Pay Attention to the Warnings

Right from the time I started blogging almost 5 years ago I got involved with blog hopping, meaning I visit a lot of blogs on a daily basis.  There are a multitude of ways to discover new blogs with the simplest being finding a blog then spring boarding from there by clicking a link to another blog that looks interesting.  One thing I have noticed is some bloggers act like children.  I'm not kidding!  Considering that most bloggers are over the age of 13 and the majority of those blogger over the age of 18 (aka adults) this is rather discerning.  All you need to do is read some of their blog posts or better yet read their posts in forums.

Parents will warn a child to not touch the stove because it is hot and may burn them.  Most children will listen to that warning and won't get burnt.  Some will touch the stove, find it is hot then will be more prone to listen to their parent the next time they are warned not to do something.  Others simply do not learn their lesson so they keep getting burned.  This analogy applies quite nicely to the tug-of-war between bloggers and Google.

Google clearly spells out certain warnings in its Webmaster Guidelines.  Whether a blogger thinks of him or herself as a webmaster, they are so these very same rules apply as well.  Some bloggers thumb their nose at these rules especially the link rules then wonder why their Page Rank suffers.  Other bloggers don't care or at least appear not to care that Google does not paid posts and duplicate content yet can't figure out why Google penalizes them for using both.  Google doesn't care about intent either.  So even though your intent is to build a community of followers through your blog, Google says bull.  What it sees is you punching a nice fat hole in your Page Rank and rewards you with lower PR.  SEO expert (aka those who really know what they are doing and are paid to do it) have been sounding the warnings over how comments are handles, links and content. 

Last year Matt Cutts who work's in Google's Search Quality group and the very person responsible for enforcing Google's Webmaster Guidelines clearly explained how the rel=nofollow tag would affect Page Rank.  At the same time it was clearly implicated that making comments do follow by removing the nofollow tag would also have an effect on PR.  We saw quite vividly the effects of Google's recent algorithm update (Panda) and its effects on content farms.  This change affected many bloggers as well.  There are now ripplings link farms are the next topic but there are still changes to come as far as comments and content.  And yet, some bloggers fail to pay attention to these warnings!

Let's put things in perspective.  Google owns it's search engine and has rules as to what sites will be indexed for use in its search engine.  Google owes you nothing.  They do not have to index your blog and they do not have to show your blog in their search results.  If you don't like their rules and refuse to follow them they can and will peanalize you and there is not a thing you can do about it.  The bottom line is follow the rules and pay attention to the warnings otherwise like the child who fails to listen to the warning the stove is hot, you may find yourself burned by Google.

Garden Gnome
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