A friend of mine started blogging six months ago. He commanded good traffic and wondered whether he can start charging for advertising. Naturally that led him wondering what metrics fully describe a blog’s valuation. Most folks turn to alexa ranking. Others adore google page rank. Then there’s the minority who swear by quantcast, xtremetracker and the like. In my opinion, these do not measure the true potential of a site. Take Alexa ranking for instance. It reflects the position of a site based on how many Alexa visitors with toolbars visit it. But how many have the toolbar installed? Then Google Pagerank is another. People absolutely go crazy over the PR system. I used to be the same then discovered it was a hollow metric that reflected little in terms of profitability or actual traffic.
If these methods aren’t good, then what are? Simple. Ask yourself what are the three most important elements of a blog.
Bloggers write to be read. You know you’re being read, and most importantly, you know you’re touching hearts and minds when your comment count goes up. Similar an empty bar, a blog without comments lacks social proof. Would you visit a pub with no crowd, or a bistro with no diners? That’s the same with a blog. No commenters? Sorry, I’m not visiting. Hence for me, the primary measure of a blog’s worth is the number of comments it has. Not from viagra spammers. From rabid readers.
A second telling metric is the growth of Incoming links. The sensitive blogger keeps asking questions: Who’s linking to me? What did they like about my post? Where did they come from? Are they big shots? When folks like Shoemoney or Everton Blair start linking to your articles you know that you’ve reached blogging nirvana. That’s when you can start charging a premium on advertising.
Finally, I like looking at my bounce rate. According to Google, it essentially represents the average percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. The higher your bounce rate, the more ‘boring’ you can consider your site. 90% is bad. That means after landing on your site, 90% of visitors leave to another site.
Admittedly, some advertisers still rely on the old fashioned alexa ranking before making an investment and this led to the growth of companies like Upmyrank.com or AlexaBooster. So. How many of you go for the old-style metrics?
