How personal do you get in your blog?

I met this question in a forum: Just how personal do you get on your blog?

Blogging has become so phenomenal that there are tons of blogs struggling to get heard and stand out in this blogging world. Whether it is niche blogging or personality blogging, it is crucial to understand just how much information about yourself are you willing to disclose. I understand that people had become very tech savvy nowadays that instead of pulling out their journal pad to scribble down their thoughts, they instead simply pull out a portable notebook for their fingers to comfortably kick up and down the keyboard, and with just one click, the entry for the day’s journal is done, published for the world to see.

When you blog, how much information about yourself do you include? Which people do you talk about? Do you include your husband, boyfriend, children or friends? What topics do you discuss? Do you speak about work? Do you write about which village you are living in or which specific place do you and your family is planning to move in? Do you show photos of your apartment or house with the entire village visible in the background? Do you speak about you being alone in your house because of other family members traveling around?

When you blog, do you openly unload all your rants in life? All your frustrations and limitations? Or do you simply flaunt about your recent purchases and how much you just spent shopping?

Blogging after all boils down to your own preference and disposition. There is no exact rule about what you should or you should not speak in your blog. We practice freedom of expression, yes, however, I believe that it is vital to draw the line on things that you want to disclose through your blog. It is important that you protect your privacy. You would never know who would come across your blog in the future. Your boss might just stumble on your site one day and read about your rants in life, worse, if he reads all your rants about work. How many bloggers were fired from their job just because they blogged about work or twitted some personal stuff of which spying workmates took gravely and reported to their administration? Although some of these bloggers turned out professional bloggers after they were fired, that is not the rule for everyone.

If you blog about where you live or your new residence, or if you show photos of your apartment and speak about how you would spend the next few days alone because your hubby would be on a trip, are you not opening yourself to potential danger? If you show photos of your kids in your blog and speak about how cute they are and which school they go to and how good they perform, are you not suggesting something for some potential stalkers? You would never know.

If you are a young blogger and you speak about personal things, are these information something that you would like your parents to read? There is one blogger who thought her parents would never find out, but a family friend did and eventually told her parents - something that she had never perceived.

There was this extremely dirty and humiliating blog fight that I ever witnessed in this blogging world, between two bloggers whose friends later on got involved. The simple bashing each other attempt turned into an enormous shaming and slandering of each other. But those involved had never met each other in person. How come they were able to dig each other's dirt? How the degrading stoning back and forth was made possible in the first place? It’s simple, through their archived personal posts.

Freedom of expression is there for everyone to enjoy. However, in every freedom to act, there is consequence. Make sure that when you write for personal blogs, you are able to draw the line from the very beginning. Write to educate and amuse your readers but keep the personal stuff to yourself. Guard your privacy.

How to increase page rank in the shortest possible time

Unless you’re a total newbie, you should know by now what page rank is. In layman’s term, page rank is the score 0-10 that Google awards on a site to identify its quality and significance. Although there are a lot of quality sites out there with no or with lower page rank, a high page rank gives a feeling of supremacy on webmasters because it quonotes popularity. If your site has a high page rank that means that you have a quality and important website. Ironically, page rank is not identified based on the quality of your content nor with its quantity. It is however identified by the number of quality [from high page rank sites] inbound links that your site receives. Therefore if you ask me how would you increase your site’s page rank, you are actually asking me how to earn quality inbound links for your site.

The following tips would guide you on how to increase your page rank in a shortest possible time.

1. If your site is new and has no page rank, you can sign up on free directories such as technoratti, topblogging, blogged, portachi, etc. If you do not wish to accumulate colorful buttons that make your site look like amateur, you can actually skip this step.

2. Produce quality contents. Even if content does not directly help to increase your page rank, quality contents are your key weapon to strike your target. It is through these contents that the rest of our methods mentioned here would work.

3. Add site map to your web/blog site. This is very important to enable Google and other search engines index your contents quickly. Adding site map to a blog site such as blogger can be tricky for newbie and thus requires a lot of reading to guide you through. Search Google “how to add site map to blogger blog?” if you use blogger.

4. Identify web/blog sites that are related to your niche, or, if you don’t have a niche, sites that are relevant to your content. Make sure that these websites have good page rank. For instance, target sites with page rank 3 or 4 if your site has still no page rank. The concept here is for you to aim for sites that have higher page rank than yours. Build relationship with the site’s owner. Read their content, post quality comments that engage to the topic. Blog owners appreciate this type of comments and would certainly visit you back to return the favor. That way, you are building relationship. Once the relationship is established, exchanging links would be easy. [Be informed that sending emails or leaving comments asking for link exchange at your first visit is usually being laughed upon by webmasters especially if your site’s page rank is significantly lower than theirs]

Note: Only links from sites that are related to your content are the ones that actually matter.

5. Create an account at established Do follow submission websites such as EzineArticles, Idea Marketers, Aticle Dashboard Directory, etc. that allows you to submit and publish articles written by you with links within the body of the article as well as in the resource box that points to your site. Getting an article published at Ezine with a link back to your site for example, gives you an easy inbound link from a pr 6 website. Submit the same article at other dofollow blogs to earn you more quality backlinks.

Note: You should learn to write articles that tease your readers so that they will feel the urge to click the link in your article, this would generate more traffic for your site. For example, I have a very good article about "How to wear short scarf for a fashionable look" published at my fashion blog. I wrote an article with the same title and published it at Ezine. The article discusses the neccessity of a scarf as an accessory and why the need to maximize the different looks that you can create out from this very versatile material. Thereby the article teases the readers to find out the answer to their question "How?" by clicking my link.

6. Look for dofollow blogs with good page ranks. When you leave a comment on their post, and your comment gets approved, your comment gets an inbound link for your site. Make sure to check first that the site has good page rank; otherwise, you might just waste your time. Make sure too, that your comment is quality and that it engages to the conversion and contribute good points. Webmasters of dofollow blogs always moderate comments to scan spammers and dismiss comments that are obviously aiming only for juice.

Note: (1)Most blogs are nofollow. That means that even if you include your link as a signatory to your comments, you actually do not get a link back to your site and you just build a spammer image for yourself. Read more about dofollow blogs and how to make your blog a dofollow if you do wish.
(2)Be aware that since there are not a lot of dofollow blogs, these blogs raise on top and receive tons of comments. The amount of link juice that the site is capable of giving is divided by the number of comments therefore your comment may not get link worth as much as you would like.

7. Be clever. Some websites with high page rank seem to be good targets for inbound links. Therefore you build relationship to eventually earn a link. But once you get the link, you discover that the page where your link is listed has actually very low page rank, a lot lower than the main page, or worse, no page rank at all. That is just a waste of time. Believe me, it happened to me. My fashion blog has a page rank of 4 and another fashion blog with page rank 5 agreed to exchange links with me. Turned out; her xxxfashion.com with pr 5 has a link list with url xxxfashion.blogspot.com with pr 0. Crap! She gets a link from my pr 4 and I get a 0 from her pr5. Haha! Play with me. I gave her a nofollow link. We’re even. Go figure.

Note: Make sure that the page where your link will be listed has a page rank that you desire.

8. Go for guest blogging. Writing a guest post for websites with very good page rank can be intimidating. It might take time for you to earn confidence but it would eventually come if you always work on providing good contents for your web/blog site. It will come naturally. A guest post with a dofollow link for you within or at the bottom of your post is a good way to earn quality page rank.

9. Keep building relationship with high pr websites and maintain those relationships that you already earned. Some partners remove you from their list if you no longer appear visible on their sites. Therefore, to monitor your links, keep visiting and keep commenting on your partners and that would enable you to meet potential partners in the process.

p.s. You might wonder why this blog has only pr 3 if I have all these tips? Good question. I actually learned all these on my quest to increase the page rank of my fashion blog. I don't flaunt about clothes and what I have therefore getting links and relationships and breaking into fashion blogging required hard work.