The Great Apology Tour

I am sorry.

I am sorry that I never followed you back on Twitter. I am sorry that I’ve neglected retweeting your tweets.

I am sorry that I am just an occasional participant on Google + and I am certainly sorry that your last message to me was buried in my Gmail inbox.

How is that for a start?

I am sorry. No, really.

Call me social media engaged, but also call me social media overloaded. I cannot think of the last time I used Digg. Or Reddit. Or Technorati. I am still using StumbleUpon, although my lack of consistency should be evident to all.

Family members beckon me on Facebook, but other than offering up the requisite birthday good wishes, most of my participation involves the automatic postings from Auto Trends and Word Journey. Too much “TMI” has left me wanting less…far less.

I am sorry for forgetting to get back to you about your guest article. Quite frankly, I am working with solicited contributors and don’t have the time to review each of the unsolicited requests. I get tons of them scattered across the blog network that I manage. Most are off topic…many are poorly written.

Still, the invites to this network or that group come in. Everyone on LinkedIn seems to want me to join their group. I prefer to use LinkedIn as my online resume and offer up an occasional question when an article idea requires additonal input.

I have a lot of friends in India – people who want to do business with me, offering to write articles for as low as $1 a piece. Trouble is, the grammatical mistakes, spelling errors and syntax are often so very wrong that I would have to spend as much time editing each article as it would take me to write them. Thanks, but I’ll pass.

I am sorry that your business venture has not worked out or that your webinar cannot seem to find sponsors. The few webinars I’ve participated in have been too long or offered a poor connection. I would rather have read your notes and, if there is something of benefit, share that information with my readers. Most webinars seem to be long on fluff and short on substance. Lots of marketing too. Enough.

To my clients I offer up a sincere apology if Google PageRank still gets you up in arms. In 2006, PR mattered much and I told you so. In 2011, PR is a secondary ranking factor – your placement in the SERPs carries greater weight. Let’s continue to naturally build backlinks and link out to reputable sites again and again and again….

Have I missed someone in my great apology tour? If so, I am sorry. And let’s just leave it at that.

Photo: MorgueFile

Google PageRank Update & Other Distractions

In case you missed it, Google exported PageRank to its toolbar within the past week. I don’t have an exact date to share, but it should show up on your toolbar. Perhaps you were busy playing with Google + or maybe you simply don’t care — in any case, as much as Google tries to take the wind out of its PageRank sails, the Internet routinely lights up with discussions about this dysfunctional website ranking system.

I’m one of those who pretends he doesn’t care about PageRank, but in reality I do. Back in 2005, when I launched by “The Article Writer” website, it quickly zoomed to PR6. I never could figure out why it jumped so high, but eventually it fell back, dropping to PR2 or PR3 before returning to PR4 more than a year ago, the number where it remains today.

Up, Down or Unchanged

I manage several websites and immediately visited those sites including ones owned by clients. Beginning with this website, I noticed a drop from PR4 to PR3, but I believe that ranking to be largely deserved — I neglected the site from mid-February to late June, going with guest posts only when I posted at all. Personally, I would have spanked the site harder and knocked it down another notch.

My main automotive website at autotrends.org is now ranked PR4, which is up one notch while wordjourney.com is also up a spot and is now ranked at PR3, where it was more than a year ago. Most other sites stayed the same, although I must inform a customer that one of his sites, which was ranked PR4 last year and then fell to PR2, is now ranked at PR0. I’m not certain why, but I think there is an ad issue that could be causing a problem. Hmmm….

Search Engine Optimization

Regardless of whether PageRank were to officially be killed off or not, there are some things you can do to optimize your website. For my two sites which increased in rank, I will tell you that I worked hard to write articles that people have linked to, including detailed book reviews, product reviews and news items. I didn’t take those steps to help improve PageRank, rather to increase each site’s visibility and strength online. I write with my readers in mind, which is the best way to get acknowledged for what you do. SEO is grand, but readers won’t bother with your site if what you write is poorly written, boring or both.

Another method I took advantage of is to send updates to Facebook and Twitter for my busiest websites. I just started doing that for this website, so I fully expect that I’ll be at PR9 real soon. Just kidding.

Funny, I should have known that something was up when I started to get a rash of link exchange requests for my “Auto Trends Magazine” website earlier this week. As before, I’m not into link exchanges, preferring to call out worthy content naturally as part of links within an article or at the end of each article in a “Resources” or “References” section.