Why RSS readers is the new Page Rank

This blog is over 5 months old, and like many others I still await a page rank update.

In one sense page rank doesn’t matter; but, in another sense it does - Page rank has been around a long time, it is used as a factor in determining the strength of a blog. It impacts on the monetary value of a blog.

However, google seem determined to make it as useless as possible.

• 5 months on the internet is a very long time. Can you imagine google updating there search results every 5 months?
• By updating it so slowly Google are kind of saying that they don’t value it anymore. But, people still look to pagerank, because it has been around for a long time. Google don’t like pagerank, but, they don’t want to stop it either. It’s kind of like pulling a lame donkey through the fields.
• Bizarre changes to page rank. Problogger notes it is going down to PR4. Copyblogger is also going down to PR4. Both these sites have tons of backlinks.
• Bloggingtips recently passed 1,000 subscribers, and has a page rank of 0

Why RSS feeds is the new Page Rank.

1. It’s hard to cheat. Anybody can find a way to get a few links from a few PR5 blogs. But, to get 1,000 RSS subscribers is no joke. True, you can swap a few RSS subscriptions, but, to get a big number your blog has to be basically very good and offer people a reason to subscribe.
2. RSS feeds is the best way of knowing which site to advertise. With Google promising to penalise the selling of text links. People will buy advertising for traffic rather than ‘link juice’ If you want traffic and exposure look at RSS subscribers not some page rank – which gives no indication to traffic.
3. A subscription is an explicit endorsement from a real person. If someone subscribes to your blog it means they find it very useful. It is unlike getting a link, which may not be deserving.
4. RSS feeds is independent of Google. If you have a high RSS readership, you can absorb a strange penalty google are giving out these days. John Chow is of course a good example. Google are giving strange penalties to good sites and promoting spam blogs to the top of search results. See this post at Daily Blog Tips about spam blogs at top of search results. This has also happened to me on several occasions.

Let us give the benefit of the doubt to Google they are trying hard to stop spam blogs. But, to be honest they are struggling. RSS feeds is independent of Google. If you can build up an RSS readership then you will be able to create a successful blog.

Of course, it’s one thing to say build up an RSS readership - it’s another matter to actually do it…