Technorati, a blog search engine that indexes and ranks blogs based upon the number of fans they have, the number of inbound links, their posting frequency, and other secret factors. After signing up with Technorati and claiming your blog, others will have the ability to add you to their favorites and you will be able to add a description and tags to your blog.
You might be wondering what the benefits of increasing your Technorati rank and authority are, it’s simple really. 90% (a stat I made up) of advertisers take your Technorati rank into account before advertising on your blog, so will services like ReviewMe, Text-Link-Ads, and others. Even if you aren’t doing it for the money, you will still have earned yourself some bragging rights.
Here’s a list of 18 ways to ultra-boost your Technorati rank and authority, some might not seem that big of a help in the beginning, but all of them will eventually lead to an increase in your Technorati rank.
1. Claim Your Blog
Anyone with half a brain would know that you need to be indexed by Technorati in the first place if you want to be ranked by it. Go to Technorati right now to sign up and the follow the necessary steps to claim your blog…. all done? Great! You might notice that your blog’s current ranking is somewhere in the millions, don’t worry, it will start decreasing dramatically after a few days.
2. Add the Related Tags to Your Blog
After claiming your blog, you will be asked to add a few tags to show others what your blog is about. The more tags you use, the better, but if you don’t have a clear idea of what tags to use, check out the Technorati page of a popular blog in your niche and just copy some of the tags they’ve used. Don’t rip them off 100%, if a tag doesn’t match the content of your blog then adding it won’t be an act of cleverness, it would just be plain stupid.
3. Give Your Blog a Clear and Creative Description
In addition to adding a few tags to your blog, you will also be asked to provide a short description of your blog. Try making it as clear and creative as possible to the point where anybody that reads the description will immediately click on your blog’s link. This step is worth spending an extra minute or two on since blogs that have a description are usually considered more professional than blog’s that don’t (another assumption made by me).
4. I’ll Favorite Yours If You Favorite Mine
Another factor that Technorati takes into account when ranking your blog is the amount of fans it has. More fans = higher ranking. The second easiest way (check #13 for the 1st easiest) to increase the number of fans your blog has is to exchange favorites with other bloggers. To find bloggers that are willing to do this, you could ask around on forums such as DigitalPoint, contact the bloggers directly, or simply ask your readers.
5. Participate in Question & Answer Sessions
Many blogs nowadays are starting to hold question and answer sessions where they give you the opportunity to ask a question and gain a juicy linkback to your site. Although you will only be getting one link from the blog, it doesn’t take more than 20 seconds to ask a question like “How long have you been blogging“. Better yet, if you ask your question on a popular blog, scrapers will usually pick up the post thus generating three or four extra links to your blog.
6. Design Your Own WordPress Theme
If you were born with a knowledge of HTML and CSS, then you’re in luck! All you have to do is design a few free WordPress themes, include a link back to your blog in the footer, then upload the theme to every single theme site you can possibly think of. If you have an established blog, then you can simply make a dedicated page listing all your free themes. Check out DailyBlogTips.com if you don’t know what I mean.
7. Sponsor a WordPress Theme
So maybe HTML and CSS just aren’t you thing, don’t sweat it, where there’s a will, there’s a way! Many designers create themes so they can sell links in the footer. If you check out the link sales section on DP, you will find tons of themes just waiting to be sponsored, so take your pick and go! Just be sure that the theme you’re sponsoring isn’t total rubbish and will be getting a ton of downloads. Ask the seller the number of times previous themes were downloaded and then make up your mind if you really want to buy the link/s.
8. Do Link Exchanges
This is a classic, but a very effective classic indeed. Contact other bloggers with similar sized blogs and ask them if they would like to do a link exchange with you. If they don’t, then just move on to the next one, there are plenty more fish in the sea.
9. Sponsor EVERY Contest That Comes Your Way
It amazes me what such a simple 30-day text link can do. These past few weeks, I’ve been taking the liberty of sponsoring every single contest that comes my way. The best thing about these contests is that most of the time the winners will never claim their prizes! I’ve sponsored about five contests in my 3 1/2 months of blogging, and only one winner has contacted me claiming his prize. So basically I got a ton of free links and a nice boost in my ranking for free!
10. Find Blog’s With Low Competition and Become a Top Commentator
Using the Link Building Bible tool, you will be able to search for blogs that are using the Top Commentators plugin. Most of the times, you won’t need to make fifty comments to get in the list, there are tons of blogs out there using the plugin that get less than five comments per month, use that to your advantage. All you need to do is make a single comment to get yourself a free link for the entire month, then do the same the next month
11. Ping Technorati When You Publish a New Post
For Technorati to be aware of your new posts, it needs to be pinged every time you publish a new article. If you’re using WordPress blog, they you won’t need to do anything, as for the other blogging platforms, you can use services like Pingomatic to alert Technorati whenever you have a new post.
12. Continuous Posting
Something I noticed about my Technorati authority is that every time I publish a new post, it will automatically increase in the next 24 hours. Try increasing your posting frequency and I’m sure that you will begin to see your authority slowly rising day by day.
13. Add a “Favorite” Button in Your Sidebar
Maybe your readers would like to favorite your blog but don’t want to go through the hassle of finding it on Technorati. Placing a “Favorite” button linking to your Technorati page will help increase the number of fans you blogs has which can help increase your Technorati ranking and authority.
14. Give Incentives for People to Favorite Your Blog
If people aren’t going to favorite your blog because of their goodwill, then maybe you should start bribing them into doing it. A good idea is to tell your readers that you will randomly pick one fan of your blog on Technorati and give him a free ad spot for the month. The results? You get tons of new fans = your ranking increases = you make more money. All this by giving away a simple free ad spot…
15. Hold a $10,000 Contest
I’m not a really big fan of $10,000 contests to be honest, but they do bring in results and that’s what matters. Give participants entry points for adding your blog to their favorites, linking to it, and any other devilish methods you can think of. Check out your ranking before and after the contest, I bet you will see a HUGE boost!
16. Write Content Worth Linking To
This is a bit basic but still very effective, if you want people to link to you, then why not write content that is worth linking to? Every week dozens of bloggers share stories they enjoyed with their readers, if you write something that is worth reading, the other bloggers with most probably include you in their link love posts.
17. Create Resources That Everyone Will Refer To
Another great way to rake in links is to create something that people will continue linking to for the ages to come. A great example is 45n5′s Top 100 list. Just imagine how many people have linked to it, not only that, but all the links are from related high quality websites. You could make a do-follow blog list (as I’ve done) or a comparison of the top 20 blogs on Technorati (people love those). Whatever it is, just be creative and original, the links will follow.
18. Guest Post on Other Blogs in Your Niche
While this might take a bit of extra work, it will help you increase your Technorati rank as well as bring you traffic, subscribers, and get you noticed within your niche. There isn’t much to explain, but a good tip about guest posts is to write about something you have previously covered on your blog, that way you can link to your blog as many times as you would like to without going offtopic.
Remember to use each and every single one of the methods above, no matter how small or big it might be. As I wrote a few days ago, you don’t need super powers or a secret potion to do things in life, all you do need to is start taking action.
Be advised, don’t use the method that includes pinging thousands of blogs, I’ve read multiple stories of people’s blog’s getting banned from Technorati after using this method.
Although it doesn’t hurt to focus on boosting your Technorati rank and authority, you also shouldn’t lose focus on what’s really important, your readers. Focusing on producing top-notch content everyday will eventually be the biggest help in increasing your Technorati rank and authority.
My current Technorati rank is around 45,000, feel free to tell me what yours is in the comments below and then get to work!