Technorati Blogosphere Report: How of Blogging


Technorati has released part 3 of their State of Blogosphere 2008 Report, “The How of Blogging,” which discusses how Bloggers generate traffic, the tools they use in conjunction with their blog, how they measure the success of their blogs, and overall behavior in their blog activity. Below are some snippets from part 3.

Time Spent Blogging

Tool Used on Blog

Blog Measurement


The vast majority of bloggers are tracking their site visitors and monthly pageviews. Only 5% of bloggers did not know how many monthly pageviews their blog received. All this hard work has paid off for active bloggers in terms of site visitors. Half of bloggers attract over 1000 unique visitors per month.

Tool Usage

  • Google Analytics is the most common tracking tool (used by 2/3 of bloggers)
  • Sitemeter and Statcounter used by one in five bloggers
  • 42% use more than one service/provider for their analytics
  • Over 100 different tracking tools used

A Different View on Page Two

Last week, while chatting with fellow speakers and attendees at SMX Advanced, I had a sudden epiphany: Search engine marketing specialists are concentrating too much on page one search results. Having started in the search industry ten years ago, it never occurred to me that many of today’s search marketers frequently, if not always, regard pages found on the second, third or subsequent pages of the SERPs as failures.


In my mind, that’s a dangerous way to look at the situation. Page one results are certainly a great goal, but there’s more than one way to measure SEO success—and disregarding results in the 11 – 50 range is an enormous mistake. Search marketers need to change the way that they think, and look at these ‘next page’ results as the opportunity that they truly represent—not as a source of constant frustration.

So what’s the opportunity? One word: localization. The results on pages two, three and four are prime candidates for local search optimization. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that exact topic in a near future blog post.

Richard Zwicky is the founder and President of Enquisite, a leading search analytics firm. He’s been actively involved in search marketing since 1998, and is a regular speaker at conferences worldwide.

The Decline of Technorati

Technorati at one time was heralded as one of the most popular blog search engines, providing quick updates and an easy method of tracking topic through tagging. In fact, I believe tagging became really popular couple years back because of Technorati. Back then Technorati’s ranking algorithm, which is based on the number of blogs linking back to you, was also a credible way of assigning a level of authority to a given blog. The Technorati rank has declined in popularity over 2007 and looking at the data from Alexa, Compete and Google Trends, so has Technorati.

Compete shows a decrease in traffic of over 20% from last year:

Google Trends

Alexa


Tagging as the Killer App

I wanted to pass on a great article by a friend of mine, Chip Gallent. Chip discusses “Tagging: The New Killer App” on his blog ChipGallent.com

Tagging is replacing the way we search for information. By tagging articles and posts, it allows editors to alert the public on new information of a specific topic available.

Of course, this process is subject to abuse as well. If web editors start associating unrelated tags to their articles, just to attract users, then tagging becomes useless.

Now that’s not to say I am not a fan. The web will adjust to abuse. It always has and always will. Automatic tags may be down the road. This would not allow editors to decide on the tags. The tags will be automatically generated based on content.

Tagging has become the Killer App as Chip mentions. Users have become more sophisticated and have are starting to skip over irrelevant content. Tagging removes that process; it takes them straight to the data.

As search marketers, we have to be aware of this shift. We can not just assume that content is still king. We have to adjust. By staying aware of the user and their needs, we can adjust to their trends and habits. Social tagging is a part of Search Engine Marketing.

** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/

10 Online Services Which I use Daily

Since blogging has become a regular habit of mine I have developed a daily routine which consists of using some popular services that help me get through my day. These services help me with communication, assessing blog performance and staying up to date with industry news. In no particular order these services consist of:

  • FeedBurner: Could be one of the best feed management services available. I use FeedBurner to get insight on a number of metrics: Outgoing clicks, Subscribers, Item Use, and number of downloads.
  • Gmail: There was a time where I used to use Yahoo Mail and Hotmail almost everyday and now both of them have been surpassed by Gmail. It keeps communication simple, quick and effective.
  • iGoogle: On my iGoogle page I have feed widgets setup to keep on top of SearchEngineLand, Search Round Table, Marketing Pilgrim, Matt Cutts and many more news portals.
  • StatCounter: For real time stats in order to quickly measure the effectiveness of daily posts I prefer using StatCounter.
  • Google Analytics: StatCounter is great, but Google Analytics is definitely a level ahead. I am really taking advantage of the newly added customized dashboards.
  • Technorati: It is a great tool to measure the popularity and authority level of your blog through the number of back-links.
  • MyBlogLog: I enjoy seeing new members join the Web Analytics World community it also provides me with a quick snapshot of the most popular links on my blog.
  • Blogger: Over the last year I have published pretty close to 400 posts using blogger. It may not be the absolute best blogging software, but it does the trick.
  • Google/Yahoo News: Both are easy ways to see the hottest stories for any given industry/topic. These news sources also help generate blog post ideas.
  • Google Toolbar Spell Check: Not a post or email goes out from me without using the spell check on Google’s toolbar.

Technorati Shows NBA Playoff Buzz

With the departure of exciting teams from the NBA Playoffs such as the Phoenix Suns, New Jersey Nets and Golden State Warriors my interest in playoffs has dwindled down to pretty much nothing.

Looking at stats from Technorati, it looks like I am not the only one who has tuned out the NBA Playoffs. I don’t want to see a Detroit vs. Utah or San Antonio final where the winning scores of games will be 86-79…I don’t think many other people do either.