It has been now over eight months, when I accidentally landed on a totally alien planet, called Blogosphere. I didn’t know the ABC of blogging at that moment, and so I chose to start with free Blogger, and ran about three Blogspot Blogs. But after trying my hands for about six months, I still consider myself to be a student of the art and science of blogging, although I have been able to learn a few tricks of the trade.

Remembering back, one thing I really missed; the huge waves of Links trains, which provided a way to the new bloggers like me, to know How to quickly build incoming backlinks. I remember to have participated in at least three link trains; Technorati Favorites, MyBlogLog and another one related to the anchor text. Thanks to them, one of my blog quickly jumped into Technorati Rankings and commanded a Rank of 250 or so, within a matter of few days. But those days have gone, and now link trains are considered an evil, specially after the recent Google crackdown.

But recently, I have noticed yet another link train coming up, which I don’t intend to board. It has been termed as NoFollow Link Train. If you want, you can see and join this train here or here, on the blogs of my friend Dave, who blogs at malewail and calgory blog. NoFollow means, that the links provided in this train will carry a nofollow attribute, which will prevent Google from passing the Googel Juice. This is compliant with the Google Terms and conditions for webmasters.

This train is being termed as the new wave taking blogosphere by storm, but, I am afraid, I am not able to appreciate the benefits of this train. Some of the perceived benefits, and my observations on them are as follows.

  1. Helps you get backlinks which will improve your Technorati ranking
  2. Increased exposure for your blog
  3. 10 lucky winners will get a copy of the book The 4-hour Workweek courtesy of Blogging The Movie
  4. And finally, each of the 10 lucky winners will be able to host their own contest which will be sponsored by Blogging The Movie.

My observations, on these peceived benefits…

  1. Is Technorati Rank really relevant. Does it serves any real purpose except that to satisfy the blogger’s ego. If you are into serious blogging, I think, traffic and the number of active readers are the most important thing to work for.
  2. What does exposure mean ? Any exposure, which cannot bring you traffic is meaningless. You can have thousands of backlinks, but if they cannot forward Google Juice and / or traffic to your blog, they are meaningless. These trains do not pass on the Google Juice and I have serious doubts about the ability of these trains to drive tons of traffic to you.
  3. The prize of getting a copy of a. Oh, I haven’t yet seen the book yet, have you ? And I will not be going for it untill I take a look at it, even if John Chow writes a review concerning it.
  4. And finally, if I am not convinved in even participating in this link train, why will I ever consider hosting such contests.

What are your views. Please let us know them.

BTW, if you really want to get a backlink from this blog, you can check out my previous post Get a Free Backlink from This Blog.

get Backlinks

Furthermore, I just wanted to announce that, a cool contest is being organized for bloggers at home based business opportunities. The details of which can be found here at sweepstakes.