Friends or Foes ?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Coin Blogger on January 3, 2009 at 9:51pm

Zapdbf,

I absolutely do not view fellow bloggers as competitors. There are three types of traffic that coin bloggers should try to attract. The beautiful thing about blogging is that all of these traffic sources are helped by fellow bloggers helping each other.

The first type of traffic is direct traffic. These are people who already know about your blog and either type your domain into their browser or have bookmarked your site. In either case, these people want to read good articles about coin collecting. The only way other coin bloggers compete for this traffic is by writing better content than you. If others are writing better content, then this is friendly competition and you need to step up your game.

The second type of traffic is from referring sites. This traffic comes from other blogs linking to your articles and from your presence on social sites like the Coin Network. Bloggers will help each other tremendously by linking to each others' articles.

Often bloggers make the mistake of thinking that blogging is a zero sum game. If someone enjoys your blog, they won't read mine. This is absolutely not true. People who want to read about coin collecting want to read as much content as they can find. Hobbyists are passionate people. They want more and more. Bloggers can help their audience find other great content by linking to their fellow bloggers' articles.

The third type of traffic comes from the search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. There is an argument to be made that linking to another's blog could help them rank higher than you in the search engine results pages. However, I think that this too is faulty thinking.

Bloggers are not competing with other bloggers alone in the search engine results pages. No, they are competing with coin dealers, newspapers and magazines who write occasional stories about coins, e-commerce stores, scammers, scrapers, coin forums, wikipedia, and the list goes on and on.

But bloggers have a unique advantage over these other types of sites. Blogging is community driven. Blogs rank high in the search engine results pages because blogging is very conversational. If I see a good article, I can write a quick post telling my readers about it. Other bloggers can do the same for me when they think I have written something that their readers might want to read. This conversation is great for building authority and trust with the search engines. This natural link building is what makes blogs rank higher than a lot of other types of sites.

I have been blogging for about two years. My first blog was MMO Explorer, a blog where I discuss massively multiplayer online role playing games, video games generally and electronics. This blog community links very freely to other blog articles. Why? Because they are blogging about video games because they love video games. It is a passion. All of these blogs do well in the search engine results pages because they are helping each other. And, it is a good thing that they are helping each other. Look who they are sharing space with - video game magazines like PC Magazine, XBOX magazine,, video game companies, Amazon, Ebay, GameStop, ect. That is some tough competition. But blogs do very well because of the community that they create with fellow bloggers.

So, my personal feeling about the coin collecting community is that the more bloggers the better. A tight knit coin collecting blogger community will make all ships rise. All of the coin bloggers will prosper together.

What do the other bloggers here think? I would love to read your thoughts.

Permalink Reply by Zapdbf on January 3, 2009 at 11:17pm

Good, I know you are correct in your assessment. I just hope other bloggers can come together and utilize this same philosophy. My hope is that this group can be more of a place for us to learn from each other. If this happens with this group, i will be back often.

Permalink Reply by coinnetwork on January 4, 2009 at 8:40am

I definitely agree with Coin Blogger's thoughts on the subject. When a community of bloggers develops and starts reading each other's blogs, linking to each other, and participating in conversations, it's a tide that lifts all boats.

When I first started blogging about coins, one of the first things I did was to try to find every blog that covered coins and coin collecting. I started reading them all, and commenting when I had something valuable to add. This reading list later became the basis for Coin Update, where I basically just link out to other blogs and coin sites with interesting stories. The process has helped me to get to know everyone else in the space (and vice versa) while staying up to date with the latest coin news.