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Blogpooling for beginners

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 8, 2008 in Web spam

A lot of bloggers got themselves into trouble last year by participating in various “SEO meme” schemes. Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in 1976 (so far as I know) to refer to a “cultural copying unit”. He modeled the idea on genes (gene / meme), where a meme is a “unit of imitation”.

There is an old adage that say “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but in the world of search engine optimization it would be more appropriate to say “imitation is about as stupid as it gets”. He who does something well once is innovative. He who does something well that has already been done is exmplary. He who does something that everyone else is doing is following the pack.

SEO memes, link chains, blog trains, and other scammy schemes to build up links sometimes work but they often don’t work or they work only temporarily. When people kept joining in a particular “SEO meme” last year the boilerplate verbiage for which included the expression “SEO theory” I became rather annoyed because it looked (to me) like the SEO Theory blog might actually have some connection to the meme.

I took the drastic step of visiting several of the participating blogs and suggesting to the bloggers that they break the chain, since the blog that had started the process was by that time (after only 2 or 3 months) penalized in Google. The root blog didn’t even show up in a search for its relatively unique title.

We laugh at Google and follow the directions on its self-applied “Kick Me” sign all day long in this industry but the truth of the matter is that a lot of naive people trip Google’s algorithmic filters faster than you can say “SEO isn’t rocket science”. It’s easy to screw up and not so easy to realize why you screwed up if you don’t live, eat, sleep, and breathe search engine optimization.

Blogpools have been around since blogging began and neither I nor the search engines see anything wrong with blogpooling. A blogpool is a group of blogs that provide some support for each other — they “pool their resources”, as it were. There are things like “blog carnvals”, “blog rolls”, “blog circles”, and so forth that don’t really get you into trouble.

That is, there is no reason for 15-20 bloggers NOT to link to each other and promote each other. People have been pooling their Web promotional resources since the Web began. But where you may get into trouble is if you systemize the pooling of resources. There is no rational justification for systemization in Web site pooling. Why do 5,000 sites all need to participate in a link chain? No human being can possibly visit them all in a reasonable amount of time.

If blogs pool their resources for the sake of “SEO” they are playing with fire. Your blog is your personal soapbox, your Internet channel to the world. It is the conveyor of your voice, the representative of your brand. A blog may be part of a larger site or even part of a micronetwork of sites but if handled correctly the blog (or at least one blog) becomes your flagship site.

Your blog is your brand. Why imperil the value of that brand by risking penalization from a search engine?

Blogging technology is as susceptible to abuse and manipulation as any other Web technology. That is why I and so many other bloggers routinely disable trackbacks in our blogs, or at least monitor them. That is why blog software now automatically offers “rel=’nofollow’” in comments. That is why blogs are closely watched by search engine processes (human or algorithmic). On any given day you can watch blogs burst into existence and then vanish suddenly as spammers seek to populate Blogger with their scraped garbage.

Some spammers get past the filters and human monitors and their spam sites hang around, but many spam sites vanish quickly. I see them in queries and find they have been zapped faster than mosquitos slamming into a bug light.

Although most people would have sense enough to avoid scraping content for their blogs, they don’t seem to have any sense when it comes to evaluating pyramid link schemes, SEO memes, and other pseudo-optimizing ninny-spam. Even experienced search marketers may be drawn into the game once too often, tempting fate with their experimental aspirations.

If you believe in your blog enough to add content it on a regular basis you should think twice, maybe three times before joining into any hot new link schemes. There are plenty of things you can do to gain attention for your blog without trying to ride some idiot’s coat-tails. Just linking out to other Web sites as part of a brief essay on any topic makes your blog a useful resource.

A lot of bloggers have found loyal audiences that keep coming back just because they write good poetry, share fantastic tips on esoteric subjects, or have good relationships with influencers in related industries. You can build your blog traffic by ensuring that you ping blog directories (the functionality is built into all blog software that I know of) and by hand-publishing your posts.

There is no need to rush to the top of search results for blogs because blogs, unlike conventional Web sites, don’t need search engines. If you start a blog on Blogger or Wordpress those services will send you random traffic because people like to click on those little “NEXT” links just to see what comes up. If you launch your blog on your own domain you can still get random traffic from blog subscription sites and directories.

Search engine optimization can help a blog after the blog starts getting traffic because you see which keywords randomly drew in people and decide whether to write more posts about those topics. Some SEO Theory posts are written solely for the people who are searching for obscure SEO topics. You don’t really need to optimize your blog for search from the start.

If you want the blog to establish a brand (as SEO Theory did) then of course you want to take titles and URLs into consideration, but that’s really all you need to do. The rest of your traffic building should be driven by your content, not by your link schemes.

But as no blog should exist in a void it’s a good idea to help other bloggers by linking to them and occasionally saying something about them. Providing useful content generates more value-passing links than participating in link schemes that link-desperate bloggers concoct.

If I were to join blogpools today I would use these guidelines to help me decide how to participate:

• I would create my own pool of blogs and link freely to them from my blogroll
• I would write something about blog in a separate post every now and then, linking to the blog from within the post
• I would mention those blogs where appropriate in comments I left on other people’s blogs, as the opportunities to do so presented themselves
• I would create a static elite directory that explains why I selected those blogs for my blogpool and which links to them
• I would choose well-written but link-poor blogs whose authors may or may not notice I am helping them

Being the resource that other people appreciate is more valuable than being just another link in a chain that stands a very good chance of getting its member sites penalized. Blogpools can be created by friends and associates who want to work together. They can be built around specific events or topics.

My partner participated in a blogpool that was created for an event — to commemorate the New Zealand actor Kevin Smith after he died. Those posts are still around for people to appreciate even if they are not bringing in hordes of visitors. That blogpool was created for a very emotional and passionate fan base that was struggling with feelings of shock, grief, and disbelief. It helped a large community of people share a final Web farewell for a very brilliant, popular actor who perished all too soon.

Sincerity is the best value a blogpool can provide. There is no limit to how many blogpools you participate in, but in my opinion you should only join them because you believe in the topic, not because you want links. Links are easy to obtain. So are penalties. Traffic and credibility require more thought, time, and effort however.