How Do You Know If Your Blog Is Successful?

When I discuss blogging with others we invariably end up talking about how to make a blog successfully.

It may not be the thrust of our conversation, but it does come up. We all want to know how to do what we do better. Today’s article discusses Google PageRank and demographics and which is more relevant to determining your blog’s success.

[Monday’ article explains how some of the other blog metric sites work (i.e., Technorati, Alexa, and Digg).]

What is Google Page Rank?
Google PageRank is a way that Google determines the value of a web site or blog. Google considers links to your blog as votes. However, not all links are equal–Google determines whether the links are coming from spam sites, blogs with some authority, or blogs with great authority. The number of “votes” you have determines your PageRank, or relevancy to the blogosphere.

In other words, it’s about the incoming links. However, if Aunt Laurie is linking to you it’s nice but it doesn’t count as much as it would if ProBlogger were linking to you.

Are you curious about your own Google PageRank? You can find your own PageRank without installing the toolbar. The higher the number, the more popular the site.

Is Google PageRank important? Do I need to worry about it?
If you’ve read any of my other articles, you know I don’t hold much stock in ranking. My opinion is that you build a community and support others. When you support others, they support you and everyone’s popularity grows. Engaging is key.

Here’s an example of why I don’t buy into Google Page Rank. I have three blogs: Blogging Basics 101, Bloggy Giveaways, and Don’t Try This at Home. Two of those blogs have a page rank of four, one of them has a page rank of two. I’ll save you the guess work and just tell you: Blogging Basics 101 and Don’t Try This at Home both have the four rank, while Bloggy Giveaways has the two rank. This makes no sense and let me show you why. These are my traffic statistics for each of those sites from February, 2009:

Bloggy Giveaways had 20,000 visits; 11,800 uniques; and 38,000 pageviews.
Don’t Try This at Home had 3,400 visits; 2,500 uniques; and 4,300 pageviews.

Which one of those would you consider a more successful site? According to Google PageRank, the personal blog I only update about seven times a month is out-ranking a blog I updated daily and which has steady traffic. If you were a marketer looking to advertise at one of those sites and only looked at Google PageRank, you’d make a mistake with your investment. The GPR is meaningless. What matters to you is my traffic and my audience. If you assume that GPR is handling that research for you, you’re missing the boat.

If Google Page Rank doesn’t matter, what does?
In a word: demographics. These days it’s all about who you reach. It’s no secret that the hot market right now is moms. If you’re writing a mommy blog or any blog that caters to women, marketers are probably interested in what you have to say and who you’re saying it to. Your job now is to find out who you’re talking to. I used Survey Monkey to build a questionnaire my readers could complete in under two minutes.

Running a demographic survey doesn’t only help you market yourself to advertisers, it also helps you improve your blog. I had a pretty good idea that Bloggy Giveaways has a predominantly female audience who are mostly moms. Until I ran a demographic survey, though, I didn’t know much more and couldn’t pinpoint my numbers. Now I know that I have a 100% female readership and 77% are moms. I was also able to see how many kids they have and what ages the kids are. I also discovered that my site’s readers are 95% white, 2% African American, 2% Asian, and 1% Hispanic/Mexican. That was a complete shock to me and I spent the better part of last month engaging in dialog with my friends to see how I can change that to be more diverse if Bloggy Giveaways comes back online.

Take the time to engage with your readers and learn who they are. Whether you’re looking to monetize your site or not, a demographic survey will really show you who your readers are and what they expect from your site. Knowing those two things will help you do what you do even better.