I was going through a post by Matt Cutts on PageRank Sculpting. And it really explains a few basic things on PageRank mechanism from Google’s point of view. It undermines the importance of PageRank Sculpting. If you don’t know what PageRank Sculpting is, then for a primary knowledge I can say that it is a way of controlling link juice flow within your site by making certain link portion nofollow artifially. For example, consider making “Archives” & “Category” part of your Wordpress blog nofollow. Here are a few quick things that you should know from that post:
- Nofollow link doesn’t pass PageRank juice at all. You can be sure of that.
- Now I am giving an example from that post about the link juice flow. Suppose you have 10 PageRank points on a page. The page contains 10 outbound links & 5 of them are nofollow. And there is no decay of link juice while passing. So you will think, 5 dofollow links will get 2 points each. But that is not the case. Rather 5 dofollow links will get 1 point each.
As you can see, even though nofollow links doesn’t pass PR, it consumes the PR points. So even if you mark certain links nofollow, you are loosing points depending on the number of nofollow links. So there is not much of value in doing PageRank Sculpting. That’s what you need to know as a new one in the webmaster field.
By the way, if you have some sort of knowledge & want to explore the post if you haven’t already, here is the link to the blog post.
You just have to remove a few “nofollow” tags from Blogger template. You should have no problem with this easy method. From Blogger Dashboard go to Layout> Edit HTML. Then check the box beside “Expand Widget Templates”. Now search for the below line of code
<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'>
Remove rel='nofollow' from it. Save your template.
To remove nofollow attribute from pingback/trackback urls find the line
<a expr:href='data:backlink.url' rel='nofollow'>
& remove the nofollow tag just like before.
Now your Blogger blog has become dofollow.
By the way do a backup of your template before modifying it. It’s always safe. Enjoy your dofollow blogspot blog.
Yeah! I have to say it is unexpected, as it happened within a month of last public PR update. As you know the last update took place on 27/28 May. And now from 23rd June people started reporting changes in PageRank. Usually toolbar PR update is released by Google in two-three moths span. So there is a reason to get a bit astonished.
By the way, this blog retained its PageRank to 2. I am quite busy with my work lately. And my posting has gone a bit irregular. But really I never get detouched to blogging. Though I am not a pro-blogger, but it is more than a hobby to me 
Perhaps many of you have seen unusual increase in FeedBurber subscribers count lately. That may have happened because you have a decent number of followers in FriendFeed. FeedBurner has started adding FriendFeed count to your blog subscribers. So it’s time to rejoice for old FriendFeed users.
But personally I don’t like the idea. That is not because I don’t have an account there. It is because all your FriendFeed subscribers are not your blog readers. Only a small portion may follow your blog. Others in general are interested in more social aspects of you. So your FeedBurner count is going to get inaccurate. You can increase some numbers by just following for the sake of following with each other, as you can do with Twitter. But it will never reflect true data.
By the way to view FriendFeed data in your FeedBurner account look for “friendfeedagg” in Feed Stats> Subscribers:
Google Adsense has introduced a feature to change font size in your ad disply units. Current default is small. You can change the size to medium or large. To change it for all the ad units go to My Account> Account Settings> Ad Display Preference. Or if you want to change it for an individual account, go to Manage Ads under Adsense Setup.
By the way, in order to fit the text properly actual font size will vary for different format sizes, font faces & settings on user side like operating systems & browsers. Font size application will however vary depending on space available in the ad unit. Here is how the three font size may look in 336×250 rectangle:
Another thing Google will do soon. They will change the default size to medium as they received feedback over it from the publishers.
Google Webmaster Tools has launched a new tool called Change of address with its brand new look. If you are moving your site from old domain to a new one, it can be of much help. Using this service you can reflect the change in Google index faster & make the transition smoother for your users. You can find the tool under Site Configuration option of the respective site. You have to have both old & new domain verified to use this service. So there is no problem of unauthorized access.
There is step by step instruction of how Google recommend you to move your site to a new domain. It can remove any complication on your part. So if you are planning to migrate, don’t forget to check it to notify Google about your new url & retain your position on their search engine.
I have seen quite a few people asking for instant-approval directory list in webmaster forums like Digitalpoint. They look for auto-approval directories so that they can get some quick backlinks. But don’t just concentrate only on it. Not only the number of backlinks but also the quality of backlinks matters, and in a big way too.
Search engines like Google consider the neighbourhood the link is coming from. If you get a link from a bunch of relevant high quality sites, it will give your site a boost. Obviously sitelinks in auto-directories can be irrelevant, less-quality & even spam. No one checks them before publishing. And spammers are always there to take opportunity of it. So backlink to your site from there may yield almost no link value. Rather if you gain an approved link from a well-moderated directory after 15-20 days, it may increase your site auhority. So don’t just run after some quick automatic links. Create a good site with content & then submit it to some well-organized manual directories. It will help you in long run. You can’t gain much instantly in SEO.
Do you have an open blog? Then you know the importance of creating a blogging community for your blog so that contributors come & write regularly. One way to do this is to increase interaction among the members. If they can interact directly with each other from your blog, then they can use it as a platform to meet fellow bloggers with same interest & communicate for views on their own blogs or link exchange. That means more visit from your members. Besides c0-authors can communicate better to find what topics to write to make the posts coherent in your blog.
Email can be a good place for this. But it is certainly not direct from your blog. What about having private messaging system available in your Wordpress blog admin? I have searched for a free plugin for that. After finding a couple of plugins that you have to pay for, I have found WP Private Messages plugin. It is free. And after you install it, registered users of a Wordpress blog (except Subscribers) can send pm to each other. You will find the option under Users> Private messages. You have all the options of private messaging like saving sent messages or replying to messages etc. I have tested it with Wordpress 2.8 personally. And it is working fine with the latest Wordpress.
This is a blog about blogging. I blog on Wordpress. But I didn’t say a word about Wordpress 2.8! Why? Simply because I don’t have enough time to explore the new features by experimenting with it. I haven’t upgraded yet. And there is no point writing on something what I don’t know pretty well. I am too busy going through my training. By the way, I have never mentioned it, I am a software professional.
So, hope you have found enough info from somewhere else. Sorry for my lack of time.
I will upgrade within couple of days & check the new features. Most of you will know about it till then. But if I find something really interesting, I will let you know.
Wordpress 2.8 is available for download now. Or if you have a Wordpress 2.7 blog, you can update directly from your dashboard.
Sometime ago I have written a post about removing Blogger Navbar. Many bloggers like to remove it. But it is not legal for all blogspot blogs. You are permitted to remove it only if you self-host your Blogger blog i.e. publish it via FTP. And I doubt if anyone of you do that. It’s certainly not a great idea when you have Wordpress to use. Here is what Blogger support has to say about the removal:
Unless you publish your blog via FTP, the Navbar cannot be disabled.
So before you do it, remember it.
