21 June 2007
Thanks for the links and comments! - Now, Here is My Take on Internet BLOG Marketing & The Importance of Links
Posted by Darrell under: Rantings Of An Outdoorsman; Blogging About The Outdoors .
My “Attention All Hunters” post seemed to be relatively well received. I appreciate ALL of the comments, emails, and links that were sent. Even the couple of emails that were less than positive, were well received and appreciated. I certainly mean no insult to any ‘marketers’ by profession and most definitely realize that yes many ‘marketing people’ hunt and fish!
The sad truth, though, is that often when I do a “blog” search for something hunting and/or fishing related, the search results leave a lot to be desired. Why do I search “blogs” rather than just using a simple site search? For two primary reasons. One, I’m often looking for ‘fresh’ information. And, two, I sometimes prefer to read someone’s opinion (or ideas) on a subject, rather than receiving a ‘corporate’ view.
Often, the results I receive are filled with so called blogs that are nothing more than spam sites. There is no ‘fresh and original’ content on the site. Rather, the owner of the site has manipulated his way to the top of the search results via keyword spamming, link spamming, etc. It drives me crazy! Why?
Glad you asked! It takes a lot of time to write posts for my blog. And, I know that every person out there with a quality blog is spending a lot of time on it. Most of these ‘quality’ blogs are chock full of great original morsels of information. It is soooo frustrating when I can’t get to that information (or even find the blog). When I do accidentally ’discover’ a great hunting or fishing blog, I’m soooo happy!
Most serious bloggers are really sharp individuals. And, any that are truly successful are passionate about what they write about. Regardless of their motivation, most don’t make money (or large amounts of it, anyway) from their passion (or their blogs). Yet, day after day they toil at writing down their thoughts, tips, ideas, and experiences for our collective enlightment. And then, for the most part, very few people actually ever find these morsels that they’ve spent unrecoverable hours of their lives on. How frustrating! It is frustrating to me as both a “searcher” and a writer.
It might be my imagination (and I’ll probably receive some emails or comments to this effect) but it REALLY seems that spammers are preying on (and somewhat successfully I might add) our hunting, fishing, and outdoors community. It at least appears to me that the blog search results for hunting terms is more spammy than let’s say internet marketing terms. Why?
My guess would be that marketing bloggers are actively marketing their blogs. Many understand, in detail, what drives organic search results. Many also make LOTS OF MONEY from this understanding. I admittedly have a marketing background (at least educationally), although I don’t consider myself to be an expert at Internet marketing by any means. I don’t claim to understand the complex algorythms. However, I do understand the basics.
The big search engines (Yahoo, Google, Etc) want to provide quality search results. It is in their best interest. However, their are always unscrupulous individuals (we’ll call them spammers) trying to ‘beat’ the algo. Often times they are successful. How and Why? Because, we, the legitimate hardworking bloggers, let them. We spend our time (and rightfully so) adding original, insightful, and fresh content to our sites instead of trying to manipulate search results. I’m not suggesting that we should want to manipulate anything, so don’t get that idea.
I am suggesting that we, as a community, be more conscious of how the search engines work. For instance, Anyone invited any of the search engines to the outdoor bloggers summit? You might be suprised who might show up (and more importantly what WE could learn from them)!
One fact of internet marketing is that Links are a big deal! On Matt’s behalf, I will qualify this, “Quality Links Are a Big Deal”. A link from a quality (original content - important, remember the content must be ORIGINAL and not duplicate or copied) blog or website to another quality blog or website (out of the same neighborhood) benefits BOTH sites in a big way. Both sites become more ‘trusted’ and will ultimately fare better in search results. So, if you have a hunting site, and it is good quality (fresh original content), it actually BENEFITS ME to link to that site - and it BENEFITS YOU, too. This works both ways. In order to gain the search engines trust you must have incoming links from other quality sites and outgoing links to trusted sites. It is that simple!
If you stop and think about the rationale it will begin to make sense to you. How many really good sites have you found just by clicking on a link (on the blogroll) of a site you already trust? I’d venture to guess that most of the sites you’ve found have been through that process. The search engine algorithym takes this ‘trust’ factor into account.
Now, back to my point about the spammers. The search engines know about them and know their tricks. However, the spammers put up another spam site and practice their magic as fast (or faster) than the search engines can block their sites.
It is my theory that our sites, I’m talking about collectively and as a community, are easy to beat by the spammers, because we might not have done as good a job at linking to one another as we could have. Thus, and again ‘as a community’, our sites trust ratings are not as high as they could be. Seriously, pull the top 25 internet marketing blogs and the top 25 hunting blogs and compare them. Group to group they won’t be comparable (I don’t mean this derogatively). The marketing people will have more trusted sites, not because they are more trustworthy, but because, in part, they’ve diligently linked to other trusted sites (and vice versa). Which group do you think a spammer is going to focus his attention on?
Someone commented today that there should be a lot more people interested in hunting and fishing than in marketing - and I agree. Just take some time and look at what garbage these ’searchers’ have to wade through before finding one of our quality sites. I’m composing a list of quality sites that I plan to permanently link to - in addition to my blogroll. My opinion is that many people will never link back to you, but it doesn’t change whether they have a quality site or not. So, I’ll link to them. However, I save my blogroll for people that have expressed similar confidence in my site (by linking to me).
By rallying together, communicating, linking to one another and commenting on each other’s posts (look how the marketing people do this - every good ‘marketing’ post they find, they comment on - POWERFUL stuff for everyone concerned) we can make all of our blogs easier to find.
Enough of that. I hope I didn’t put you to sleep. Regardless, I’m now climbing off my soapbox. Tomorrow, I’m off to work on my deer stands and hopefully spearfishing on Monday! Yeehaw! Hopefully, I’ll have some game camera pics to add next week. Either way, my next few post will be a little ‘lighter’! I promise.
Thanks again for the links, comments, and emails! It made today a little more exciting.
2 Comments so far...
Matt Says:
22 June 2007 at 3:49 am.
Good post. Any further insight on getting the search engines to participated in the Summit would be great.
Kristine Shreve Says:
22 June 2007 at 7:15 am.
Adding the search engines is a great idea. I also have contacts with a SEO company that is quite well known in the industry. I’m guessing we could get someone from there to come and talk about how organic search works. Could be very useful.
I also agree that quality links can help us all. If we all support each other, through links and comments, everyone’s blog (and the work they’ve spent on it) will reach more people.
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