With all the brouhaha over the google bitchslap that took place towards the end of 2007 (in case you didn’t know, google penalized sites who posted links with out nofollow for payment) something was bound to step up and take its place. The question is can a new comer survive in the shark eat shark world of SEO and Page ranking? IZEA (payperpost’s daddy) hopes so and it thinks it has a winning product with RealRank.

RealRank (RR) is Izea’s answer for its affiliates on how to retain a ranking system that doesn’t care how or what you link to so much as traffic quantity and quality to your site. The idea is that the realrank weights blogs 70% on daily unique visitors, 20% by daily active inbound links and 10% by daily page views as reported by ITK (Izea tool Kit). While the idea was just released to the public, Izea and the PPP crowd have been using this since December ‘07 as a way to rank websites in order to maintain the level of advertising as before. From where I sit, the only down side is that advertisers have been slow on the uptake of the new ranking system, prefering PageRank still despite the fact that anyone who would even consider posting about their products has virtually no PR at the present time.

The realrank system is a pretty nice system with some nice looking graphs. According to the ranking, Delusions of Grandeur is some where around 452 for the day with a weekly average of somewhere around 588. Not bad when you consider the 100,000 blogs that Izea/PPP is potentially already tracking. A nice feature about RealRank is the ability to keep the stats private. While I personally do not mind if others see how successful I am, it might not behoove a smaller site to have its stats public until they’ve built up a good base.

According to the realrank site:

RealRank is a more accurate ranking than Alexa and Google PageRank because it isn’t based on a small sample of a site’s visitors or on a censored link-weighting algorithm. It’s based on real traffic.

One of the other cool things is that they have an open api so anyone can develop for it with out any penalty. Already, there’s a rank badge available and its only a matter of time before there are more and more things developed.

We’ll have to see if RR makes a difference. If you haven’t checked it out yet, visit IzeaRanks to check out your blog, create an account and get the tracking code for your site. It could help boost your traffic!

Popularity: 100% [?]

It appears that several of the bigger players are abandoning ship in hopes that they aren’t dragged down with it. The promises made by BlogRush head John Reese have failed to materialize as more and more bloggers pull the widget from their sites in an effort to rid the web of such bloaty scripts.

I had posted back in November about my experiences with BlogRush and whether or not it was worth it and at the time, I decided to make some changes to the way I handled their system. Instead of giving them my main feed with every article in it, I switched to a specific blogrush feed that only showed the articles I wanted to show. It helped a little, but as the next screenshot shows, it still wasn’t the boon to traffic that programs like EntreCard, and even just making comments on other blogs has been.

My next step was to change the category my blog lived in as well on the BlogRush system. That did little more than drive my credits up as I received less and less exposure. So now, I have around 20k credits that aren’t being used (which is a far cry from the Cow’s 10,000,000 credits). I’ve noticed that as I browse the blogosphere, I’m seeing the BR widget less and less and with bigger sites pulling their widgets, I have to wonder if it was a good idea poorly implemented. One of the things that makes EntreCard worth while is that you have to get out and drop your card on other blogs and YOU get to choose who you advertise on and who advertises on you.

This form of self quality control enables you to make better choices that benefit you and your readers more than blogrush. Most of the crap on the blogrush widget is just that, crap. I really don’t need to know that you failed to make 28,000 a month last year. What I need is good incoming traffic.

Popularity: 65% [?]

Dropping cards for traffic sounds like it is too good to be true doesn’t it? In fact, it is a little too good to be true, there’s more to EntreCard than just dropping yours where ever you feel like. This past week, I’ve taken the opportunity to visit a lot of the sites that Entrecard plays host to (and I’m no where near done yet) and its been amazing at the differences between sites that I’ve seen. I’ve come across some Really bad ones, some that are common wall flowers and others like The Gospel and Cigar Jack that have some cool stuff and good writing to offer that I’ll visit more often.

It astonishes me that the number of websites lacking proper design, writing and taste on entrecard is so high, but then, with the number of blogs that has sprung up lately, should I really be that surprised? It seems that everyone and their sister has a blog dedicated to making money on line that they fill with the “latest and greatest” money making tips that any monkey with a keyboard should be able to figure out. The number of personal diaries online has seemed to skyrocket as well. These two areas can probably be attributed to the rise in the number of paid blogging systems (yes, I do belong to several of them) that have popped up over the past year as well. One of the benefits of Entrecard is enabling more people to learn about your site through various means like advertising on other blogs.

Is it really worth it though when your “card” is going to be displayed at the bottom of a mile long page of mindless blabber about the weather and the fact that the site owner had to write about ladies undies you could at least do it in a better form than “well, a sponsor wants me to write about ladies undies but I’m a man!”. No its not. However, you shouldn’t let the bad sites ruin your chances to increase traffic.

As with any advertising media, there is a right way to choose whats best on Entrecard. You have every right to be picky about which sites you advertise on and which sites advertise on you. For instance, if I ran a blog about dogs, I would most likely not advertise on a blog about cats (or Vietnamese food) and I would not have a cat site advertise on mine. Do not be afraid to reject ads if they do not fit in with your topics. You don’t see want ads for window washers under the used car salesmen section do you?

Secondly, do not, I repeat, DO NOT, advertise on sites where the entrecard box is below the fold (the fold is an old newspaper term referring to the bottom half of the page which is usually not seen when the paper is folded. Here we’re talking about the bottom of a page where someone has to scroll to see it). If its not one of the first thing a person sees once the page is loaded, its a waste. Want proof? Ask around. I’ve found that in advertising on Entrecards, the ad’s I’ve placed that are above the fold perform better than those below the fold. You can drop your cards as much as you want on those sites, but DO NOT advertise on them no matter what kind of traffic they claim to provide.

Don’t be afraid to drop your card and even write recommendations for the site owner through entrecard. I’ve found that by dropping cards on sites I get more visits back in return. It does two things. One it lets people know about your site (and if you do it in your own category, you might gain new links elsewhere) and it encourages them to visit your site and drop cards. Dropping cards on other sites benefits everyone.

Lastly, and this is probably the most important, leave a comment on a post or two on the blogs you visit through entrecard. Not only is it free advertising to you, but many blog owners have the scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours mentality. If you comment there, they’ll come and comment on yours. Its an excellent way to gain friends, readers and comments which all helps in the traffic game.

If you want to see who all is on entrecard… Check HERE

Popularity: 70% [?]