John Chow recently announced that his site JohnChow.com site ranked higher on Google than ProBlogger when searching for the words “Make Money Online.” Most people on John’s site are excited over the results, since it means that using anchor text efficiently helps in search engine ranking. For me, here is the most important point that is missing from the post and the comments: would visiting John’s site actually give me more useful information than ProBlogger when it comes to making money online?

Working hard to appear before another site on search engines can be good, though that also means that you are promising a reader that your site also delivers more value than the other site.

If a site tries hard to appear in the top search results, it better provide better content too

Let us take a hypothetical situation. If I see ProBlogger appearing first in search results when searching for the words “Make money online”, and I notice the quality of content on Problogger is inferior compared to the content on JohnChow.com, I will think that Darren Rowse, owner of ProBlogger, simply focused on getting higher listing on search engines instead of coming up with better content than other sites like JohnChow.com.

Why? Because I would notice that his content, in this hypothetical example, is of lesser importance, value and quality compared to other sites which do not rank high on search engines. I would also think the same thing for JohnChow.com, if his site appeared higher in search results compared to other sites but provided content of lesser value, or content that has already been discussed elsewhere compared to other sites which have unique and more useful content.

Of course, as you get more popular, people tend to agree more with you. Reading a post about having good anchor text on hundreds of new blogs on the internet for the last 5 years does not spark much interest in some people, while those very people jump to commenting with great excitement because of someone like John Chow bringing up the same point. I wonder if some people are simply looking to praise anything written on prominent blogs instead of focusing on what is being said and why it is being said.

What do I think of JohnChow.com?

As for me, I initially started reading John Chow’s site because of his humor and the way he discussed random things that he wrote about so well. As time passes, his blog is focusing more and more on being commercial, full of reviews and stuff related to making money. I guess directions change from time to time. Even my site has gone from being completely personal and talking about everything to being a blend of personal thoughts and public trends, among several other things.

As long as John Chow’s site has something that does not focus solely on making money or commercial marketing, I will continue to be a reader. He writes well and in my view, with honesty, and when he jokes, it is good. As for ProBlogger, in my view, I like Darren Rowse being honest and transparent in his posts, and for addressing the issues of making money and commercial marketing well through direct and indirect ideas and thoughts. I will continue to be his reader also.