Blogging Rules Of Engagement
What are the rules of engagement when it comes to blogging? Are there certain standards we have to obey by and if so, what are they? For new bloggers, the Internet can be one massive maze of confusing messages.
A blur of images, content, sales messages, networking sites and blogs.
It’s enough to drive the most sane person mad. Unless of course you know the rules of engagement. Alright, I admit, blogging isn’t a battle, although sometimes it ends up being one. Some bloggers battle their own subconscious because they struggle to come up with a working concept.
If that is you, then don’t worry, as looking around this blog and reading Alex’s great tips will certainly help you with that.
As for standards, let’s look at common aspects of blogging and how we can tie them together into some sort of behavior.
Linking out
The whole purpose of linking to another blog is to pass on some Google juice to that person. Now, if you stop a moment and think about how you can do this best, here is how. Do’s and don’t’s of linking out:
- It is best to link to others without having the link open in another tab. An exception to the rule are links to affiliate networks or advertisers. Other than that, there exists an unspoken rule to link without any additional attributes.
- If you consider linking to another person, use THEIR main keyword, blog name or post title to link and NOT their name. It doesn’t do them any justice to link to Tom. I know you mean well, but you can also do well.
- Posts in blogs should usually be dofollow links due to respect of the other person. However, having said this, I think when we consistently link to big networks like Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo or others we can sometimes attribute a rel nofollow to the link in order not to diffuse our PR. (I understand some of you might disagree with me here, and if so please let me know why)
Blog posting frequency
There really is no rule about the frequency in which we ought to write a new post. Quite frankly, the blogging community is pretty much divided. One half says: “you have to post every day”, the other says: “no way, you do as you please”.
What you have to consider is what your intentions are with your blog. If you target a huge flow of traffic, then you might be better of to post more frequently.
In the end, you ARE your own boss and do as you please on your domain.
Commenting
One thing that really annoys me (excuse the pun) is when blog commenter’s use a keyword to leave their comments. It’s not considered net-etiquette if you ask me. Unless the blog owner clearly states he/she accepts these types of comments, you should use your name, or at least your name followed by your blog name if you leave blog comments.
It’s really hard to have a conversation with atlanta automobile club.
Blog comments have one purpose and that is to encourage discussions. Remember, real people read your blog, so behave like one too when you read other blogs.
The ultimate rule of engagement
Ultimately, these rules are really not rules at all, but simple guidelines you can choose to follow or not. I consider them common courtesy, others might disagree.
Blogging should be foremost about having fun, meeting new people and fostering a friendly community while helping to spread knowledge.
What do you think about rules in general? Are they meant to be broken, or do you see a sense of having some order in blogging? Please let us know. I welcome discussions. 
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8 Responses to “Blogging Rules Of Engagement”
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I made my own blogging network by giving out some links and luring bloggers into my site. I knew they would read the post so I spoke directly to them using the post–a little creepy but hey, it worked!
MJs last blog post..SEO Challenge – Learn SEO!
Nice post, but I’m a little confused by one point. You said:
“However, having said this, I think when we consistently link to big networks like Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo or others we can sometimes attribute a rel nofollow to the link in order not to diffuse our PR.”
Could you explain how that hurts PR?
Wills last blog post..Duplicate Diggs
@ Will: It is leaking PR from your site. Every link you give out counts. As default, WordPress is setup to use dofollow links in posts. By linking to the sites mentioned using dofollow all the time you will leak or weaken your own PR. If the links are related to your post title and keywords however, then it is beneficial to use as is. But if they are unrelated to your topic and you still need to link it is better to use a nofollow.
Hope this makes sense. Plus, for bloggers who really don’t worry about PR and climbing Gogogle, this info isn’t relevant.
Monika Mundells last blog post..Blog Communications
Will, I believe he is referring to “PR Leakage”. Basically a web page has a certain value (based somewhat on the pages PR). It passes on a percentage of this value to all the websites the page links to, including internal pages. However, the value of the page is equally distributed to all the different pages linked to, so adding external links effectively decreases the value that is passed on to the internal pages…where once say 1/6 of the value was distributed to each of 6 pages linked to, adding another link would decrease it to 1/7 of the value.
Note this does not affect the pages PR at all… links out do not take away from links in
. But it can have an affect on other pages for the same website that were also linked to by that page.
Hope I didn’t muddy the water even further
RodneyBs last blog post..August 21, 2008 Newsletter – Link Building
@ Rodney: Thanks for explaining this to Will. You got the gist of what I meant. I suppose I should have explained this in more detail upfront.
Monika Mundells last blog post..Blog Communications
Rodney,
Thanks a bunch; that’s an aspect of PR I never quite understood. I’ll consider it… but I probably won’t start using nofollow for anything.
Wills last blog post..Chocolate Skittles
Agreed, the whole blogging culture can be hard to get to grips with when starting out. But somehow we all get there in the end. Like you say, it comes down to courtesy in the end; a good rule of thumb I heard awhile back is “don’t say anything online you wouldn’t be prepared to say to someone’s face”.
The one point I differ on is that of opening links in the same window. When I surf I tend to open links in new tabs, so I do the same on my blog. That way visitors can choose if they want to continue reading my site after following a link, or not.
Rods last blog post..Collect traffic and backlinks by participating in Blog Carnivals