Technorati Tags And Authority - Increase Your Blogs Traffic

What Is Technorati?

Technorati is an internet search engine for blogs with a dynamic ranking system.

How does Technorati work?
Technorati aggregates RSS (Really simple syndication) feeds in real time from the internet and sorts the posts it finds into categories using Technorati tags. After sorting posts into their proper categories Technorati offers visitors the ability to further sort the posts by freshness, by topic and by authority.

What are Technorati Tags?
Technorati tags are labels that writers assign to articles in order to tell Technorati what the article is about. Wordpress blogs uses plugins to make this task simple however wordpress version 2.5 has rendered most plugins obsolete. Technorati is now able to use an article’s category name as its tag.

What is Technorati authority?
Technorati authority is a system in wich points are assigned to blogs based on the number of other blogs that link to it. When another blog links to yours you gain one authority point however subsequent links from the same blog do not give you additional points. Technorati ignores points older than 6 months.
Step two - Setting up Technorati the right way
How do I get started with Technorati?
To add blog posts to Technorati visit [1] www.technorati.com and create a free account. Once your account is set up you will be prompted to “claim your blog”. Follow the instructions provided by Technorati and claim your blog. If you’re running version 2.5 or later of Wordpress you don’t need to do anything else.

My wordpress blog isn’t upgraded to version 2.5 yet, is that ok?
No, it’s not. Technorati announced on April 16th, 2008 that they will no longer index posts from outdated blog versions because of security issues.

How can I raise my Technorati rank?
Step 3 below will contain advanced optimization methods however there is one very basic fundamental you should consider. Proper use of Categories and Tags. As mentioned above Technorati can read category names and use those as tags so it stands to reason that you should chose your category names wisely.

The [2] Technorati Top 100 page should give you a good starting point in deciding what to name your categories (or which tags to use if you prefer old fashioned tagging). The “top tags” section tells you what the most used tag names are. Likewise the “most searched” for tags tell you what people are actually looking for. Your goal is to get your articles in front of potential readers so browse through those lists to find good candidates to represent your articles.

Ack, nobody even searches for the categories I have on my blog!

You’d be very surprised at how many articles are improperly categorized on blogs. Some category names are extremely creative but unfortunately nobody actually searches for those creative names - and so the articles are not seen. Adding articles to multiple categories or using too many tags will increase the chances of a visitor being unhappy with the article. Chose wisely and make sure the tag or category name represents exactly what the article is about.
Step 3 - Strategies to help you get the most out of Technorati

Strategy #1 - Increase exposure time.
The most popular categories on Technorati change rapidly. If, for example, you write an article about technology and you tag it as such it will show up on Technorati BUT it will stay on the first page of technology results for a VERY short amount of time, often less than 20 minutes. A more specific tag, such as internet technology might be both more accurate and less popular resulting in a longer stay on the first page of search results and in more targetted visitors.

Strategy #2 - Let SEO and Google/Yahoo/MSN/AOL etc raise your authority.
Articles with first page results in search engines are often used as source material on other sites. Many times an author will link to the source of an article which in turn provides you with an authority vote. The latest version of wordpress has the option of letting category names be the Technorati tags. Go a little further and add additional tags when writing your articles, those extra tags are now converted into keyword meta tags for that article. REMOVE the php the_tags… line of code from single-post.php in your theme so that tags do not show up on any article page, they are redundant in this scenario and hurt SEO.

Strategy #3 - Time your article releases.
If you only write a handfull of articles per week you can time their release by using the wordpress Post Timestamp feature. If you set it to a date in the future your article won’t be published until then. The idea behind timed release of articles is to have them show on Technorati when the most people are likely to see it. That doesn’t neccessarily mean during peak hours either, depending on the topic and timezone. Play with this until you get results you’re happy with.

Strategy #4 - USE Technorati to find other users who enjoy the same subjects.
If you browse through your favorite categories on Technorati and spot other users who post to that category and have a little authority consider using some of their best articles as reference examples in your own articles. That helps visitors find more related content, it helps raise the authority of the blog you linked to in reference and it increases your chance of having that person/blog return the favor. Make friends with similar interests, favorite their blogs.

Strategy #5 - Technorati is not an island, get active!
Being active and interacting with other sites can help you raise your Technorati authority in subtle ways. A guest post for example can provide you with a link to your site which becomes an authority point. Likewise, leaving great comments on peoples blog posts increases the chance they will notice you and talk about you. Comments won’t increase authority but plugins like [3] top commentators that give you a link will raise authority if you’re on the list when the person posts their next article. Create buzz and the net will notice you, so will Technorati.

These are just five of the strategies you can put to use on top of promoting your site with Technorati tools, please take a minute to share other strategies you know about and have tried with good results in the comments below.