A Guide to Breaking Into the Technorati Top 100

Jan 8, 2008

A Guide to Breaking Into the Technorati Top 100
by Skellie

For a few minutes, I want to you to suspend your natural balance of optimism and cynicism. This article lists exactly what’s required to break into the Technorati Top 100 most linked-to blogs in the world.

It might seem like an insurmountable goal, but remember, many others have done it — and most of those blogs started small. The journey towards a big goal is just a collection of many little steps in one direction. My aim is to set out all the little steps here.

I asked you to turn off your inner-cynic for a moment because you may be having one of the following reactions:

“My blog’s target audience is too small to ever make the Technorati Pop 100.”

or

“I don’t even want to make the Technorati Pop 100. It’s a bogus list.”

In both cases, I don’t want to persuade you that you’re wrong. Instead, I’d counter that many of the strategies here can be used to powerfully increase the number of inbound links to your blog, regardless of what you want to do with them. For bloggers, more inbound links generally means more good stuff (traffic, subscribers, revenue, etc.)

The Numbers

The Technorati Pop 100 is a ranked list of blogs with a high ‘Authority’ rating. The #1 spot is taken by the blog with the highest authority of all Technorati tracked blogs. The rest of the list proceeds in descending order. A blog’s ‘Authority’ is the number of unique blogs that have linked to it in the last 6 months. Multiple links from the same blog will still count as +1 to your ‘Authority’.

As I write this, your blog would require an ‘Authority’ score of 3,043 to break into the list.

Unless your blog is very popular, this number will probably seem outrageous. One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that in-bound links have a tendency to snowball over time if your blog is growing steadily.

These strategies could help you double your monthly in-bound links from 20 to 40, for example. But what if you receive 80 the month after that? And 160 after? And so on. Once you put strategies in place, you can start a snowball rolling, even if you don’t have many links to begin with.

1. The wisdom of writing for del.icio.us

Writing ‘for’ a social bookmarking service sounds cheap, but all it really means is writing value-packed content your readers will want to bookmark.

In my experience, writing an article which becomes popular on del.icio.us results in a lot of inbound links, because many del.icio.us users have a daily or weekly link-dump they publish to their blogs. The post contains recent items they’ve bookmarked (which will hopefully include a link to you). This is an under-reported strategy and one I’m going to talk about in more detail sometime.

2. Unearth cool stuff

A lot of blogs are in the business of pointing to things other people have found. If this is done fairly, the blogger will include a link to the person who ‘found’ the item. If you find something a lot of people want to link to, that person could be you. I suspect most of the links to Gawker Media blogs (Lifehacker, Kotaku, Valleywag et al.) are accrued through this method.

A tip: don’t point to items another blogger has already ‘found’. You will miss out on the ‘via’ link entirely.

Traffic lights.
Photo by .supernova.

3. Be prolific

While frequent readers will know that this isn’t a strategy I subscribe to, it’s one that seems to be employed by many in the Technorati Pop 100. An article on ProBlogger today includes a quote from a blogger who swears by this strategy:

… his theory was that if he posted 20 posts a day that even if only 20% of his audience actually read those posts that he’d end up with more readers on that day if he wrote 1 post a day and 100% read it.

The result is that he writes a very successful blog with a lot (and I mean ALOT) of short sharp posts per day).

4. Create value-packed content

As a counter-balance to the last point, many blogs on the list deliberately pursue a strategy of not posting more than once or twice a day. Seth’s Blog, Dosh Dosh, Copyblogger, A List Apart, Zen Habits, Coding Horror, The Dilbert Blog and several others are all examples of this strategy. Value-packed content has the potential to attract more links than a dozen easily-discarded posts.

5. Give meaning to news

While it’s difficult for bloggers like us to break news without the vast resources of blogs like Engadget and The Huffington Post, our news coverage can still collect in-bound links if we give people something to link to (other than the news itself). Analyzing the implications of news, how it will affect certain groups/individuals and what it means in the greater context of things are strategies you can use to make your news-coverage worth linking to.

6. Coin a phrase

Seth Godin has proven himself the master of this. Every time the terms “ideavirus”, “Purple Cow” and (lately) “remarkable” are mentioned, Seth Godin seems to get a link. I suspect this is one of the main reasons he occupies such a high spot on the Technorati Pop 100 list (though the position is really well-deserved). In my own small way, I’ve noticed a number of incoming links to Skelliewag adding to the discussion about “value-packed content”.

7. Create passionate readers

To steal and modify a catch-phrase from Kathy Sierra, building an inbound link snowball requires a passionate readership more than it requires a very large readership. Having 100,000 readers will not get you into the Technorati Pop 100 if only 1% ever link to you.

Readers will become passionate about your blog because of its content, but it’s also important to give them a reason to support you, the blogger behind the blog. A link is an act of support and endorsement.

My suggestion would be to avoid neglecting individual readers in favor of the collective. Answer emails, respond to comments and get to know your readers in other places (StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.) Remember that while your collective readership is important, it’s the individuals who create the benefits of the collective.

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44 Comments, Comment or Ping

How To Rule The World

so in order to get the via link, you would have to be the first to find lots of stuff?

Jan 8th, 2008
OffbeatNews

Awesome advice!! I have been working Technorati for my 2 blogs a lot these last few days. Does it improve your ranking if a lot of people fave you?

Jan 8th, 2008
Marketing Blog

Some very good tips there i will one day make the top 100 blogs

Jan 8th, 2008
extreme webmaster

Well, nice article. But recycled…and that actually works! I have read advice like these many times. What works is that people write advice on blogging, but this gets buried quickly. New posts replace old ones so it always works to repeat what was said before - especially because there are always new readers.

Yep, it is really simple:

1. Write cool stuff
2. Write quality stuff
3. Write inventive stuff
4. Write linkbait
5. Write a lot

Good luck with your blog!

Jan 8th, 2008
Ritu

Skellie, thanks for another insightful post.

I do have a complain though. I do not have access to computer at work but I do find myself constantly checking skelliewag at work on my Treo. I am not even allowed to use my phone while at work ( imagine that ). Anyways, I am getting addicted to your blog because of all the great content you provide.

About getting on Technorati Top 100, although at times I don’t think it matters much I do find myself constantly checking my authority which at the moment is pretty low to even list it here. but it’s creeping up slowly. Just thought I would thank you for posting this on how to increase the technorati Authority cause although I would like to think its of no importance, at the end of the day I am constantly finding myself bothered by the fact that I am not where I want to be.

One more thing though, although all the points you listed are valid, one important thing is to give it some times as well. 3,000+ links within couple days or weeks for that mnatter might be quite hard to attain.

Thanks again! By the way, the addiction to your blog is worth being addicted

Jan 8th, 2008
Mark Dykeman

I think the “snowball” effect of popularity is a valid insight.

And I still think you should trademark the phrase “value-packed content”

Jan 8th, 2008
Fiar

Value Packed Content™ How’s that, Mark? I have to agree with Ritu here. It’s going to take time.

Jan 8th, 2008
Warren

I really don’t think it is that important to be in the technorati 100 but having as many incoming links as you can is a good idea. It helps for bringing in direct traffic and increases your page rank.

Jan 8th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence

I’m going to be sarcastic.

What you really need to do is tag each post with hundreds of irrelevant tags so that all the useless sites that just pull by tag will pick up your posts and increase your link count.

For me, that’s the weakest part of Technorati: many of the blogs that link to me are pointless and useless - they just read RSS and spit some of it back out..

Of course that’s not T’s fault per se: it’s the pointless and content-empty blogs cluttering up the Net.

But people who don’t care whether their tags are relevant can take advantage of that and boost their Authority.

Not that this would put you in the top 100, of course. But I’m sure it could boost you quite a bit and I wish Technorati had a mechanism for reporting inappropriate tagging.

Jan 8th, 2008
Naomi Dunford

@ Warren - While I agree, claiming a spot in the top 100 is not exactly vital in and of itself, it — or high and measurable goals like it — provide powerful benchmarks. Everybody knows intellectually that qualitative growth is of a much higher value than quantitative growth, but it’s nice to see some cold, hard numbers validating one’s success.

Jan 8th, 2008
Karl Staib l Your Happiness Matters

Value
Value
Value
The three most important things in any blog. I’ve struggled with this over the past couple years, but the more that I understand myself the better I get at doing all seven of these guidelines

Jan 8th, 2008
Mrs. Micah

I don’t know if I want to be in the top 100, but I do know the value to my blog of having passionate readers. I have a few and it’s very exciting. I hope that even more will come…and I’ll keep doing my best.

Jan 8th, 2008
Wayne Liew

I guess everything will be down to content + marketing. Have a great article coming out EVERYDAY and be sure to market it by nudging everyone in your niche about the existence of our article.

It is getting harder and harder for new and intermediate bloggers to enter the Top 100 Technorati list because new blog readers eventually got caught up with the blogs already on the list, making these bloggers their idol rather than blogs that are not inside the list.

Jan 8th, 2008
Mark

Now if we can just get Technorati to improve their ping function!!

Jan 9th, 2008
Gisele B. from myBeautyMatch.com

This is the first I hear of the “value pack” concept and I will have to start writing in that manner.

Thanks Skellie!

Jan 9th, 2008
David Wilson

Good tips Skellie. I have bookmarked it on del.icio.us!!

David

Jan 9th, 2008
Bitter Tonic

Hi Skellie,

Can you explain what you mean in number 1 in more detail please?
Not sure of how to write for del.icio.us specifically or how articles get popular on their service.

Thanks

Jan 9th, 2008
skellie

@ How to Rule the World: If you want a ‘via’ link for that specific item, you’d have to be the first one to find it :). You don’t necessarily have to do lots of stuff though.

@ Offbeat News: Two blogs eh? Impressive! Your favorites count goes towards entering the Technorati Fave 100, which is a different list of most favorited blogs. You can find it through the Technorati site if you want to have a look.

@ Marketing Blog: I like your attitude :).

@ Extreme Webmaster: I haven’t seen a blog post on breaking into the Technorati 100 before. Alas, I can’t be everywhere ;).

@ Ritu: Uh oh, I’m damaging your productivity ;). I’m going to try and develop a more rigid posting schedule so hopefully know when to check for a new post, and when not to, hehe.

Your point about giving it time is a really good one. Gathering links is a slow process but it really does add up eventually.

@ Mark Dykeman: I wonder if Seth Godin has trademarked “remarkable”? ;).

@ Fiar: I agree, it’s definitely one of those big goals you might hope to achieve within years rather than months. All of the strategies listed will need a sustained effort over time.

@ Warren: The Tech Top 100 is really only useful for the profile and extra traffic. You can also charge more for advertising. But in terms of growing a thriving blog, the links are what matters — definitely.

@ Anthony Lawrence: I didn’t even know there was an inappropriate tagging thing going on… that’s pretty lame. I myself have quite a few splogs posting my content, but I just find it funny — I can’t imagine what kind of AdSense ads they must be getting with posts like ‘How to Write Like a Painter’, etc. I don’t use Technorati tags but it’s still a problem.

@ Naomi Dunford: Good points — you can also leverage your spot to gain new readers, and use it to charge more for advertising. So there are some concrete benefits, too. The best is just having lots of links, though ;).

@ Karl Staib: I think any blogger guiding themselves with a mantra of value is going to have a lot of success, eventually :).

@ Mrs. Micah: I agree, passionate readers absolutely make it worthwhile, even if the big accolades don’t come. I’m lucky enough to have a few of my own, too. I think that’s my favorite thing about blogging.

@ Wayne Liew: I think you need great articles, but they don’t need to come out every day. In fact, I think it would be quite difficult to produce a great article every day. Even 1-2-3 times a week is fine if the content is good enough.

I agree though, I think there’s a large swathe of people who will only ever read the really big blogs and don’t take the time to explore further.

@ Mark: Yeah… it takes ages to update for me too. I think they’ve turned it down deliberately — maybe to save on resources.

@ Gisele & David: Thanks!

Jan 9th, 2008
ETAVITOM

AWESOME POST! Thanks so much for the inspiration…..

Jan 9th, 2008
skellie

@ Bitter Tonic: Writing for del.icio.us really means writing content a lot of people will want to bookmark. The link within the tip is to an article I’ve written on doing that :). I hope it helps!

@ Etavitom: Thank you!

Jan 9th, 2008
Bitter Tonic

Thanks Skellie. While I’ve read tons on how to get Dugg, I haven’t seen many on the powers of del.icio.us, so am curious. However the link within that tip just goes to current popular on del.icio.us articles page. Unless I am blind and just can’t find it.

Jan 9th, 2008
Nick - road2blogging

Thanks Skellie, that was a great post and I think I’m going to implement a lot this next month towards the points you mentioned.

Jan 9th, 2008
skellie

@ Bitter Tonic: Yowtch! You’re right! When I first wrote this the phrase “writing value-packed content your readers will want to bookmark” was a link, but then the formatting got wiped. I obviously forgot to re-add the link. Sorry about that — here’s the article: 10 Tips for Writing Bookmarkable Content.

@ Nick: Thanks — good luck with it :).

Jan 9th, 2008
Nothingman

[[Multiple links from the same blog will still count as +1 to your ‘Authority’.]]

this decreases the authority…you can check it for yourself. Sorry, didn’t feel like reading after this.

For Eg, my blog has 106 “reactions” on technorati but authority 37, i added one extra link to my primary blog from my second blog…and the authority went down by 1.

Technorati has a flawed system.

Thanks

N

Jan 9th, 2008
Debby

Skellie,

I really liked your post at Problogger so I thought I would check out your blog and you have post that hold a lot of really good information. I bookmarked it and subscribed to your RSS feed.

~Debby

Jan 10th, 2008
CatherineL

Thanks for the wonderful advice. I used to think I would never get anywhere in Technorati, as I didn’t understand it at all, but I’m very happy with my small progress this year.

Hopefully, your tips will help me get a good deal higher.

Jan 10th, 2008
Tibi Puiu

Great post Skellie :D. I find technorati to be a bit irrelevant and easy to abuse, but breaking through the top 100 list surely has its advantages, like loads of exposure to advertisers.

Jan 10th, 2008
skellie

@ Nothingman: The first link from a new source will count as +1, but extra links from the same source up to 6 months after that will each count as zero. Your Technorati authority only decreases because links that become older than six months will no longer be counted. Still, I don’t make any guarantees about the system. It has been known to be a bit wonky ;).

@ Debby, CatherineL, Tibi: Thank you! And welcome to Skelliewag, Debby :).

Jan 10th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence

A “bit” wonky, Skellie?

More than a bit..

Jan 10th, 2008
Alfa King

It all needs a little bit of brain. And Skellie is not short of it. Great tips.

Jan 11th, 2008
DT

Hi Skellie,

Am a big fan of your site. This is a great post, and I have recently taken a lot more effort to get more involved into delicious. You the link dump tip is a great strategy and something I did not realise.

Thanks!

Jan 12th, 2008
Daily Common Sense

Extremely interesting, really! Very well put and concise.
Thanks!

Feb 19th, 2008
Franchise Whale

Writing for del.icio.us is great advise. I think del.icio.us bookmarking is the best personally but I never write to capture that network’s readers. I look at all my social network traffic and it is all Stumble traffic because that is what I am working on the most. Great post.

Apr 29th, 2008