PSotD played the “Free Beer” trick last week, but with the lure of undressed (ick) Ann (ick) Coulter. The point of the exercise was not merely to lure people with a strange pruience. It was to make a point about search engines and the importance of blogrolls and linking.

I covered the topic of Google PageRank and it’s implications for political commentary and electioneering here about six weeks ago. PSotD’s post points out another potential for search engines to be gamed or bombed. I was trying to point to a more legitimate area of search optimization that every single small-time blogger should reckon with. (Actually, I’m hoping that only my friends on the progressive side of the blogosphere are paying attention.)

Blogs have themes. Over time, any good blog is going to come to own mindshare on the conversation of the topics it blogs about most.

The lefty side of the Pennsylvania blogosphere is already more developed than its right-wing counterpart. There already exists a pretty robust variety of bloggers, big and small, promoting the progressive agenda in PA, whereas the conservatives seem to be congregating in concentrated enclaves like Grassroots PA. The conservative side seems to be much more focused on the editorial page of newspapers, but that often puts them at a disadvantage with respect to developing PageRank.

For PSotD’s observations to be useful, we have to get past blogrolls. Being included on a Blogroll is helpful, but it’s far more important for bloggers to keep linking to each other’s specific posts. Not only does the attention stroke your comrades’ inherent narcissism, it also promotes their voice on the topics that matter. The difference is the keywords that people use in actual searches. People don’t search for “Daddy Democrat,” they search for news on Delaware County or Joe Sestak and find their way here.

It’s great to leave comments on posts you like. But if you have a blog or community diary, it’s far grander to extend the conversation with a post.

All for one, and one for all.