DC ranked 20th. Hmmm, I'm a competitor so let's see about this.... ;-) Any serious suggestions? Maybe we should just blast Christians and Christianity?
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comments:
Anonymous
said...
Actually I think being in moderation mode kills us, so I'll suspend it again in hopes we can ward off the blog terrorists who sporadically attack this site.
What's really weird is that the slacktivist made the list, and he's an evangelical christian. A REALLY liberal evangelical christian, but not an atheist.
As I understand it, Google ranks you high if a lot of people link to you. You can encourage this by placing buttons for StumbleUpon, Digg or other social networking sites. You could invite guest posts from other sites, especially more popular ones, or interview other bloggers, both of which may drive traffic and get you some links. You could discuss contemporary issues, have dialogs with other bloggers (or even single people out to debunk/attack/critique them). If your posts on other forums or the battling experts debates make sure to provide hyperlinks back to DC, not as link spam but to help people explore your arguments in more depth but which will also attract some number as future subscribers. Heck, you could pay for ads, host giveaways, host a forum or try other gimmicks to build a community.
You're releasing a steady stream of posts, have a coherent and well-defined theme and have a varied list of authors to help out, so you're already doing a lot. You're also up against some very established competition so 20th isn't anything to sneer at.
I suspect that you are simply not able to climb into the top few blogs so don't even bother. Reading long, thoughtful articles takes effort and, unfortunately, it's something that's likely to keep you somewhat lower in the rankings. It limits your audience, it limits your discussions which further limits the growth of any DC community and it limits the chances of reaching the atheist pop culture.
Look at the list and ask which blogs deliver anything like the researched critiques you offer. Daylight Atheism and Rationally Speaking might be the next contenders but both target much broader issues than DC. Which of the top blogs of any category look like what you're offering? Vanishingly few, I'd bet.
As long as you remain true to your goals & mission, I would expect that you will have little opportunity for upward movement. If you do decide to change in some quest for a broader reach I'd recommend that you follow Steven Novella and start an entirely new blog. Keep the image that you've build up here, work at making slow and steady upward gains while experimenting with new formats elsewhere.
Looking at the numbers in more detail you can see that there are plenty of blogs above yours which are potential targets. If you work with technorati it looks like you could jump up 3-4 slots very quickly.
While the top tier may be unassailable, there's no reason why you can't jump up 3-8 slots on this list. You've got about 300 Google Reader subscriptions, but if you can bump that to 400 or 450, the other stats would follow and you'd be near the top of the second tier blogs and could get you into the top 10. Very doable.
You are 13th on my automatic rankings site. (http://atheistblogger.com/rankings/). I've programmed it so that a "N/A" shouldn't affect your rank negatively, but getting technorati to work on this blog should push you up even higher in the long run :D
7 comments:
Actually I think being in moderation mode kills us, so I'll suspend it again in hopes we can ward off the blog terrorists who sporadically attack this site.
What's really weird is that the slacktivist made the list, and he's an evangelical christian. A REALLY liberal evangelical christian, but not an atheist.
Anyone knows of studies on church's income vs. expenses vs. charitable giving?
By denomination or geographically or by faith (Jews, Muslims, Christians) Let me know if you find something.
Thanks!
As I understand it, Google ranks you high if a lot of people link to you. You can encourage this by placing buttons for StumbleUpon, Digg or other social networking sites. You could invite guest posts from other sites, especially more popular ones, or interview other bloggers, both of which may drive traffic and get you some links. You could discuss contemporary issues, have dialogs with other bloggers (or even single people out to debunk/attack/critique them). If your posts on other forums or the battling experts debates make sure to provide hyperlinks back to DC, not as link spam but to help people explore your arguments in more depth but which will also attract some number as future subscribers. Heck, you could pay for ads, host giveaways, host a forum or try other gimmicks to build a community.
You're releasing a steady stream of posts, have a coherent and well-defined theme and have a varied list of authors to help out, so you're already doing a lot. You're also up against some very established competition so 20th isn't anything to sneer at.
I suspect that you are simply not able to climb into the top few blogs so don't even bother. Reading long, thoughtful articles takes effort and, unfortunately, it's something that's likely to keep you somewhat lower in the rankings. It limits your audience, it limits your discussions which further limits the growth of any DC community and it limits the chances of reaching the atheist pop culture.
Look at the list and ask which blogs deliver anything like the researched critiques you offer. Daylight Atheism and Rationally Speaking might be the next contenders but both target much broader issues than DC. Which of the top blogs of any category look like what you're offering? Vanishingly few, I'd bet.
As long as you remain true to your goals & mission, I would expect that you will have little opportunity for upward movement. If you do decide to change in some quest for a broader reach I'd recommend that you follow Steven Novella and start an entirely new blog. Keep the image that you've build up here, work at making slow and steady upward gains while experimenting with new formats elsewhere.
Looking at the numbers in more detail you can see that there are plenty of blogs above yours which are potential targets. If you work with technorati it looks like you could jump up 3-4 slots very quickly.
While the top tier may be unassailable, there's no reason why you can't jump up 3-8 slots on this list. You've got about 300 Google Reader subscriptions, but if you can bump that to 400 or 450, the other stats would follow and you'd be near the top of the second tier blogs and could get you into the top 10. Very doable.
Thanks Tyro, when I get a chance I'll look into these things.
You are 13th on my automatic rankings site. (http://atheistblogger.com/rankings/). I've programmed it so that a "N/A" shouldn't affect your rank negatively, but getting technorati to work on this blog should push you up even higher in the long run :D
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