As a couple of you may remember I mentioned that I built 5 Wordpress blogs. I built them to create a tiny blog network. None are linked to the other. For 2 months I have posted text, photos and videos each day.
During this time I have noticed that each post is indexed in Google within 30 minutes or so. I also noted that when I posted a little text link, that link would also get indexed rather quickly as well. I found it to be a very good way at getting new sites indexed.
I also found that I enjoyed maintaining these blogs. I would post no more than 100 words and maybe a photo or a video. They are on topics that I like. I feel no pressure to maintain them as they are free.
I posted up a screen shot a few weeks of one of them and I was excited about it getting, what 300 visitors a day? That blog has been getting over 2,500 page views a day this past week.
I also noted I’m generating a massive amount of interesting keywords and keyword phrases that were being used to find those blogs. I’ve now started using the best of them to build Blogger blogs. On one keyword phrase that gets about 100 hits a day I am listed in Google #1 with two listings for the Blogger site, #2 for the Wordpress tag page, and #3 with two listings for my Wordpress.com site. I’m also converting a couple of underutilized domains with generic names to see if I can capture some of the traffic these Wordpress.com blogs get. I’ll use the top keyword phrases from the Wordpress.com blogs to post on my self-hosted Wordpress blogs.
I have been using the Wordpress.com logins to be a “member” of the community. I troll around and make comments on other Wordpress.com blogs. There is no back links that I can determine but I think Wordpress.com likes it and rewards the blog with “featured” listings maybe. I’m simply guessing. I also promote these WP.com blogs with BMD, commenting and blog directories.
Google has apparently updated the PR data. After two months I have three PR3 and one PR4 Wordpress blog. Want to know how stupid this game is? The blog that I have promoted the least has the PR4. The fifth Wordpress blog was actually started a month ago in earnest. It has a PR0. BTW-None of the subsequent Blogger blogs I have built as a result of the Wordpress.com blogs have pagerank either. But they are really only a month old. The Wordpress.com blogs didn’t have PR after a month either. We’ll see if that improves. (All is not happy in Google PR-land. One of my PR4 “money” blogs dropped to a PR2. Tragic.)
I have been reluctant to talk about this. I don’t want using Wordpress.com to become abused but frankly I don’t have thousands of readers here I don’t think. Plus over the last couple of months I have been impressed with Wordpress.com’s ability to control spam. I report spam vigorously in the categories I target and they always email me to say thanks and say they have removed the blog. Thousand of blogs get built everyday over there so it would be arrogant of me to think that my blogosphere reach could have anything to do with Google losing interest with Wordpress.
If you come in to Wordpress.com to provide content you will be rewarded with viewers and interest from Google. And honestly I have yet to figure out how to fully maximize the monetary potential. I’m trying a few things and unfortunately Adsense is the only thing working right now. But I am continuing to seek out affiliate programs that will work better for the topics that I am targeting. They aren’t easy to monetize but they get tons of traffic. I know some of you will ask what’s the point of traffic if you can’t monetize it? Well 3-PR3 and 1-PR4 for one. I can send traffic elsewhere. You just have to be smart about it. I’m trying to get smart about it.
Understand that you can’t monetize WP directly. I send traffic quietly to my “money sites”. I don’t plaster the Wordpress blogs with links either. Every 5 or so posts I might add a small text link. I’ve only got a couple of text links in the sidebar too, but it seems to be enough to get people to click to the money sites where they have Adsense or eBay widget links to click (another screw you to BANS, thank you very much).
For now I’m glad that I have 4 WP blogs that have decent PR, that takes nothing to maintain. You would honestly be amazed if you saw how little effort I put in for the gains that I am apparently getting for now.
15 responses so far ↓
JK Swopes // Jul 26, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Looks like you have quite a system going there. I’ve seen your blog on a few blog rolls I visit, wasn’t sure what it was about based on the name…
I’m glad I came over though
I’ve never heard anyone using wordpress.com in such a way, most complain about it not being able to be monetized….but, you’ve still managed to use it without monetizing directly.
Splork // Jul 26, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Thanks for reading JK. I’m glad you rolled over too.
Yea Wordpress.com is a tough nut to crack for monetization. That’s probably why Google pays attention because the blogs are solely built for content. People try to spam it with crap but they get yanked down pretty quick I’ve noticed.
It’s great for linking and indexing. When I originally started out I was hoping to be able to get a few blogs, a mini-net of sorts, to be able to use to get other sites indexed by Google without having to go through all this black hat crap. Squidoo and Hubpages had ceased to work as quickly as they did (for me) so I tried this. I don’t even bother making Hubpages anymore. Though I do make Squidoo lens. Anyway, the results exceeded my expectations.
Emma // Jul 26, 2008 at 3:16 pm
My first blog was a wordpress.com although it’s private for my family with b-days and personal info etc. I like your idea about having some for getting the occasional PR link to a money blog. As for the PR update my main blog which has been a solid for got bumped down to a 3 ouch Google. As if blogging isn’t discouraging enough. Keep up the great posts, I always enjoy your honest insights.
Dave // Jul 26, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I’m glad your finding something that works for you. I’m going to give wordpress a shot. I made a few blog spot blogs to eventually link to my money sites but I can’t stand the chosen niches. Makes updating them painful. Perhaps I’ll start a couple wordpress blogs about things I am actually interested in and see what happens.
Out of my 8 sites none got PR except my main money site which got a 1. What worse is I spend a ton of time on the friggen site and I’m rewarded with that?! Admittedly I’m not spending time getting backlinks, but it’s tough to do when your content blows because you hate the subject.
Splork // Jul 26, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Yea, I know your frustration well. Backlinks are the most important though.
As far as the Wordpress blogs go, it’s not all about blogging about what you like. That’s 50%. It’s also about blogging about what other people like. I’m collecting traffic and trying to figure out how to divert it off WP blogs.
I’m finding that Blogger blogs are very frustrating. I am using them as landing pages of sorts filled with Adsense and Ebay widgets. So I hope I can get a ton of traffic to Wordpress.com blogs and direct some of the clicks to the Blogger blogs and maybe eventually pass some PR to Blogger blogs and getting backlinks as well.
Splork // Jul 26, 2008 at 7:58 pm
One other thing I thought I’d mention. Each WP blog is built with a separate account. None of them are linked to each other and despite there being similarities I do not make comments to my own blogs.
Brian // Jul 26, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Interesting… Google seeems to love Blogs more than they love static HTML sites and in the long run content rather frequent content really is king. With all the plug-ins that Wordpress have like the ability to add youtube vids to your Blog will only make Blogs that much more powerful in the SERPS
Tom // Jul 26, 2008 at 11:46 pm
You wanna know what’s funny Splork, I started one of these on a whim after reading your previous post about it, and it’s a PR5 now, lol. The first post was on June 13 for heavens sake.
I’m shooting for a PR8 on the next update…Hehe, just joking.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Basically it sucks, and doesn’t get much traffic at all, but it might be good for some link juice.
I may start another one soon and try to create better content. Or I may just work on this one and see if I can make it better.
If you had some really good content on one of these things, and as a result, ended up getting a bunch of natural links coming in to it, you’d probably have a real powerhouse for link juice, not to mention a lot of good search traffic.
Splork // Jul 27, 2008 at 8:07 am
Hey Tom. Yea that’s about the sum of what I’m using these blogs for. Link juice. I’m just trying to figure out how to get the traffic to leave via a link to something to make money on.
Hey Brian. My theory on Google is they like blogs only to the extent that they are actually blogged. If they aren’t updated in a manner that is “blog-like” I don’ think they care much for it. Plus I have a few XSP sites, static sites, that do fine without ever being updated. Ever. But the same can’t be said of my blogs. When I stop updating they stop being ranked.
Frank C // Jul 27, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I agree with you a lot on the WordPress.com blogs. I have two that are PR4 as of this update. Sadly, OpTempo dropped from PR4 to PR3, no idea why.
The thing about “blogs need to be blogged” for Google I think depends a lot on the content. As I’ve mentioned before I’ve got a very rarely updated programming blog that gets steady Google traffic. I’ve got some other niche blogs that don’t get regular updates and still hold their own. However, I’ve got others that will die off when not regularly updated. Maybe it has something to do with how Google grades the content as it being timeless info or just temporary.
Internet Marketing Badger - Jennifer // Jul 28, 2008 at 9:33 am
This latest Google update IS tragic.
I have two excellent quality, regularly updated sites that had been at PR4 and now they’re PR3.
My Badger blog had been holding nicely at PR3 and I naively expected to hit PR4 based on the way things USED to go with Google. GRRRRGH. Instead after lots of updates and backlinking it’s been deranked to PR2.
You know traffic dips when your sites get deranked like that. That’s just life. But it really sucks. Google is so blatant about favoring content only sites and forcing ANYBODY engaged in any form of online sales to use their Adwords program - costs of which doubled the moment their company did their IPO.
YUCK.
Jennifer
Splork // Jul 28, 2008 at 11:18 am
PR is fun to observe but it doesn’t mean much. At least that’s what I tell myself. Traffic is what matters. On your sites maybe they did get dropped but did that also drop the traffic?
It’s one reason why I think WP is so powerful, right now. There is no onsite monetization possible. Which following your thesis (interesting) about Google penalizing sites with online sales makes sense. So maybe utilize sites like Blogger, WP, Hubpages and Squidoo that collect a ton of traffic and then send the traffic away to your money sites that Google hates.
I have a PR2 site that used to be a PR4 maybe a couple of years ago. It gets more traffic and makes more money as a 2 than a 4. Then again you could say that if I promoted the shit out of it to get it to a 5 I would double the money. WTF knows.
Internet Marketing Badger - Jennifer // Jul 29, 2008 at 7:56 am
Hi Splork,
Where I notice the traffic dropoff is for new content I’m posting. So if I post a new article at a site that’s been deranked, and I used to be able to get that new article on the first or second page of Google for my keywords, now those articles are getting stranded much farther back in Google - third, fourth pages, that type of thing. So that will definitely affect traffic for me since the “power” of my site has been decreased.
Existing articles that were already posted seem to be holding steady in their spots on first and second pages of Google. But new stuff isn’t getting as much love from Google. Which sucks.
If your site isn’t as powerful any more in competing with other sites for your keywords, this of course encourages people to shell out money for Adwords to replace the profit they’re losing.
It’s all part of Google’s evil plan to drive everyone into using Adwords.
When I said content only sites are favored by Google, I forgot to add that obviously you also see monster sites like ebay and Amazon and Youtube also favored. Especially with Google making plans to buy most of those sites (they already bought YouTube I believe.) You start to see a real uneven playing field unfortunately. Not good for those of us busting our butts doing things the old-fashioned way, building sites out organically over time. What’s the lead time now to get a page rank of 4? It used to be six months for me if I updated sites regularly and gently built backlinks. Now we’re looking at a much longer window. Will that be two months? Another six months? At one point do we have to have these insane build out schedules where you build sites today, update them for a year, and maybe in the twelfth month Google finally coughs up some traffic.
I HOPE it doesn’t go that way, but I know that our time window in getting a site some Google love definitely became longer with this latest update. We’ll see what other fallout happens.
I could totally stomach this if I was building spammy sites or doing stuff Google doesn’t like. But when you try to play by their rules and still get slapped, it does make you want to take out an Uzi some days!
Jennifer
Splork // Jul 29, 2008 at 10:08 am
You should go over and read Griz’s new blog post on his new WP site. He talks about Google and what a croc the duplicate content filtering is. It may be worth not playing totally by Google’s rules. They are going to eff you in favor of making money for their shareholders anyway. Maybe you should try to gain an advantage as best you can. If new stuff isn’t loved as much then maybe spending time writing new articles is not worth the time. Scrape a few (leave the credits) tokeep the site fresh with maybe photos and videos too.
You may have a few sites that you really care about that you wouldn’t do this for, but maybe with bs niches that you simply want an affiliate sale or Adsense click it would be better time and money served to just post whatever. And keep getting links. That seems to be all that ultimately matters.
I dunno. Just a thought. It’s what I do now. I’ve stopped getting bent about writing original 400-500 word posts on shit I know nothing about. I use OrwellPro and Frank Link Luv builder to create quick posts to keep things fresh. I have the same success with 100 word posts as I do with 500. They both get indexed.
Internet Marketing Badger - Jennifer // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:54 am
Thanks! Will definitely check out Griz’ info.
Jennifer
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