technology Bloggers a stronger brand. This means that your association with the blog is a greater benefit for you. Saying you are a writer for TechCrunch brings you a lot of credibility, due to your association with the strong brand, we can make Technology Bloggers like that too!

The bigger we get, the more everyone involved gets out of the blog!

You

So what can you do to help your blog? The answer? Help us by promoting the blog further. We have a great community here, loads of fantastic writers, writing brilliant content daily, so what we really want to do now is expand, and to do that, we need to help more people find out about us.

Why not tweet if you read an interesting article here, also, if you can +1 it, share it via Facebook etc. please do!

Why not tweet or post a comment like:
I am part of the great dofollow community over at Technology Bloggers (www.technologybloggers.org) why don’t you come and join me?
or how about
Why not check out the great dofollow community over at Technology Bloggers – www.technologybloggers.org?

Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, share our articles!

If you are a blogger why not add us to your blogroll, or page of favourite sites? Why not add a link to us into your bio? You could even write a post like Jonny has done.

Here are some images you could add to your blog, or post via social media to help promote us:
Technology Bloggers - A Dofollow Community Blog a smaller version – more are available, just contact me 🙂Technology Bloggers - A Dofollow Community Blogshow off that you are part of the community!
I Am Part Of The Technology Bloggers Dofollow Community! www.TechnologyBloggers.orgIf I was a normal blogger, that might have seemed like a very needy plea for help to improve our traffic (which is already very respectable) however I am not, I am a member of a community blog. That is the difference, I am doing this on your behalf. You reading this are going to benefit (hopefully!) from this article, through the communities (that includes you!) response.

What are you going to do to help the blog? Let us all know below! If we get enough people writing about what they have done, I might write a post promoting those people!

Technology Bloggers – a community blog from which we can all benefit!

Blog Commenting – Making the Most Out of It

18 Replies Kaushal Gandhi

Since sites that are rich with relevant inbound links are rated favourably by search engines, link building is of vital importance in SEO.

By virtue of its ease, commenting on blogs has become a convenient and popular tactic for link building. Regularly scanning blogs by experts, reading news posts and adding comments that link back to the commenter’s website, seems be the quickest way out.

However blog commenting offers many more benefits; and you should aim to get much more returns from your comments. Here are some simple tips help you achieve this.

Technology Bloggers comment form

Showcase your awareness

Promoting yourself needn’t be equated with dramatic sales talk. In fact using blog commenting space for sales promotion is taboo.

On the other hand, simply adding a line of appreciation just to earn a link is not the right way either. Rather, invest some time in reading and comprehending the entire post and only then adding an insightful comment – comprising a minimum of three sentences – to enrich the conversation.

In this manner, blog commenting offers a good platform to showcase your awareness and experience and thus grow your brand.

Engage with the blogger

Some blogs make for extremely insightful and enjoyable reading. Why not try and develop a connect with those bloggers?

Following them on Twitter and other social media increases the exposure of their writings. Once they see you enriching the quality of their blog with well-thought of comments, they will be attracted to read and endorse your blog too.

Foster relations with the community

It’s quite likely that visitors of a particular blog, where you regularly submit comments on aren’t reading your blog as yet. The good news is that commenting on blogs is a great way to share your experiences and opinions, and establish yourself amongst a completely new set of readers.

Further, if you are a regular contributor of interesting and relevant comments, it could mean more opportunities for your blog. Replying directly to the comments of blog readers and initiating a conversation or debate on a specific subject, is great way to be recognized too. Replying to the first 4-5 comments enhances visibility within the community.

Finally, remember to be proactive on your blog too. While there aren’t many SEO advantages, blog commenting is a great tool for networking and building brand awareness.

Monitor your blog on a daily basis; always allow comments on your blog; and be sure to reply to those who have queries after reading your posts.

Do note that a lot of individuals commenting on blogs are bloggers too and there are benefits to be gained from having a good reputation among your peers.