Posts Tagged ‘utm’
Izea Forum
Have you visited the Izea Forum yet? If not, you definitely need to go visit the boards. Why? Well, first of all, they just completely redid them. They have a brand new look. It is a tad different looking than the old boards, but it only takes a little while to figure our your way around there. Another reason to check them out is because of the community. Izea posters are an awesome community to be a part of. These are some of the kindest most caring people I have ever met. Some of us have met in real life, but the majority of us have never seen each other ever. However, if you are having a problem with an opportunity you took, problems with your blog, or even problems at home, there is someone who is willing to give you a hand. For free. I know, it is hard to believe, but it is true. When I was pregnant with Will, there was even a thread guessing when he was going to be born! (I forgot who won that one — Amy, maybe?). All I know is that I have met some of my very best online friends on there. Another cool feature on the new boards is that you can report people if you have a problem with them. Instead of a discussion turning into a flame war, you can get a moderator to put a stop to it and reign everyone in. Speaking of moderators, I am one there, so that alone should make you check it out. LOL. In all seriousness, the Izea forums is your one stop shop for both information and community. Go check it out!
Stoves, PR, RankSpanks, and Izearanks
I spent today trying to find a new oven online. My oven has decided to have a mind of its own. Sometimes it is twenty five degrees below what I set it; sometimes it is twenty five over. The thing can’t make up its mind, and it is getting increasingly more difficult to cook. What does this have to do with Izea?
The Rankspank
Well, several months ago, many bloggers who get paid to write posts were RankSpanked. What this means is that we once had PR, and we no longer do. PR is the holy grail to most bloggers who do any sort of paid work. The higher your PR, the more money you were able to charge. You’ll even see this badge on a lot of sites out there:
PR and other measures
Up until recently, there really wasn’t a good measure of a blogs worth. PR wasn’t even all that great. Yes, blogs with PR had backlinks, but you never really knew what kind of traffic they were getting. Alexa is another service out there. Your traffic with them only counted if you visitor had the Alexa toolbar, so that was not too good of a measure either.
At this point, Google seems to be changing the rules as they go. It is getting to the point you need a degree online to figure out how they are designing their algorithm. You use to need lots of backlinks to get PR. Now, it is anyone’s guess. At this time, you can have all the backlinks in the world, and if Google thinks you are doing any sort of blogging for pay, they will knock you to zero. They have knocked down sites that don’t do it. I have seen a lot of guilty by acquaintance. You mention one of your other blogs on a rankspanked blog — that new blog won’t get PR either. I know that because I have two sites that should have gotten some PR and didn’t. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t planned on including my cooking blog at all in any sort of blogging for pay. However, since I am not going to get PR anyway, I figured why not! Every so often you hear that people got their PR back and did nothing different to get it back. I wish I was one of those people. However, I am not.
How can you know what to do with the rules constantly changing and you have no idea what the rules really are?
The Answer
The answer to my stove problem is the thermostat. We either need to replace that or buy a new stove. The answer to the PR problem is that we either need to replace part of it or come up with a whole new ranking system. Since we have no control over Google, the best bet out there is the new measure IzeaRanks. IzeaRanks allows you to measure your RealRank, your pageviews, and your uniques. Something I have learned about bloggers is the last couple of years or so is that we are all stat junkies. We love to have multiple places to see where we rank.
How do I get it?
Getting it is super simple. You just go to IzeaRanks and fill out some information about your blog. You then are given a code to put into your footer. Now, you don’t have to do any sort blogging for pay to be involved in this. I think the majority of the blogs listed aren’t part of any service. To get your real rank, the system weights blogs 70% on daily unique visitors, 20% by daily active inbound links and 10% by daily page views. Here’s sneak peak of what the graphs look like:
Now, you will see 4 different lines on there. I used my 4 blogs to make the graph. You can use your blogs or any blogs in the system to compare stats. You can also graph pageviews and uniques too. Finally, a true measure of where you are at.
This is free to use, so you have nothing to lose trying it. What are you waiting for?
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IzeaRanks
Since the Google Smackdown of ’07 happened, page rank definitely does not mean what it once did. Webmasters are now running afraid since sites that did not even have paid links on them got smacked down to a zero. They are starting to no follow all their links since they are running scared. However, by doing this, they are really messing up google’s ability to have a quality search engine. Anyway, what does google page rank tell you? Not much. Supposibly it is the authority your site has. The higher page rank the better the site is suppose to be. Well, I cannot be the only one who has seen terrible sites that have been ranked high. Heck, I have seen splogs (blogs that steal others content through their RSS feeds) that I have high page rank. Please, tell me how that ranking is telling me anything.
IZEARanks.com is attempting to solve that problem for you. Right now, the only way to monitor traffic is through companies like Compete and Alexa. The problem with compete is that it only follows unique monthly hits and alexa only works if the person viewing your site has the alexa tool bar. Izea Ranks is a measure of your traffic against all the other people who have the tracking code on their blogs. It is a much better way to track your traffic. You don’t have to expect your readers to do the work. They can do what they always do, just come and read your blog. If you are afraid of google, have no fear. IzeaRank uses a different code than Pay Per Post. You are able to see your rank, your uniques hits, and your pageviews. They are even giving away $1000 each week in February to the blog with the #1 RealRank. I know that won’t be me — however, if any of you win it I’d like a finders fee! LOL
5 Days Left 