Permalinks, Traffic, and Google | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Hi all!

I have made a tweak to the way that my blog links to outgoing sites, and was just curious if anyone had any feedback.

As you can see, for the majority of my posts, when you click on the headline, instead of taking you to a permalink on my blog, it takes you to another site. A lot of my posts are of the quick, one-hit variety, and I like the convenience of the reader being able to just click the headline, and off they go reading the piece I linked to. I want them to visit the sites I link to, and I think this makes it easier.

But that got me wondering … since I'm not "giving myself" those permalinks, would that in any way effect the way that Google treats my blog? Currently, the only permalinks on my site are my "featured posts" (denoted with a ★), and the About/Contact/etc. stuff off to the side. Does it matter, then, that my blog will only contain a handful of permalink "pages", in the way that Google ranks my site? Maybe this is a stupid question, but I thought it may be possible.

So I guess I'm asking for feedback for two questions. 1) does the current headline-linking effect that I have look aesthetically pleasing and efficient to you as a reader, and 2) do you think not having those permalinks to my own site is hurting me with Google.

Link to my site here - http://www.personalfinancebeat.com

Thanks!

Mike

If I click on a post title, my expectation as a reader is to be taken to that article so that I can read more content (if the front page contained a snippet) or so that I can have access to the comment box.  If I'm redirected to another site, that's confusing to me, and my first thought is going to be to think that I must have mis-clicked something.  I'll try again and then it will probably start to bother me and I'll go elsewhere.

From what I could tell, the 'content' under each post title is pretty small in terms of number of words / paragraphs.  So, if that's all you get on your site, and then clicking takes you to a more detailed site, eventually people are going to skip the middleman (no site) since it's really not adding any value.  If you perceive your 'value' as aggregating a bunch of information, I can assure you that there are hundreds of thousands of sites that already do that and that users already have loyalty toward.  In other words,  if you think people are going to quit reading their Google Finance page after coming across your site, I don't think that's going to happen.

As MJTM said, don't worry about gimmicks this early on (and probably even later if we're talking the truth). If you want to be a PF blogger, then concentrate on that.  Maybe I'm completely misreading, but it seems like you're trying to take a shortcut here. 

Post edited 9:18 am – January 24, 2013 by KyleAAA

You aren't going to be able to sustain targeted google traffic with that model because your site is basically a series of front pages. That MIGHT be fine except as you add content, the content on those pages will constantly shift. You will probably be able to eventually rank for some really, really long-tail phrases with super low competition but that's not your bread and butter. Forget search traffic. You HAVE to build a large (and I mean VERY large) regular readership to make money with that model. Consequently, your CPM is going to be extremely low. It's probably not much of an exaggeration to say you need 100-200 times the traffic of a traditional blog to make the same income, and even then it's iffy. Look at DF. They are pulling in around $35,000 per month, yes, but it takes them 4 MILLION pageviews to do it. To say their CPM is miniscule would be an overstatement. And when you are getting 4 million pageviews per month, your costs aren't all that low, either. I wonder how much actual profit they're earning.

Am I missing something, or is this just capitalizing off other's hard work? I mean, if your site grew and had 4M views a month, then it would be a big benefit to others in this community for the links you are providing. But right now, it seems like you are trying to gain traffic off other people's catchy titles and well written articles.

Correct me if I'm wrong here…

I mean, if your site grew and had 4M views a month, then it would be a big benefit to others in this community for the links you are providing.

So your issue is not with the format of my site per se, it's that, right now, it's not benefitting you with extra clicks? Put another way, if my blog was sending you readers, you'd be totally cool with it? I think you need to re-examine your logic here. Do you think DF started off with "4M views a month" from Day 1, or do you think he started out with zero, kept to his format regardless, and then built up his audience that way? And if you want to talk about "gaining traffic off other people's catchy titles", have you ever heard of Techmeme, or Drudge? Do you really think the only way to blog is to write one, 750 word post per day about signing up for credit card rewards programs? 

Jake's sentiment is the exact reason why the Yakezie is likely not the place to promote that kind of site. 

Yes, I am starting to see it that way too. Thanks.

Post edited 12:42 pm – January 25, 2013 by Jake@iHeartBudgets.net

Personal Finance Beat said:

 Do you really think the only way to blog is to write one, 750 word post per day about signing up for credit card rewards programs? 

And this quote is specifically what I'm talking about. No one here is going to respond positively to this type of statement. And just to be clear, most here are actually helping people on a personal level, not just churning out garbage about credit card articles. Personally, I have helped others get on a budget, get out of debt and start hitting some financial goals they never thought possible. And since most others here have the same heart to help others (re: Yakezie – selflessly helping others), if you come in here, link to a bunch of posts with some basic comments without writing your own, and want to start seeing traffic and income, it basically goes against what this place it about. Just fair warning, as others have said, this may not be the right place to build your readership.

Lol. This will be my last post in this thread, as I'm sure everyone else is getting annoyed that it keeps getting bumped. Just wanted to address a few points.

They are pulling in around $35,000 per month, yes, but it takes them 4 MILLION pageviews to do it. To say their CPM is miniscule would be an overstatement. And when you are getting 4 million pageviews per month, your costs aren't all that low, either. I wonder how much actual profit they're earning.

I missed this comment earlier. This is 100% incorrect. DF doesn't have to worry about "CPM" because that's not how he makes money. He sells a "sponsorship" to his RSS feed. It has nothing to do with clicks, there's a reason he doesn't have any crappy, terrible Google Ads plastered all over his site — he doesn't need them. There's the $35k per month. On top of that, he also sells ONE ad on his site via The Deck, and even that is not based on clicks. As for actual profit, his is a one-man operation. His only costs are his hosting fees. The rest of it is pure, pure profit. 

What is it about your site that will bring in a reader?  I don't know much about the DF site but if you look at the archives it goes back to 2002.  That's like the stone age of blogging meaning he got in and built an authority site probably before anyone else was doing it in his niche. . . . They are adding value to the article by breaking it down and giving their opinion.

I'm a month into it, give me a little time to find my footing. But yeah, DF is the gold-standard (and Rotoworld, which follows the same, "spammy" style) — I obviously don't expect to be able to be that good.

My sole reason in bringing him up as an example was in response to those who immediately — right off the bat — questioned the legitimacy of the format, like:

All you did was create a tumblr site.

And:

it seems like you're trying to take a shortcut here. 

And: 

just capitalizing off other's hard work

And:

It feels spammy and very self-serving

And yet I'm the one accused of being "condescending" when all I did was ask for some feedback?

At any rate, as I said, I'm sure everyone else is tired of this thread. So am I. Thanks to Kyle for providing some valuable insight. 

I agree with JP. I don't see anything selfish about this. Hard to monetize? Yes, almost certainly. But selfish? No.

Selfish would be aggregating the content of others on your site. In this case, the title itself leads to the work in question. As JP and Kyle point out, this approach has its downsides (e.g., makes it hard to interact with the person running it, lack of internal pages for search engines to find, etc.) but it's certainly not "selfish".

The challenge, as I'm sure Mike is aware, will be to become known as <i>the</i> place to go for curated financial links. Sites like daring fireball, marco.org, kottke.org, etc. are built on a personas that are (in most cases) well known for other reasons. Gruber created markdown, Marco helped build Tumblr, etc. So without that, how will you gain the notoriety/trust required for success? Not saying it can't be done, just saying that it will be hard.

Anyways… I wish you the best of luck, Mike. You're more than welcome to link to my stuff if/when you see fit. :-)

Post edited 7:28 am – January 29, 2013 by KyleAAA

Personal Finance Beat said:

They are pulling in around $35,000 per month, yes, but it takes them 4 MILLION pageviews to do it. To say their CPM is miniscule would be an overstatement. And when you are getting 4 million pageviews per month, your costs aren't all that low, either. I wonder how much actual profit they're earning.

I missed this comment earlier. This is 100% incorrect. DF doesn't have to worry about "CPM" because that's not how he makes money. He sells a "sponsorship" to his RSS feed. It has nothing to do with clicks, there's a reason he doesn't have any crappy, terrible Google Ads plastered all over his site — he doesn't need them. There's the $35k per month. On top of that, he also sells ONE ad on his site via The Deck, and even that is not based on clicks. As for actual profit, his is a one-man operation. His only costs are his hosting fees. The rest of it is pure, pure profit.

 

It's not incorrect. Everybody has to worry about CPM, as its the industry standard whether you're paid by click, pageview, or action. Whether or not he needs clicks is irrelevant because all forms of monetization compete for the same space. CPM matters for everybody. The point is, he had to get to 4 million pageviews BEFORE he could justify charging $35,000 per month. And if you think hosting a site that gets 4 million pageviews per month is cheap, well, it's not. He's not spending $10,000 per month on hosting, but he doesn't have the $100 plan either, I can promise you that. And then there's the value of his time. His profits are almost certainly very low considering his traffic volume. Trust me, I've been doing this a long time and I work for a large dotcom. I've seen firsthand what this kind of operation costs to run.