Blogbuzz

I finally managed to take the time to come up with a new theme and came up with this one courtesy of Florida Rentals on the www.wpthemesfree.com WordPress Theme site.

After a bit of customizing some of the color choices, this theme now fits the kind of thing that I really like in a blog. It’s easy on the eyes, color combinations are easy to read without having to highlight text. It’s also a fluid-width design that automatically rescales when the browser window is resized.

Another good feature that I consider important for SEO purposes is that the content loads first and then the sidebars, so that the main post content will be higher up in the source code when Search engines spider the site. It also means visitors don’t have to sit looking at sidebars while the main content waits for them to finish loading. This way, if the sidebars DO take longer than I’d like to load, at least the main content is loaded first.

With the new theme in place, I’ll be getting about the business of writing here more often.

Technorati Tags: color+combination, fluid+width, new+theme, seo, SiteBuzz, wordpress+theme

BuzzRank is taking shape. While it is true that the factors that I’m scoring on are determined arbitrarily by me, I intend to apply these factors as fairly as I can. With that in mind, here are the things that I’m going to score on:

Readability - Factors include font, font size, text color vs background color, hover color, visited link colors. If it’s hard to read, that’s a deal breaker.. very few people will bother trying to read it or even do anything like highlight the text to read it that way. Like most people I’m a lazy reader, If I can’t read it without doing anything extra, I probably won’t bother.

Layout - Factors here are things like how easy it is to find navigation links, how easy it is (or not) to find the main article content among whatever advertisements are on page and the number of and overall use of graphics and background images as well as the ratio of advertising to content.

Loading time - if a page takes too long to load a lot of people are going to close the tab and go somewhere else. I know this because I’ve done it many times myself.

“Scrollability” - simply put, how easily or smoothly the page scrolls. I’ve seen plenty of blogs (even some of mine in the past) that have slow, jerky response to any attempt to scroll the page. This is something that will discourage people from returning and a lot of folks will consider it a deal breaker.

Writing - regardless of what you’re writing about or what your opinion on the subject is, being able to write in such a manner that allows readers to easily understand you is important. Being hard to understand is one of the fastest ways to prevent people from subscribing to your RSS feed or returning to your blog.

Each of these things will be scored on a scale from 1 to 10, the totals will be added up and a percentage calculated based on the actual score vs the maximum possible score. That percentage will be the BuzzRank Rating.

Yes, this system is very subjective because it is based on my opinions but I still expect that readers will agree that blogs with higher scores are generally better in terms of how easy they are to read, understand and navigate.

I may also refine this system as I go and if I do the changes to the system will be posted. Changes to the ranking system will not be retroactive for blogs reviewed previously, they will retain ratings based on standards in effect at the time of their review.

Just what the world of blogging needs right? Another Ranking system. Well, I think in this case that it’s true, this system is needed. I think so because it will be based not on popularity, or the number of inbound links or pagerank, rankspank, realrank, thoofrank or or how many diggs, stumbles, propellers, sphinns or whatevers that a page or site has.

Instead, BuzzRank is going to be about the blog being reviewed and ranked. It’s going to take into account such things as readability (which includes font, font size, color combinations), use of graphics, writing style, the ability of the writer to get their point across clearly without being needlessly vile or obscene, and other technical issues such as how long it takes to load and how hard it is to find the actual blog content as compared to things like advertising and navigation links and general layout.

Granted, BuzzRank will be entirely based on my own personal opinions, however it will be geared to reflect the readability and clarity of any given blog and the ease of use for that most important person, the reader.

I’m going to work out a list of the factors that I’ll be scoring each blog on. Each factor will be assigned a numerical value and then the total of all factors will be given, probably as a percentage. The idea is that a BuzzRank score of 100% is the ideal blog and 0% is the worst possible nightmarish waste of bandwidth you can imagine.

As I work out the values that will be included in BuzzRank I’ll post the details of what they are and how I intend to score each of them. Once I have the whole thing worked out, I’ll start assigning BuzzRank scores to all blogs reviewed here.

By the way, I don’t expect any blog to ever get a 100% score or a 0% score for that matter. I simply intend for it to be an indication of how good a blog is overall from a reader’s point of view.

Simply put, BlogBuzz is all about blogging. Anything and everything related to blogging is considered fair game here. From blogging software to writing style to even some apparently touchy (well, to some people anyway) subject of blogs, advertising and sponsorship.

One of the things that you’ll see a lot of in BlogBuzz is reviews of other blogs. I’ll talk about the theme and layout, the stylesheet, the color choices, readability and, oh yeah, the content. For that I’ll try to give some idea of what that particular blog’s main topic(s) is(are).

Yeah, in a lot of (though not necessarily all) cases I’ll be weighing in with my own opinions about that author’s main topic and I won’t even consider agreeing with somebody unless that’s what I think. I’ll be as polite about it as I’m able but if I disagree with something I’ll say so.

Mostly I want to enjoy myself and maybe learn a few things along the way about blogging, writing and yes, monetizing. There. I said it. Yes, Blogging is about writing but let’s face it. These days for a lot of people it’s also very much also about earning a living and guess what? That’s *NOT* an evil thing to do.

–edit– added Technorati Profile for blog claim