PageRank vs. RealRank vs. Something Else?
Thanks you for visiting. Please consider subscribing to the RSS feed.
So, I’ve been mute the past few days with regard to the latest monopolistic business practice by Google. To be honest, I was stunned that Google moved so dramatically against such a narrow segment of the blogosphere, ignoring the A-listers and their bogus “thanks to our sponsors” posts that provides SEO benefits to paying advertisers. I don’t know why I was so surprised, but I did expect a “cooling off” period while bloggers sorted out for themselves how they wanted to move forward.
I’ve said it several times: Google’s motivation is to protect it’s revenue model. Now, someone with some weight in the blogosphere is saying it also. This is important, and can not be dismissed - this is the basis of any claims regarding anti-competitive behavior. If you have any doubts, just look at which blogs took hits and which did not: blogs using brokered advertising deals get zeroranked, while blogs that use shady “thank you” side posts for direct-purchased ads are held up as examples. PPP and TLA, two companies that appear to be close to reaching critical mass in the internet advertising industry see their blogging partners hammered. Google didn’t have a problem with under-the-table side deals though - not enough of a threat.
Ugh writes that we should be focused on producing great content and building traffic, and he’s correct - we should always do this, regardless of what metric is in vogue today. Unfortunately, advertisers are wed to Pagerank and will be until something better comes along. Will that be RealRank?
RealRank is a start, but it isn’t perfect by any means. It’s weighted 70% towards daily visitors, 20% to incoming links, and 10% to pageviews. If I were building a new metric that advertisers could trust, I would not weight visitors/day this heavily. As an advertiser, I would want to know that readers were spending enough time on the site to actually digest my ad/post. Daily visitors is extremely easy to manipulate - easier than PR, to be honest. Anyone that has Stumbled their own post knows this.
What’s more important are pageviews, time-on-site, and bounce rates - ironically, major metrics tracked by Google Analytics. But, they ARE important, because they are a signal to advertisers that this blog is trusted, that people are drawn in, and they spend adequate time on the site to be exposed to a marketing message. There is a rule of thumb in marketing that consumers need to be exposed to a message 12 times before being able to recall the message on demand. A site that brings in 100 readers and dances with them for a couple minutes will be a better value for an advertiser than a site where 1,000 readers bounce in and out in 30 seconds.
This sort of metric puts an enormous demand on the blogger - the design of the site has to draw people in deep, the content has to be compelling enough to motivate the reader to go beyond the first paragraph, and the blogger needs to be likeable enough that visitors return. This sort of metric will allow the cream to rise to the top, and may not be popular with the majority of bloggers, but I know I’m up for the challenge. This is the sort of insight I hoped Argus/Socialspark would provide, I hope Izea goes beyond RealRank with the data they provide advertisers.
Popularity: 55% [?]
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
Good point, Andy. I have examples of paid posts that continue to draw traffic long after they could be considered “fresh”. Not as many as you, of course, but you reside on a different planet than me. 
For me, paid content relating to entertainment or problem-solving (tools & health products, for instance) do well. Probably a combination of my own interests coinciding with the product/service/website, allowing me to write enthusiastically and authoritatively.
Something worth keeping in mind, for me at least.
I’ve had paid posts pull in a lot of traffic making it a record day for me in a particular week. So far I only have one blog doing paid posts and am seriously weighing whether to do that on the other two. One is too new to be ranked the other is a 2 and of course the paid post blog is a big fat zero. The idea of being delisted is kind of scary. I will probably sit, wait and watch with those two.
Advertisers will have CTR tracked, but it seems currently to only be on site, not in the RSS feed, unless we also use tracking links.
As it happens you should always be working on great content and building traffic. I think one of the thinks many people writing paid reviews miss is that the reviews should be great content as well.
Look on the money earned as a bonus