The Technorati Visibility Game

Posted by Hans de Ruiter

Today I found a fellow Technorati skeptic, who is also trying to increase the visibility of his blog. In his blog post titled "Blog tips to get your posts seen by more people," he states that he hasn't had much luck with Technorati so far, and wonders how to "get some authority" (i.e., increase the Technorati authority value of his site). This authority value is based on the number of other blogs on Technorati that have referenced your blog.

Whilst there is no direct way of obtaining authority, it is possible to increase your visibility on Technorati. Yesterday I noted that a visit to this blog came from the Blogged.com page on Technorati. What had happened is that a previous blog post had referenced and linked to Blogged.com. As a result, that blog post was listed on Blogged.com's Technorati listing as a "blog reaction." So, simply referencing and linking to other blogs will increase the visibility of your blog. 

Will this increase your blog's authority? No. In fact, it will increase the authority of those blogs that were linked to. For example, the fellow skeptic's blog, a.k.a. laptopmanpaul.co.uk, Technorati authority has been increased by one due to this blog post linking to that blog. More importantly, this post is listed as a blog reaction on laptopman.paul.co.uk's Technorati listing. There is a good chance that Paul (laptopmanpaul.co.uk) will see this, and possibly others too. The more people see these "blog reactions," the bigger the chance that someone might link to this blog, and hence, increase this blog's authority rating.

Obviously linking to more popular blogs will increase the visibility more than others. However, I personally find people who make friends based solely on what they think they can get out of them, distasteful. Likewise, linking to blogs simply because they are popular is something that I would discourage. Moreover, creating links haphazardly will likely ensure that your new visitors find your blog irrelevent, and quickly leave. Thus, if you are going to link to other blogs, make sure that the blog posts being linked to are relevant. Also, nothing beats having quality material in ones own blog posts. Perhaps the best advice that I, as a newcomer, could offer Paul and others like him, is to not let trying to increase traffic and/or monetize a blog get in the way of generating genuine and original content.

Comments (1) | 11 July 2008