I often claim that I have the #1 ham radio blog, according to Google. This is true. When you type in “ham radio blog” or “amateur radio blog” into Google, I come out on top. I don’t know how good this recommendation actually is, and it certainly doesn’t mean that my blog is the most widely-read, but it’s better to be rated #1 on Google than #100. :)
Having said that, I thought I’d do a quick review of the other blogs that appear on the first page of the Google search results:
Ham Radio Blog by DL6KAC – Talking about Ham and Amateur Radio, SEO, & More. This blog is no more. The last post was on May 2, 2010, and notes, “Today I decided to shut down ham-blogs.net.” It has only ten posts since the beginning of the year, and only three or four of those had amateur radio content.
K2DBK’s Ham Radio Blog. K2DBK’s content is a lot like mine–a lot of personal musings and reports on his operations. The content is mostly interesting, especially the “Ham Tools” series, but I didn’t really like the design. White type on a black background is too hard to read.
Ham Radio – a Contact Sport. I liked the story on the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer) and some of the other stories, but there just wasn’t enough of them. This blog has only eight posts in 2010.
IW5EDI: Ham Operator in Florence. I liked this blog for a couple of reasons: 1. The header has a great aerial photograph of Florence, a city that I love, and 2. IW5EDI’s writing style. For example, his post on why he recently chose the Palstar Palstar PM2000 A/M power meter/SWR meter over the DAIWA CN-801 was well-written and useful, and my philosophy is that blogs should be useful as well as interesting.
Ke9v.net. KE9V blogs prolifically on a wide variety of topics, not just ham radio. For example, he’s recently blogged on the most recent Debian Linux distro, Android cellphones and the “Culture of Death.” On the current homepage, only two of the ten posts were ham radio related.
N0UN’s Ham Radio Blog: My Ham Radio Experiences Through the Years. This blog has some interesting and useful posts, but they are few and far between. The last post was on May 30,2010, and there were only three posts in all of 2010.
W2LJ’s Blog – QRP – Doing More With Less. Larry, W2LJ, is an on-air friend of mine, and I’m glad to see that his blog has edged it’s way onto the first page of search results. Like me, he likes to mix the personal and the technical, and his blog is up-to-date. Worth reading.
Well, that’s it for page 1 of the Google search results. I’m kind of surprised that some of the blogs that made this list were relatively inactive, but I guess that it would be difficult for Google to automatically figure that out.
Happy reading!
Good SEO technique?
Strange when I run that same query I come out on top. Maybe that is because that it is the way that Google cookies work or something. If I use my IE instead of Firefox G4ILO’s blog comes out top, probably because I never use IE normally.
Hmmmmm. That is interesting. My guess is that it’s not so much the cookies, but rather our locations. Neither you or G4ILO show up on the first page of the search results for “ham radio blog” here. G4ILO is #11 and G0KYA is #18.
I guess I need to post more often. There was a time when I was posting at least weekly. However, there’s a few factors at work here… how busy I am with other things, how much I’ve been active on the radio, sunspots, etc.
I just googled “ham radio blog” and the resulting top ten is a little different than yours. But you are Number 1.
Bob K0NR
That’s interesting. G4ILO comes up for me, and I’m in the US. Maybe things are in a constant state of flux?
I have to say that I was quite surprised to discover how highly my blog was ranked. I can tell you that there’s no fancy SEO going on at all. I think the reason why different folks show up in different positions is probably related to which country your Google results come from. For instance, if you run this query http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ham+radio+blog (going against Google in the UK), things look a bit different than the same query against the US version.
As for the comment about the format of my site, I’ll freely admit that I used a standard (though fairly new) template from Blogger. I personally like the white on black, though I have been meaning to tweak the “read links” color a big because it’s very hard to see.
I am running Firefox here and in Google when I type in ham radio blogs KB6NU is number 2 followed by K2DBK and I have G4ILO 6th in the running. W2LJ is as you say a very good blog I have him on my blog as a link. His as well as yours Dan are very good reading. My number one was also DL6KAC who as you say is no more…..intresting.
Cheers Dan
Your site position is actually related to cookies, especially if you are logged into a Google profile. Log out of your Google accounts or use something such as Chrome’s incognito mode to get a more accurate result. Also, as you are probably aware, your rank is only important if the search term is actually being typed into Google’s search bar. For instance, “ham radio blog” gets 12 searches per day, according to one of my SEO applications. This is a decent amount of searches if you are in number 1 position. Other keywords such as “ham radio” will definitely get more searches but will be much harder to rank for. Your site is doing very well, however.
Yep. I’m definitely aware of all that, Randy. I like to joke about it, though. :)
Hi, I really like the nice clean layout of your site. Just started my own amateur radio site NJ2X.COM which has been an interesting learning experience. Stop on by and let me know what you think. All the best 73, NJ2X
I get the same result when I use a chrome incognito window, so it doesnt apply any cookies and gives the results. Congrats on being number one. I think i’m on page 3 depending on how active I am posting. 73 W7DTG