Traders' Hub: I Finally Got A Page Rank of 2!

Today, I was totally surprised and overjoyed to see that I finally have a page rank of 2. It was only last night when I had this site graded at http://website.grader.com/ ( a website I stumbled into while doing my daily entrecard runs), and I was disappointed to have gotten a grade of only 61.

So, today's page rank discovery has totally and completely overwhelmed me!

A struggling newbie, I was for a long time!....awkwardly feeling my way around....impatiently

picking up a lesson or two from the other bloggers whom I have included in my fave list...trying too hard to get noticed...hoping to discover the secrets of those successful bloggers who have profitably monetized their blogs.

But alas, disaster hit my upstart blogging adventure many times!

There was that time I panicked when I suddenly lost all my links, and my site counter numbers went zero for days, after I unknowingly followed a SEO tip I read somewhere saying I must simplify my url name into one which reflects my blog content, so that search engines will easily find me and rank me.
T
he stupid me, without realizing the implication of what I was going to do, simply followed the advice literally and changed my url into another customized, concise, and attractive name. I realized what a big fool I was only after a few days when I reviewed my site's performance at my 'feedburner page'. To my horror and surprise, no one has visited my site since I changed my url name! My readers disappeared! Their links to my site were no longer working.

My problem now was how I can keep my new url name and recover my already established links and increasing readership all at the same time. Being a newbie to blogging then, I was totally at a loss! And so I just reverted back to my old and long url name http://bigdaddyrichard-swirlingthoughts.blogspot.com/ and shelved the idea of optimizing my site's visibility among search engines.

There was also this time when I got kicked out of entrecard 'for having copied content from other sites'! It turned out that the other sites they were referring to were my own mirror sites (Swirling Thoughts at blogspot and Big Daddy's Trunkated Ideas at wordpress). Again, being a stupid newbie that I was then, I always published my write ups in all three blogs at the same time! So, when copyscape finally caught up on me at wordpress, a report of a serious violation at entrecard was tagged to my profile and served as ground for my expulsion! I tried explaining the matter to entrecard to no avail. I could have easily corrected the matter then by deleting redundant posts in all three blogs but my standing applications with several paid to blog forums would be jeopardized if I start deleting some of my posts in any one of those blogs.

So, I just made myself believe that perhaps by writing good content I would still be able to keep my readership level afloat. It didn't! Finally, after I got my membership to the paid to blog forums approved, I hurried to do what I should have done before. I made deletions and additions to my posts in all three blogs to make each one unique. I also streamlined the content of each blog - Traders' Hub for online investing ideas only, Swirling Thoughts for my political views and opinions and my blogging experiences, and Trunkated Ideas for general topics that interest me.

After I've done all that, I went back to entrecard and re-applied. It was a good thing that they immediately reinstated both blogs. I truly felt bad about it when entrecard deleted my blogs since I knew my page visits will drop tremendously, which it did! I tried to console myself with the thought that it was stupid anyway to be part of a group where members visit each other's site just to drop ec cards without ever bothering to browse the blog's content. I also made myself think then that good content is enough to get people to visit your blog. I was totally wrong! How would people know your site exists at all in the first place? Oh yes, perhaps, they will, ... when someone stumbles on your site and happens to like it. But hey, they need to like it so much for them tol Digg it, or Stumble it, or Twit it! But nah, it can be a long ardous process for a newbie.

So, I thought of just eating up my own words and decided to go back to entrecard. I know that at least there will be ec members who will drop by the site to drop their ec's every once in a while! It will now be up to me how I shall take advantage of those few precious seconds of their fleeting visits to my site ... how my site wll attract them enough to stay a bit longer and browse the site for a few minutes more or bookmark it for later browsing!

I guess this is what entrecard is all about! And I guess that you guessed it right - the blog content and design are the keys to achieving this.

Anyway, no matter how late this jarring realization came to me, at the very least, my return to entrecard brought life back to my site! More bloggers are linking up with me now, my page visits has soared, and the most beautiful thing of all...I now have a page rank of 2.

So I'd like to thank all my Entrecard droppers, my MyBlogLog communities, and my Blog Catalog friends, without you, all these will not happen.