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Five Ways to Win Links—and Technorati’s Heart

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About Technorati
Technorati is a blog search engine. It tracks tags and categories on blog posts, links to a blog, and your “Technorati authority.” You can use Technorati to find posts on relevant topics, track how many blogs are linking to you, or give yourself a little self esteem boost (if your ranking is high). For now at least, Technorati’s tag index pages are also appearing in Google results, so it really pays to have your posts on those pages!

Michelle at Scribbit has some great information on Technorati (Ten Technorati Tips and the Biggest Technorati Tip in the World), but with Technorati’s total redesign a couple months ago, a few things have changed. Michelle’s excellent tips on how to join Technorati, how to add tags to your post and why Technorati matters are still completely accurate. However, Technorati has changed the way they display their information, trying to encompass more than just blogs.

technorati authority and rankingOne of the changes is that they no longer list the number of blogs linking in, number of links and authority numbers separately. Your Technorati Authority is the number of different blogs that link back to yours. Your Technorati Rank is based on your authority. UPDATE (Oct 2009): Technorati now uses a scale of 1-1000 to indicate authority, rather than a direct number of blogs linking in.

Most of the growth in these areas comes naturally, albeit slowly. There are a few things you can do to improve your Technorati authority yourself (without opening up fiftybillion mini blogs to link to your real one). Now for . . .

Five Ways to Create Links & Win Technorati’s Heart
Making your own links is almost better than having other people link to you. If you have the opportunity to submit your link (like you do with the last three, and may with the others as well), you can write the text for your link. Whatever the title of your post is, your link on someone else’s blog will say that. Having a good link text can help your page rank for those words in search engines!

So, how do you make your own links on other peoples’ blogs?

  1. Commenting. This one can pay off in a number of ways:
    • Become a regular commenter who adds value to blogs in your niche.
    • Even if your link won’t count for search engines because of a “nofollow” tag, if you have a post on your blog that’s relevant to the topic of that post, share your link. Of course, don’t just drop it in a comment and leave; read the article, comment on its contents and explain how your post was related. The author of the blog might link to you or other readers of the blog might visit you and later link to you.
    • If you comment on a “Dofollow” blog (one that hasn’t linked to you in the last six months), it should count as a point on your Technorati Authority automatically. Always add value to the conversation when you comment!
  2. Create a network of blogging friends. Reach out to people who blog in your niche (hi, blogging friends!) and build relationships with them. Sometimes, they’ll start reading your blog on their own (and linking to it on their own), and sometimes, you’ll be able to ask them to link to a post that’s very entertaining or linkable, or one that you know they’d like.
  3. Participate in blog carnivals. One of my favorites is the Carnival of Family Life, created by Kailani.
  4. Participate in contests including things like Scribbit’s Write-Away Contest.
  5. Participate in projects that will give you links, such as my Group Writing Project.

Speaking of my Group Writing Project—next week is the July Group Writing Project. Spread the word—this is one we’ll all benefit from!

Get more tips of all kinds from this week’s Works-for-Me-Wednesday!

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28 replies on “Five Ways to Win Links—and Technorati’s Heart”

I have wondered if it is rude to leave a link in a comment. I personally haven’t minded the few times that people have done it on my blog but I feel really funny about doing it myself unless the blogger asks for ideas or links.

Is there a general “rule” about this?

I would definitely like to find more time to participate in writing contests and such. Thanks for all the ideas!

My Technorati rank has grown because of the comment DoFollow thing and it kind of feels a bit like cheating because I’ve left the link, not someone else. Having said that, I comment when I feel its warranted, not just because I know someone has Dofollow turned on for their blog.

It’s not just comments that get a technorati love, it’s links in sidebars too. So if my blog is in someone’s blogroll and they post, I get a new Technorati mention. Actually that feels a bit more like cheating than the comments thing.

The network of blogging friends is something I’ve been concentrating on this year and it’s paid its dividends. My technorati ranking was a lot lower and now I’ve cracked the top 100,000 and nearly the top 50,000.

Thanks for the great advice!

I can’t wait to hear what the next group writing project is. I got busy and couldn’t participate last time, but I’ll make sure to carve out some time next week! Thanks in advance for putting it together.

Great Post Jordan. As I shared with you, I’m really aiming to at least get back up to the authority I had at my wordpress.com blog. Part of that wonderful number (for me- and considering I only had that url for 3 months!) Was doing the problogger writing contest. The link love was wonderful. I didn’t share it as much because I didn’t know how to, but thanks to your “copy the page source” idea I now know and will do it every time I particiapte in a contest to give the other participators link love. Pay it forward 🙂

Relationships I agree, are also crucial. Finding balance in this area can be difficult though. I have met so many amazing people in the world of blogging, yet there is only so much time in the day and I have to live a little too! 🙂

On linking in comments. I only do this if I’m sure that this will be valuable to them, and I have already commented on their blog before. I don’t mind when people do it on mine unless I feel like I’m being spammed. You typically have very useful things to link to from questions I sometimes post on my blog.

I can’t believe it is already time for the next contest! Count me in, can’t wait to hear the topic.

Thanks for the tips! I’m a total newbie to blogging and I just learned what technachori (sp?!) was this week :o)

Cara

On “link dropping” in comments:
I feel like the “rule” for doing this is if your post is highly relevant to theirs and adds value to the conversation. It’s especially acceptable in the way that MZ mentioned: if you’ve built up a relationship with the Blogger and have commented before on their blog. If it’s more of a “hit and run” comment, even if it might be relevant, even I mark it as spam.

Another bonus to having commented before: at some blogs, like this one, once you’ve “accumulated” 10 comments here, I remove the “nofollow” tags from your links.

@Jen—I totally understand what you mean about feeling like you’re “cheating” when commenting on DoFollow blogs. However, if you’re adding value to the conversation (which I’m sure you are!), remember that it was that blogger’s choice to give you those links.

By Post Author

“On “link dropping” in comments:
I feel like the “rule” for doing this is if your post is highly relevant to theirs and adds value to the conversation. It’s especially acceptable in the way that MZ mentioned: if you’ve built up a relationship with the Blogger and have commented before on their blog. If it’s more of a “hit and run” comment, even if it might be relevant, even I mark it as spam.”

The reality is that every body benefits from comments and dofollow, site owner gets more content and the commenter gets a link back to his site.

@Vic—Yes, if your comment and link are designed to add value to the conversation, then everybody does benefit. However, if, for example:

  • you drop a link without saying anything else in a comment
  • you link to a post that’s not relevant
  • you’re a vicious spammer

then you’re certainly not adding anything to the conversation (or adding any content), and are simply taking advantage of the blogger’s good will.

I trust that most people here are not in any of the above categories, and, hence, have no reason to feel bad for commenting on DoFollow blogs.

By Post Author

I wish more people would go for “Do follow”–I dropped the no-follow out of my template months ago but I haven’t bothered to advertise the fact.

Technorati seems to mess around with things every so often. Just when I think they’ve settled down and I understand it, they go and switch it again. I guess Google does the same thing though.

Hey Jordan – I just figured out what technorati was. I have blogged for years with my husband and he has always dealt with that end…I just wrote. Now I get to figure all of this out for myself. It has been my personal goal this year.(I made a promise to myself I wouldn’t ask him for any help..and so far I haven’t:-)) I have heard of the no follow thing and I am not sure of how to drop it? Is there a wp trick?

Count me in on the July group writing contest. Sounds like fun. Plus my mom reads my blog (subversively of course) and I would love to bless her this way.

Amber

I have a love-hate relationship with Technorati. Babylune was in the top 10,000 for a few days with a rank in the 9000s, but that lasted just a few days and my rank has been dropping like a stone ever since. Remarkably, the more I participate in things like GWPs, the lower my rank even though the number of links has never been higher. I am not completely sure, but I think the rank of the sites that link to you factors into your rank.

I don’t think so; I get links from sites with little authority that still help my rank. However, as Darren mentioned on ProBlogger the other day, after 6 months your Technorati links “expire.” Were you gaining links more quickly six months ago?

By Post Author

Then again, maybe… I just looked at your Technorati ranking and even though you have a lower authority score than MamaBlogga, you have a better rank… Hm…

By Post Author

Ok that is interesting about the links expiring I never knew that and that would explain why my authority has dropped like a stone this past week.
Surfed here to check out the blog olympics from Island Life, hello !

Thanks for this insightful article- it definitely helped me understand Technorati’s new rating system and the tips have benefitted my new blog immensely!

I only recently began seeking information to fully understand the ranking numbers etc. I also wondered about people who leave their URL in their comments, because I don’t ever want to appear to be spamming any blog. Occasionally I get comments where people say something like, “great post, check out my blog at ….” Fortunately, I have my settings where comments are reviewed prior to being published, so that helps eliminate the spammers. Trying to improve technorati or google rankings etc is tough business, but I’m working hard on improving mine. Thanks much!

I generally remove “link signatures.” I agree with your opinion that it’s rude and spammy. Leaving a link to a specific post, very much related to the topic of the post, however, is not, in my opinion.

Part of the reason why I feel that it’s rude and spammy is because you already have the opportunity to get a free link with any anchor text when leaving a comment (the name and URL provided when leaving the comment).

In the end, it’s your blog and you get to do what you want with it. I like having a written comment policy to refer to just in case anyone objects to my objections 😉 .

Good luck with your rankings!

By Post Author

I feel really funny about doing it myself unless the blogger asks for ideas or links.

Thank you for the tips about Technorati. Although I registered with them several months ago, I never really figured out exactly how to get “authority”. From what I have seen so far, it is simply the number of backlinks to your site that Technorati’s spiders have detected. I’m not sure about whether the type of site matters, however.

Hi
I know the last post was a while ago so not sure if this is still active but what a brilliant and useful resource. I am new to blogging and really appreciate

I have been working on Technorati this week basically to improve my scoring there. Thanks for the info provided. Will definitely act on it.

Thanks for the useful tips… This is just exactly what I need to improve my scoring there. Thanks for the info provided. Will definitely act on it.

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