Want links? Google says be interesting
Google's Maile Ohye concluded Link Week with a tutorial on
inbound links. It says basically what SEO experts have been saying
for years: content and inbound links are most important, and in
that order.
Just because it's old news doesn't mean it's bad news. Google's
had a real history of silence on the SEO side of things, and
experts were often left to theorize and test-and worse, try to
game. Google sent a pretty loud signal this time last year by
hitting the PageRanks of paid directories, a move seeming to
confirm basic white-hat SEO tactics.
In her post, Ohye extols the virtues of naturally gained, editorial
inbound links and directly denounces links appear "spammy," or not
"merit-based."
"One of the strongest ranking factors is my site's content.
Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources --
however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google
is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to
contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.
"Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the analysis
of the site's content and inbound links as mentioned above) are
applied to return the most relevant results to the user."
Ohye then offered four bullet points on how to earn merit-based
links, paraphrased below:
* Start a site-related blog, writing or video, research or
entertainment.
* Be interesting. Be a teacher. (Hey, that should be a recruitment
slogan for a College of Education somewhere! I'll sell it to ya
for the bargain price of $500,000-if a private school, just
$10,000, since as a non-government institution you can't just
print the money you need.)
* Participate in the community surrounding your industry-social
media, blog comments, user reviews.
* Provide useful products or services.
In short: content, content, content, a little participation, and
the links will come.
And an Interesting Side Note About "Journalism"
Read Write Web conducted a survey with some quite interesting
results. They asked 20 bloggers and social media consultants
(that they claim to know and trust) what kind of money they make
with their blogging gigs. The agreement was for RRW not to
disclose their names, and for the bloggers themselves to be
honest about their earnings.
"We hope that no one will be too angry with us if these numbers
lead their employees to feel newly shortchanged and protest,"
says RWW's Kirkpatrick. "These folks are at the top of their
field."
The survey looked at different blogger set-ups, such as those
who get paid by the post, those who are in-house full-time
bloggers, and expert social media consultants. As Pro-Blogger
Darren Rowse notes, the sample is small, but that doesn't make
the numbers any less intriguing.
The Numbers
It looks like the average rate on a per-post basis is $25, though
some reported to make as little as $10 and as much as $80. "Let's
say these people are half-time pro-bloggers making $25 per post,
writing 3 posts per day," Kirkpatrick says. "That's $75 per
half-day, a little less than $20 per hour, about $1500 to $1750
per month for half time work. Take two of those jobs at once,
do it for a year, and you'll make about $40k."
You could do worse, but in-house bloggers seem to be doing better.
According to Kirkpatrick, respondents reported annual salaries
ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits up to $70k, $80k and $90k
with bonuses. "We're tempted to say, based on the anonymously
submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure
journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were,"
he says. Now that's interesting. Critics of blogs as news sources
ought to love that little nugget.
Those in-house bloggers still didn't make as much as the
participating social media consultants who make as little as
$150 an hour, and most commonly about $300 an hour. That's
fascinating considering the amount of sponsored content
infiltrating social networks. I have to wonder how the pay rates
of these consultants reflect their practices in terms of white
hat/black hat.
Again, this info shouldn't be considered accurate for the entire
industry, considering the number of participants (and also
considering that they're anonymous for that matter), but Read
Write Web has certainly provided an interesting look into the
possibilities of making money with blogs and social media. What
are your thoughts? I'd love for any bloggers/consultants to post
their earnings (anonymously of course) in the comments to see
how they stack up against RRW's data.
Google's Maile Ohye concluded Link Week with a tutorial on
inbound links. It says basically what SEO experts have been saying
for years: content and inbound links are most important, and in
that order.
Just because it's old news doesn't mean it's bad news. Google's
had a real history of silence on the SEO side of things, and
experts were often left to theorize and test-and worse, try to
game. Google sent a pretty loud signal this time last year by
hitting the PageRanks of paid directories, a move seeming to
confirm basic white-hat SEO tactics.
In her post, Ohye extols the virtues of naturally gained, editorial
inbound links and directly denounces links appear "spammy," or not
"merit-based."
"One of the strongest ranking factors is my site's content.
Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources --
however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google
is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to
contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.
"Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the analysis
of the site's content and inbound links as mentioned above) are
applied to return the most relevant results to the user."
Ohye then offered four bullet points on how to earn merit-based
links, paraphrased below:
* Start a site-related blog, writing or video, research or
entertainment.
* Be interesting. Be a teacher. (Hey, that should be a recruitment
slogan for a College of Education somewhere! I'll sell it to ya
for the bargain price of $500,000-if a private school, just
$10,000, since as a non-government institution you can't just
print the money you need.)
* Participate in the community surrounding your industry-social
media, blog comments, user reviews.
* Provide useful products or services.
In short: content, content, content, a little participation, and
the links will come.
And an Interesting Side Note About "Journalism"
Read Write Web conducted a survey with some quite interesting
results. They asked 20 bloggers and social media consultants
(that they claim to know and trust) what kind of money they make
with their blogging gigs. The agreement was for RRW not to
disclose their names, and for the bloggers themselves to be
honest about their earnings.
"We hope that no one will be too angry with us if these numbers
lead their employees to feel newly shortchanged and protest,"
says RWW's Kirkpatrick. "These folks are at the top of their
field."
The survey looked at different blogger set-ups, such as those
who get paid by the post, those who are in-house full-time
bloggers, and expert social media consultants. As Pro-Blogger
Darren Rowse notes, the sample is small, but that doesn't make
the numbers any less intriguing.
The Numbers
It looks like the average rate on a per-post basis is $25, though
some reported to make as little as $10 and as much as $80. "Let's
say these people are half-time pro-bloggers making $25 per post,
writing 3 posts per day," Kirkpatrick says. "That's $75 per
half-day, a little less than $20 per hour, about $1500 to $1750
per month for half time work. Take two of those jobs at once,
do it for a year, and you'll make about $40k."
You could do worse, but in-house bloggers seem to be doing better.
According to Kirkpatrick, respondents reported annual salaries
ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits up to $70k, $80k and $90k
with bonuses. "We're tempted to say, based on the anonymously
submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure
journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were,"
he says. Now that's interesting. Critics of blogs as news sources
ought to love that little nugget.
Those in-house bloggers still didn't make as much as the
participating social media consultants who make as little as
$150 an hour, and most commonly about $300 an hour. That's
fascinating considering the amount of sponsored content
infiltrating social networks. I have to wonder how the pay rates
of these consultants reflect their practices in terms of white
hat/black hat.
Again, this info shouldn't be considered accurate for the entire
industry, considering the number of participants (and also
considering that they're anonymous for that matter), but Read
Write Web has certainly provided an interesting look into the
possibilities of making money with blogs and social media. What
are your thoughts? I'd love for any bloggers/consultants to post
their earnings (anonymously of course) in the comments to see
how they stack up against RRW's data.
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