Technorati Link Optimization: Getting What You Deserve
Anyone who has a blog and is familiar with Technorati is probably very aware of their blog's ranking on the popular blog search engine. If you're not careful, watching a blog's ranking fluctuate may lead to carpal tunnel from clicking the refresh button. Every blogger obsesses about this at some level, including respected bloggers like Steve Rubel, Frank Gruber and blogging newbie, Guy Kawasaki.
It doesn't take long to figure out that a blog's ranking is directly tied to the number of links and unique sites that link back to the blog. This is similar to how Google determines web page authority and has proven to be an effective ranking metric because it relies on third-party endorsements in the form of links.
Knowing that, what can be done to make your site rank higher? The most obvious strategy is to create interesting content on your site that's worth linking to. Great. But what should you do when Technorati doesn't register the hard earned links you've earned?
Technorati Optimization
Imagine stumbling across a site that has linked to you, and noticing the site does not appear in your Technorati ranking report. Does this happen? Yes. How could that be? Most likely, it's because the site didn't ping Technorati after publishing the post. Shame on them. Should your Technorati ranking suffer (um, be held back) because of this oversight by someone kind enough to cite your blog on their blog? Of course not.
The solution: Ping their site for them. Make a quick trip to Pingomatic.com, fill out the form with your new best blogging-friend's site, feed information and submit the ping. You should get credit for your hard-earned link in short order.
Is this ranking strategy gaming Techorati's search engine? Exploiting a loophole or optimizing a blog's ranking? I call it optimizing because it simply takes steps to make a blog rank as high as it rightfully deserves, but no higher. What do you think?
PS: If you found this post interesting, feel free to mention it on your blog. And don't forget to ping Technorati!
I agree with you, Ed; it's definitely not gaming the system. In fact, another blog ranking system, The Truth Laid Bear, says this in its FAQ:
"All links from a scanned weblog to any other weblog (i.e., links from a weblog to itself are ignored). This includes links within posts, and 'permanent' links in a weblog's blogroll. Remember, however, that the Ecosystem only counts links from blogs that are also registered in the Ecosystem. If you have links coming from a blog that isn't registered, feel free to add it."
This is entirely consistent with your argument.
Really had a great time in class today with Ro. He is a very good instructor and I hope to see him again soon.
This seems like an idea that will work. I am going to be checking it out in the near future. I am clearly looking for ways to get more links in Technorati.
I've done the same for the TTLB ecosystem. It doesn't matter much though, unless you count on using the ranking as a sales tool to pitch to advertisers.
lecentre
Quiet interesting and revealing, I just spend the last hour going to every single blog site to find the ping form,..
1. Posted by: Abe Olandres on January 29, 2006 6:17 AM:
There's a serious glitch in the Technorati link stats mechanism that allows a blog to get padded link stats. I wrote an explanation about it in my blog.