“It is very interesting seeing the figures rise”, says Mambe Nanje Churchill of AfroVisioN, when I asked him why he keeps checking his Analytics everyday. “and besides, it is the best strategy I can use to see how far I have gone, plot a line on how far I can go within a certain time frame, and analyze the resources that I need to take me to my destinations”. I was very happy reading a post that Linda wrote, in which she carefully interpreted her entrecard stats for July 2008. This tells me there are some people who really take stats seriously.

Do you take time in analyzing your traffic as Churchill does? Do you analyze your entrecard stats as Linda does? Not very many people will say “to hell with the stats and ranks” and actually mean it. Statistics and rankings say a lot about a blog and the efforts put in place to maintain it. At times, they even say something about the blogger. Well, let me not draw any hasty conclusions here. Just keep reading. Maybe at the end of this post, you will take a specific side.

What type of stats and rankings are we talking about here?

• Post Views or Reads
• Average Number of comments per post
• Number of adds to Social Bookmarking sites (Digg, StumbleUpon…)
• Blog stats and ranks in various Blog Communities (MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Bumpzee…)
• Blog to Blog Links (e.g. Technorati Authority)
• Traffic ranking (e.g. Alexa Ranking)
• Search engine ranking (e.g. Google Pagerank)
• Feed Subscriptions (by RSS or Email)
• Entrecard Drop Rank and Popularity

There are hundreds and hundreds of stats and rankings one can check against a blog depending on which plugins or scripts are installed, and also on which communities the blog is registered to. We can’t possibly list all of them here, so let’s go to the question

Do stats and Ranks reflect the real value of a post or Blog?

Is a blog with a Google Page Rank of 2 necessarily better than another blog with PR 1? Is a blog with an Alexa Ranking of 500 better than another with 600? Is a post with 10 comments better than another one with only 5? If 500 blogs link to a blog does that means that blog is more important than another blog having just 10 blogs linking to it? If your blog has 999 subscribers, does that mean it is better than another blog with just 10 subscribers?

To the best of my knowledge and following my personal opinions, stats do not really reflect the real value of a blog because they depend on many other variables. I hope you got me right. I didn’t say stats do not reflect he value of a blog or post. I mentioned the word real. “Nothing” is flawless, of course. So because of certain flaws in stats that enable them to be tweaked, they can’t really reflect the real value of a blog or post. If you have good content and update regularly, you will obviously have good traffic and high search engine rankings. Content depends solely on you, but ranking and traffic depends on several variables, amongst which is marketing and promotion.

If blog A and B are competing in terms of content, what will actually give one an upper hand over the other is Marketing and Promotion. Consider a virtual situation in which A and B have the same content quantity and quality and A is being marketed and promoted more than B. What happens? A hereby actually appears to have a higher value than B. That extra value attached to A does not reflect content, but reflects the Marketing and promotional skills.

I mentioned the word “tweak” somewhere above. Aapparently, two blogs can have the same value but one is indulging in several optimization techniques, both white hat (good) and black hat (bad). Have you ever noticed that some blogs are higher on google search than others that actually contain information about what you are searching for? Some blogs randomly exchange links with others while some try to set reasonable standards. At the end of the day, you do you value such blogs operating on opposite ethical principles?

Are you happy with your blog’s stats and ranks?

The question I just asked is the main reason why I wrote this post. If you are a true blogger, even if you are blogging just for the money, you are already getting addicted to blogging and will continue blogging even if the money stops coming. You are already possessed by blogging addiction. The only thing that can force you to relent your blogging efforts is diminishing passion. Yes, passion. And there are many ways to lose it. The easiest of all is not being at peace with your blog.

I have discovered that many bloggers are not happy with their blog’s stats and ranks. If being unhappy with your blog is in a positive sense, like striving to improve, then that’s OK by me. Who doesn’t want to go higher? If on the contrary, you are just disappointed and cursing yourself, too bad.

What makes many bloggers unhappy with their blog is not the fact that they are looking up to higher heights. Instead, most are merely just comparing with others. Just imagine Uncle Che asking himself “If Crissy’s Blog can have a PR 4, why should mine have only PR 1?”. Oh, I must admit I should be jealous. But instead of being jealous and unhappy with my own blog, I should admire her blog and strive to take mine to that level.

Before comparing your blog with other blogs and getting mad over your stats and ranks, I think you should consider the following:

The Age of your Blog: If your blog is just a couple of months old, like mine, and you are looking up to PR 5, Alexa 500, Technorati 5000…etc and comparing yourself with another blog 2 years old, don’t you thing you are being a bit irrational? I think you should really give your blog the appropriate time it deserves for growth.
Your Blog’s Niche: There are some niches that normally have very little content you can actually write on. Some people create a blog just to market a specific (just one) product. In some cases, the product being marketed is not very popular. It will be very difficult comparing such a blog with another blog that has so much to write about because with little content, it is difficult to really build up links and traffic.
Competition: A blog may belong to a niche or category that has more or less competition than the category or niche to which another blog belongs. It is easier for a blog to stand out where there is little competition than for another blog where there is very high competition. If your blog is in a high comp

etition niche and is not standing out the way you expect, that doesn’t really mean you are not making progress.

There are many other aspects one can also consider but the final word I really want to pass out is that you shouldn’t be mad at your blog for not performing the way you want, or be jealous of other blogs or bloggers. Be happy with your blog, while striving to do better.

I wish there was a perfect system that can actually give you the real value of your blog. I like having fun with Smart Page Rank. They say my blog is worth $212. I won’t sell it for even $2120

I am very happy with my blog and its performance. I really thing you too should. While celebrating, you and I can think of ways to make our blogs better.

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