I made a decision today. It’s mostly based around the time aspect, and more importantly, around how I feel about it.
For a few years, I’ve been a member, and taken part in some lovely blogging groups which have blog stats. I didn’t really care where I sat in the stats, as the blog just does it’s own thing and Google is very good to me these days.
My blog went down (out of action) for a few days recently and although I’ve only dropped about 100 places in one ranking, the others are likely to tank in the next few weeks. Yes, I know by next month, I’d be back where I was, but when I spotted the drop, I instantly began planning a couple of competitions etc to temporarily up the blog reader number.
Then I stopped myself.
To be part of a couple of the groups, I felt myself giving in to not posting many of the types of things that I would really like to, as it means that the blog was going down a more specific route than I really wanted it to, and becoming more niche than I’d like. My blog isn’t a business, it’s a hobby, and I felt myself losing that.
Yes, I’ll lose offers from PRs that use the blog ranking places, but that’s not all bad either. Anyone who knows the blog can work out it’s level as an SEO value, and it should drop some of the spam enquiries, that some days, actually fill the blog e-mail address up so much that I can spend ages just wading through them all.
I plan to pop on my Google page rank, play with the blog and do some posts around the business that I have unexpectedly had returned after being rented out to someone for the last 12 years. It’s going to be a busy time, and to keep up with it all, I can’t be distracted by where I sit in ranking stats.
I feel slightly liberated today without blog badges reporting my stats back to the ranking websites. Yes, I know I will be bottom of the rankings pile by next month with no stats reporting back, but I will have my blog back the way I used to feel. There will undoubtedly be days I will regret removing them, but I don’t want to feel I can’t post things as it won’t fit into my niche.