Too much me, not enough PageRank

While I think this blog has got off to a reasonable start, I do notice a couple of obvious flaws. First, the blog entries are far too long; short and sweet should be the rule; and secondly, that's probably because I'm mentioning myself too much.

To alleviate these problems, I've launched yet another blog,"Martin Gradwell's Blog". You should go there if you're really here to find out all about me. So, if you're still here, I'll assume it's for the SEO. Let's plough on, and maybe mention someone else for a change.

Adrienne Smith has what looks to be a very good blog about SEO. I discovered it because one of her pages is about "10 tips for getting your name on the first page of Google", which coincidentally is the target that I have set for the name of this blog (and the target which @seogoogleexperts say they can achieve in six months or your money back. Seriously, there seems to be a lot of attention paid to that first page on Google for some reason :-) ).

Anyway, there are some good points among her ten. but she's talking about how to get your own personal site or blog into the top ten if you have a name that happens to be common. That may be relevant for my newly created personal blog, but it could only be used for a special-purpose blog like this one with some modification. I'll produce my own top ten list in a future blog entry, which may well be based on hers (with suitable acknowledgments if that is the case and sufficient differences to make it unique, of course).

One other thing that caught my eye was "Wow, Google doesn't like me any more", an article about how Adrienne's blog recently went down from PageRank 4 to PageRank 2. There doesn't seem to be any good reason for that, or at least Adrienne couldn't see one and at first glance I can't see one; but she accepts it stoically and won't let it stop her from doing what she is doing.

I think the lesson to be learned from that is that SEO isn't an exact science. Even people who have been steadily building up their ranking for years can suddenly find it reduced and be at a loss to understand why. But that's okay, because PageRank isn't everything. In fact, it isn't anything tangible at all. It's just a number. Having it reduced won't make an interesting blog any less interesting. It won't impact the experience of the average visitor to a site in any way. So, what does it actually mean?

That can be the subject of a future blog entry, since on its own it could probably fill quite a few entries. Short and sweet is the rule. Bookmark this space.