And There Goes Our Alexa Rank!
I woke up today and was browsing through my RSS feeds when I came across an interesting post from Problogger: Alexa Announces ‘New’ Rankings.
It looks like Alexa is now using other sources apart from the toolbar to draw its traffic metrics, and as a result all the previous rankings were shuffled. Problogger used to have a 2,600, and now they are at 12,900. Daily Blog Tips used to have a 14,000, and now we are at 68,000.
The objetive was to remove the bias towards tech websites, where a greater percentage of the visitors would have the toolbar installed. My initial impressions is that this new ranking system might work better in fact, because Daily Writing Tips, not a tech blog, kept its previous Alexa ranking.
How did your Alexa rank change?
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Wikio, News Aggregator and Top 100 Blogs
I will be frank here, I think that the marketing rep of Wikio.com emailed me about 10 times on the last month to let me know about their new blog ranking system. But I am not writing about them only in the hope of stopping the harassment: I also think that they have an interesting service.
Wikio is a kind of news aggregator, but with an interesting slant: surf and subscribe. That is, they feature a bunch of news and stories from around the web, but they also give you the possibility to subscribe either to local RSS feeds or to the direct feeds of the sources.
The Top Blogs section is particularly useful. Basically they have a Top 100 list for several niches, from business to celebrities, from technology to sports. If you are trying to find some quality blogs on a certain topic, for instance, you could go there and browse around, and even subscribe to their RSS feeds directly from the Wikio website.
Here is how the calculate the rankings:
The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. These links are dynamic, which means that they are backlinks or links found within articles.
Blogrolls are not taken into account and Wikio only counts links from the last 120 days. We thus hope to provide a classification more representative of trends in the blogosphere.
Moreover, the weight of a link depends on the linking blog’s position in the Wikio ranking. With our algorithm, the weight of a link from a top blog is greater than that of a link from a blog that is less well ranked.
Our rankings also include Top Blogs for several categories: Technology, Politics, etc. New categories will be added on a regular basis.
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May 1st RSS Awareness Day: Get Involved
Back in 2005 5% of the Internet users said they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online (according to the Pew Internet Project).
Feedburner recently reported that they track around 60 million RSS subscribers. Even if we bump that number to 70 million RSS users (counting people that use RSS with other applications or platforms) this would still convert to a meager 5,4% if the Internet users around the world as of today.
What is the takeaway message? Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and what it can do for them.
If you have been using RSS (either to syndicate content or to consume it) you know how useful the format is. It allows users to stay connected with different websites and applications, especially those that are updated regularly (more about it on WhatIsRSS.com).
So it is a pity that such a tiny part of the web users are using RSS. The question that came into my mind was: is there anything we can do about it?
Yes, let’s create an RSS Awareness Day!
Objetive
The objective of the RSS Awareness Day is to get as many people as possible talking about RSS and its benefits on May 1st. Bloggers and blog readers are already aware of the RSS format, but if enough of them talk about it perhaps the mainstream media will cover it as well, and the general public will get exposed to it.
If people start reading about RSS and how it can help them everywhere, I am sure that some will get curious at least to try it out. Over the time the usage of the format should pick up, and all the Internet users (including content publishers) gain from it.
How to participate
There are several ways to participate:
- Blog about it: on May 1st write a post or article on your website about RSS. You can just mention that it is the RSS Awareness Day and link to some RSS resources, or you can explain what RSS is and teach your readers how they can make the most out of RSS. You can even write a poem about RSS, there are no limitations here.
- Use a badge or banner: We will be hiring a company (if you wanna help with the badges let us know) to produce several badges and banners that you can use on your site. You can use them throughout April or just on May 1st.
- Help spread the word: see the section below.
Help spread the word and win prizes
Since the goal of the project is to get as many people as possible involved, we thought about giving out some prizes to people that will to help spread the word. Just write a post about the RSS Awareness Day on your blog until next Tuesday (April 15) and you will be included on a random draw for the following prizes:
- 6 $50 cash prizes via Paypal ($300)
- 3-month enrollment to the SEOBook training program ($300)
- 3 single licenses to any iThemes Premium themes ($240)
- 3 $100 credit vouchers from TNX ($300)
- 5 copies of my ebook “Killer Domains” ($100)
- 5 free banner designs from MiniBannersZen ($100)
- 3 single licenses to the Mimbo Pro Premium theme ($300)
Sponsors welcome
Next week we will do another post encouraging people to spread the word about the event, and publishing the badges and banners that participants can use. If you want to sponsor the event by offering a prize to the people involved just contact us via the contact form.
*Daily Blog Tips will not take any money from the event. All the prizes from the sponsors will be given to people helping spread the word.
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May 1st RSS Awareness Day: Get Involved
Back in 2005 5% of the Internet users said they were using RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online (according to the Pew Internet Project).
Feedburner recently reported that they track around 60 million RSS subscribers. Even if we bump that number to 70 million RSS users (counting people that use RSS with other applications or platforms) this would still convert to a meager 5,4% of the Internet users around the world, as of today.
What is the takeaway message? Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits.
If you have been using RSS (either to syndicate content or to consume it) you know how useful the format is. It allows users to stay connected with different websites and applications, especially those that are updated regularly (more about it on WhatIsRSS.com).
So it is a pity that such a tiny part of the web users are using RSS. The question that came into my mind was: is there anything we can do about it?
Yes, let’s create an RSS Awareness Day!
Objective
The objective of the RSS Awareness Day is to get as many people as possible talking about RSS and its benefits on May 1st. Bloggers and blog readers are already aware of the RSS format, but if enough of them talk about it perhaps the mainstream media will cover it as well, and the general public will get exposed to it.
If people start reading about RSS and how it can help them everywhere, I am sure that some will get curious at least to try it out. Over the time the usage of the format should pick up, and all the Internet users (including content publishers) gain from it.
How to participate
There are several ways to participate (none of them require that you link back here, as long as you help to raise the awareness of RSS we are happy):
- Blog about it: on May 1st write a post or article on your website about RSS. You can just mention that it is the RSS Awareness Day and link to some RSS resources, or you can explain what RSS is and teach your readers how they can make the most out of RSS. You can even write a poem about RSS, there are no limitations here.
- Use a badge or banner: We will be hiring a company (if you wanna help with the badges let us know) to produce several badges and banners that you can use on your site. You can use them throughout April or just on May 1st.
- Help spread the word: see the section below.
Help spread the word and win prizes
Since the goal of the project is to get as many people as possible involved, we thought about giving out some prizes to people that will to help spread the word. Just write a post about the RSS Awareness Day on your blog until next Tuesday (April 15) and you will be included on a random draw for the following prizes:
- 6 $50 cash prizes via Paypal ($300)
- 3 copies of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide ($300)
- a 3-month enrollment to the SEOBook training program ($300)
- 3 single licenses to any iThemes Premium theme ($240)
- 3 $100 credit vouchers to buy links from TNX ($300)
- 5 copies of “Killer Domains: How to Find the Perfect Domain Name” ($100)
- 5 free banner designs from MiniBannersZen ($100)
- 3 single licenses to the Mimbo Pro Premium theme ($300)
Sponsors welcome
Next week we will do another post encouraging people to spread the word about the event, and publishing the badges and banners that participants can use. If you want to sponsor the event by offering a prize to the people involved just contact us via the contact form.
*Daily Blog Tips will not take any money from the event. All the prizes from the sponsors will be given to people helping spread the word.
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Prove Your Guest Blogging Skills and Win over $9,000
This is one idea that I thought about several months ago, but I never ended up implementing it. A guest blogging competition!
Loren Baker from the Search Engine Journal came up with the idea as well, and he just launched it. It is looking pretty promising, considering that they have over $9,000 in prizes.
Here is how it works: you send a guest post their way (starting today until 4/15/08), they will then publish all the guest posts on the following two weeks (4/16/08 to 4/30/08), and after that they will measure the success of each post, based on parameters like page views, social media votes, backlinks and so on.
What can you write about? Here is a quote from their announcement:
This competition is open to all writers and bloggers, not only those in the search marketing field. So, you can write about anything from blogs to blogging, SEO to paid search, Twitter to RSS, your thoughts on Yahoo or Google, even Top 10 or Top 101 Lists are acceptable.
It should be fun to participate, and if I manage to find some time I will also shoot a guest article their way.
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