Trying to Earn Global Online from the Philippines: This Blog Is Now Officially www.manilamom.com

Yes, I finally took the plunge and changed to the domain name www.manilamom.com, using free Blogger hosting. I did so a few hours ago as a test and, thankfully, my Technorati widget continues to show my old blog link stats and it continues to grow.

Marhgil tells me that I have a 301 redirect which means all my existing links for manila-mom.blogspot.com will still be counted by search engines for www.manilamom.com. This confirms what Andy Beard told me before. What a relief!

Marhgil also mentioned that Technorati can't read 301 redirects.

I'm not sure how my Technorati widget still shows my old stats, and it's still being updated promptly every few minutes. I hope it stays this way.

At Technorati, though, I have two blogs claimed - the blogspot and the dot com. Whereas the blogspot account shows the updated stats, the dot com account shows zero authority.

Since both urls are for the same blog, I don't know which will show when someone does a search for Manila Mom at Technorati. Perhaps I should log out and check it out.

I also don't know how this will affect my ranking at Ratified.org's Top 100 Philippine Blogs. As of this moment, Manila Mom is 68th - quite a big jump from yesterday's 87th.

It feels good to see those stats and ranking, of course, but I do believe that what matters most is that I gain regular readers who will continue to read this blog not just for link exchanges (although those exchanges definitely help a lot). I fully agree with Marhgil, THE ANiTOKiD and Trinity that establishing a readership will be of greater long-term benefit.

I do hope that the blog promotional programs I have participated in will bring visitors who will also become regular readers.

So far, I am very happy with the friends I have made on this blog. I'm sure I will get to know many more good people in the blogosphere.

Now I can really say that www.manilamom.com is in for the long haul!