Monday, August 27, 2007

Criteria for Cleaning Up Blog Links

Gradually I add blog links to my right-hand side section by the name of "blogtastic (of all sorts)". And once in a while I go through the list and weed out some of them. I think that is an important activity, because the idea is to make the blog link list as digestible as possible.

Just recently I've given some thought to the criteria of weeding them out. Here is what I came up with. I intend to go through the links a couple times a year and judge them by this criteria:

1. Has there been a new post in the last three months? (in other words: is the blog semi-alive?)

2. Have I ever met the author in person?

3. Does the blog contain posts that are extremely interesting to me and my readers? (assuming I have readers, that is..)

4. Does the blog link to my blog?

5. If they link to my blog, do I ever get traffic from them?

6. Does the blog have more than 20 posts?

7. Out of the last 20 posts, are more than 5 of those posts actually unique content? (not links to other blogs, links to youtube videos, etc.)

8. Has the author ever commented on my blog?

None of these individual questions would become absolute in my decision to remove a link (or not). If 'yes' is the answer to all of these questions, the link is a definite keeper. If 'no' is the answer to all of these questions, the link should be eliminated. For those blogs that fall somewhere between those two extremes, more consideration will be required and some questions will be given more weight than others. If there is only one 'yes' and it happens to be on #2 or #4, chances are I will keep the blog link. And if a 'yes' on #1 is combined with a 'yes' on #3, I'll be inclined to keep the link.

Why am I talking about this? Because it is fun to "meta blog". And maybe this will be helpful to others? I'm an optimist..

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3 Comments:

Blogger Nick said...

If you wanted, you could change my blog's title from Sophia Kai Arete to its current title: Vicisti, Galilaee. However, since it would make about as much sense to most people (ie gibberish), it probably wouldn't be a worthwhile change (also considering that it seems to change every so often anyway).

Peace.

1:58 PM  
Blogger Mark Nenadov said...

Nick,

I'll update it to Vicisti, Galilaee.

Or better yet, would you mind if I just make it "steffen, nick"? I tend to prefer real names for those links. Let me know if that is OK.

9:13 PM  
Blogger Nick said...

Hey, if you want to make it steffen, nick, go right ahead. I'm obviously not too private a guy.

Peace.

10:33 PM  

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