I joined Blogging Chicks about a month ago. Blogging Chicks is a very large blog network, and when you join it, your link gets added to the blogroll that's mandatory on all members' blogs. When I say that I "joined" I mean that I emailed the owner on September 22 asking for the code to put her blogroll on the sidebar of this blog. She sent me the code on October 18, and I added it over there on the right, aware that it might even be "a few weeks" before I got added to the list. I didn't think about it too much, but periodically I would check it and notice that I wasn't on it yet. Well, whatever; we're all busy, right?
The reason I joined Blogging Chicks was to improve my site's ranking on things like Google's PageRank and TTLB. I suppose I could say it was to make friends, to find cool new blogs, to belong in a more meaningful way to the blogosphere, etc. But mostly, it was to boost my linkage. Today, I took that blogroll off my blog for two reasons. One was that I went and checked out the Blogging Chicks site, and the owner has announced that due to school pressures she won't be adding anyone until the 16th of December. The other was because I checked out the page rank of some of the sites on the blogroll, and they're not better than mine. I don't need help to get a page rank of 3. In fact, having a wagonload of outgoing links can actually harm your ranking with some engines.
I know a lot of blogs that have what looks like thousands of links, both via blogrolls and also in handmade lists. I wonder how valuable some of these mega-blogrolls really are. I think I'm done with the big blogrolls, for now. I mean the ones that are generated by a third party and then called up by a script to appear on all the member blogs. On the other hand, I am going to work on my links list and develop a handmade blogroll of sites that I visit regularly, as well as those that link to me. I appreciate and reciprocate links, and I want to work on that aspect of this site. Now that I have a functional site index, I need a good links list.
This is how homeschoolers really are.
I happened across your blog totally by accident. I had no idea they were rated in any way.
ReplyDeleteI love the blue box with ideas in it. Fabulous addition to your site.
Glad you all made it home safely from your visit to Disney. We loved the pictures and it has really inspired us to start planning our own Disney vacation.
Mary
You know, I'm on a couple of those huge blogrolls, and the links do show up and, evidently, count for TTLB's rankings. Of course, my rank at TTLB wavers widely sometimes--and inexplicable, too.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what my Google page rank is.
Uh, make that "inexplicably."
ReplyDeleteI'm not a Power Blogger by any stretch but really, if you click on a link on my blog, it's a link that's there because I enjoy the blog I've linked. It's there because we are in some way, related--either by homeschooling or green living (or attempts at green living ;-) and not because I think it will increase traffic to my blog. Point is: Why lead your readers to other blogs if you don't have hopes that they'll enjoy reading them? (I have enjoyed my first foray into Little Blue School!)
ReplyDeleteTina