Getting Stronger -- Mission for PR3 status report

A little over a week ago I stated my goal of bringing this blog back from the dead SEO-wise.

One metric -- inbound links -- is up substantially in only one week with hardly any effort. I have not submitted any articles or done any "backlinking" in the past week, but the count of inbound links has risen from 18 to 33. Not too shabby! That's an 83 percent increase in only one week, having undertaken no other activities but semi-regular posting and linking out to totally cool bloggers. Neither have I groveled with one webmaster for a link back nor have I spammed. Give and ye shall receive! Yea, verily.

One of the theories (not hypotheses) that I'm operating under is that the new search algo is weighted somewhat heavily toward contextual relevance and very heavily toward human participation. These two are related. Taken together, contextual relevance and human participation imply community. Based on what I have seen at some of my other sites, participation and time on site matter now. Additionally, it looks like a slow build of organic backlinks from related sites is more effective (over time, of course) than a flash flood of links from spamtastic article directories and the shameless scrapers who syndicate that drivel.

I admit with some shame that I have contributed to that black hole of wasted electrons -- but my articles are actually worth syndicating, unlike approximately 96.43 percent of the content one finds on those sites. A couple of weeks ago, before this project began, I did submit some articles to a few article directories. This typically results in the above-mentioned flash flood of links as those articles get syndicated. At least one of those articles got picked up on a few other blogs, but I'm not seeing any of those links.

Hmmmm. What conclusion can be drawn? (Yes, that is rhetorical. There are only two plausible answers, and I'm leaning toward the one that says "article marketing" is on its way out. Good riddance.)

This site's still at PR0, but I've still got three more weeks to hit my first goal: PR1. It could be harder than I thought. Pushing everything out a month wouldn't constitute the end of the world. Things percolate slowly sometimes, and I really think I'm on the right track with the whole strategy of enmeshing myself in a community of bloggers and doing my best to engage my readers.

I'll keep you posted.