Site Redemption

When I first started this blog it was an experiment. Much like The M Show, I had no idea where it would go or if I would have more than a few weeks of things to write about. Fast forward a few years, and yes, I guess I do have some content.

Thanks to this lack of initial commitment I cut some corners. Rather than pay for two hosting accounts I decided to point RoninMarketeer.com to the same account that was hosting The M Show. Since Libsyn serves up 99% of the bits for that podcast the server had capacity to give.

The problem is that many tools that watch the web don’t really like this. Even with proper redirects any tactic that only a spammer or cheap bastard would use is not going to give you that extra glass of fresh Google juice. My domain started strong with a page rank of 6 (PR6 if you want to sound like a social media douche bag SEO consultant), but then dipped to 5 as the blog gained momentum.

I also noticed that technorati (hint – become a fan!) and lists like the Power 150 had me stranded out in Nowhereville. The final straw was when I hit PR4, not the web equivalent of hell, but definitely the neighborhood where the washer and dryer are out on the front porch and there are vehicles on cinder blocks in the front yard so you don’t have to mow the lawn.

So I had two options – flush it all and start new, which would have been the easy route, or try rehabilitation. Again, seeing this more as an experiment, it seemed like it would be a good case study to fix as much as I could and see what would happen. After all, it’s probable that I will run into people and companies whose online reputation has been screwed up, yet they will be unwilling to give up the current domain name in my future.

Results so far: The problem was deeper than I thought, my feed had been hacked with some hidden links that I imagine where what banished me to the ghetto. Having finally straightened out the domain name issues and cleaned up all the feeds (sorry to the M Show fans that had Ronin posts show up for a couple of days!), today Google shows me with a PR5! So rehabilitation is possible at least to get back to zero, the next question is can you go above the zero line?

What you can do to help: If you want to accelerate this case study (LOL) you could re-subscribe to the feeds over there on the left side of the page above my Lijit widget (I would tell Tara that I’ve finally got it in the template, but she would roast me since it’s taken me like 7 years to finally add it to my blog, but since she didn’t enter the 23rd Annual Marketing Over Coffee Awards, hell, we’re even). Anyway, for the price of less than a few clicks a day you can help feed this hungry blog.

Ok, I can no longer avoid shovelling snow… see you later.