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Google and blogs: “Shit.”

marco.org

1–10 of 24 posts

Re: Google and blogs: “Shit.”

#2
The trend seems to be "blog + feed" all-in-one platforms like Medium.com now. The old blogging model was the feed readers were separate from the platforms. I'm not sure if that's better or worse but that seems to be all that's left.

Re: Google and blogs: “Shit.”

#3
Why are we writing to please Google?

Depending on your reach within social media networks (Twitter, Gplus, etc), it can be sufficient enough to just migrate entirely. Scoble's blog, for example is defunct now, and all his content has migrated to social media. See:

http://scobleizer.com/?p=8494

It is not especially required that we write to please Google. All writing should be done without a bias towards search engine crawlers. "Write like Google won't index this" is a good rule of thumb.

The goalposts are always shifting. Pretty much the only 'hack' you need in terms of web traffic is to stay ahead of the curve.

IMHO, Marco should never have to worry about traffic. He might say different, but Marco Arment is pretty much synonymous with what blogging is about. It's the newcomers who all need a leg up on how to get traffic. I recommend watching Rand Fishkin's whiteboard Friday. Some real gold in there.

http://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday

The old way of doing SEO, of 'set and forget' obviously is dead. You really have to work hard for traffic. Listicles are only useful if you have no shame. Buzzfeed are pretty much loathed by the 'independent publisher / indyblogger' crowd, but then Buzzfeed are making truckloads of cash, so they will never care as much as we do. They have no shame.

Re: Google and blogs: “Shit.”

#4

Why are we writing to please Google? Depending on your reach within social media networks (Twitter, Gplus, etc), it can be sufficient enough to just migrate entirely. Scoble's blog, for example is defunct now, and all his content has migrated to social media. See: http://scobleizer.com/?p=8494 It is not especially required that we write to please Google. All writing should be done without a bias towards search engine…

> IMHO, Marco's should never have to worry about traffic.

You'd have thought the same about, say Metafilter, as well. But apparently not.

Re: Google and blogs: “Shit.”

#6

The trend seems to be "blog + feed" all-in-one platforms like Medium.com now. The old blogging model was the feed readers were separate from the platforms. I'm not sure if that's better or worse but that seems to be all that's left.

It's a continuation of the long-term and broad trend of silo-ization and movement to closed platforms.

Re: Google and blogs: “Shit.”

#7
post #5

What does the blog title mean?

Marco famously tweeted "Shit." when Apple introduced an Instapaper clone into iOS/Safari. He kinda re-uses it whenever a big company does something to squash smaller ones/individuals.

It's tongue-in-cheek.

Re: Google and blogs: “Shit.”

#10

The trend seems to be "blog + feed" all-in-one platforms like Medium.com now. The old blogging model was the feed readers were separate from the platforms. I'm not sure if that's better or worse but that seems to be all that's left.

Honestly, I think people just never really liked using feed readers. I saw in my own data that RSS usage seemed to top out in the late 2000s.

I'm not really sure why it never expanded beyond the "early adopter" crowd. Maybe the readers were too hard to use or the benefits weren't explained clearly. Part of me kinda hopes it's because publishers started caring a lot more about the design of their sites and people actually preferred the experience of reading on the original site instead of a "stripped down" version in an RSS reader.

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