Tag Archives ⇒ writing

Social Bookmarking – Technorati

· Brandon Hann

I’m sure at some point in your blogging career, you’ve seen an article or two that pops up on the mega blog site, Technorati.com, but you probably didn’t know much about it. Don’t feel bad; neither did I.

We all know and love Google for they’ve been able to accomplish in the Internet industry (it’s amazing that we can now call this an industry!), and now we can love Technorati for doing great things just for blogs. As a reader, you’re able to search some millions of blogs all around the world talking about anything you can imagine. From there, you can leave comments, Digg articles, re-tweet your favorite bits of information, write for the site as a free lancer and even advertise your business there.

Freelance Writing

But as a writer, you can do one more important thing: promote your blog. Everywhere on this site, you read about posting quality content, finding backlinks and getting ranked high in Google. Well, here’s another way to promote and all it requires you to do is create an account. You can use Technorati to promote your blog and gain exposure and web traffic for your site.

Once you create your account, you “claim” your blog by adding a link to it and then Technorati will have you place some random text somewhere on your site. Within a few days, they will have found your site, verified you’re the author of it and then added it to your account. Now, whenever you post an article on your site, it will be referenced in your account and therefore, searchable. The more you post, the more likely your stuff will be found and that equals more traffic for your blog.

The advantage here is that you are listing your content specifically to a blog community. Being listed here can only help your cause over at Google. One thing to remember is that above and beyond any tips you’re going to find about how to create a successful blog, the most important one is whether you’re credible or not. I’ve said it many times before, but I’ll say it again. You can have a wonderful site with tons of content, but if nobody cares about what you have to say, then you’re lost and your site is considered dead.

Technorati Ranking

Technorati will also rank your blog against every listed blog in the database so you can watch your site gain popularity as your rank climbs higher and higher. Here’s a screenshot of my account page showing my claimed blog and ranking:

As you can see, at the time of this writing, I’m ranked at 40,606! I plan to drop this number as fast as possible and if/when I do, I’ll post a follow-up to this post to give you an idea of how long (and how many posts later) it took to get to that position. I may also post the traffic/rank ratio to help you get an idea of where your site ranks.

I think another great thing about Technorati is that you can claim multiple blogs. Just keep adding them to your account and you can then compare ranks between them to find out which ones are more popular. You mix this site together with your WordPress stats and Google Analytics, you will know exactly how to fix your blog if you need to.

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How to create original content

· Brandon Hann

You’ve heard it before and most likely you didn’t hear it from me first–have original content on your blog! Why is this so important? First of all, if you’re trying to create a blog that just copies postings and other material from other blogs and websites, you can stop right now. People are smart and search engines are smarter.

Posting original content is the only surefire way to get people to your site and to stay. The ultimate goal here is to create a returning user base. One reason for this is that these “fans” will begin to promote your site based on the fact that they like your site. Other sites will link to you because of your quality. Search engines will rank you better. The list goes on.

Now, obviously when I say original, I don’t necessarily mean something that nobody has ever talked about. You can discuss things that are all over the Internet, but the idea is to do it in your own, unique way. And do it often. Blog frequency is another topic we’ll be discussing later.

For now, the question is what do you write about? In order to be successful at this, you’re going to want to pick a topic that actually means something to you as this will create passion in your words and people respond better to content when it’s passionate. Don’t try and blog about a whole bunch of different things all at once (unless everything’s connected somehow). Just remember that whatever the topic is, there are plenty of people out there that are just as obsessed with it as you are, so don’t get discouraged–just because your friends don’t visit your blog it doesn’t mean nobody will.

It’s hard to write a how to guide on a topic that doesn’t have any set standards or rules, but here goes!

In a nutshell:

  1. Choose your topic – find a topic that really interests you as well as something that can be discussed. You wouldn’t want to have a blog about one particular movie because that movie will eventually go away and it won’t be relevant anymore. Do a blog about all movies, or one genre of movies.
  2. Do some research – start searching around the Internet and see what people are saying about your topic. Remember these sites for later because they will come in handy when we get into promoting your blog.
  3. Look for ways to improve – Once you start seeing your topic of choice popping up around the Internet, start looking for ways to improve the already available information. This will start to separate your blog from the rest.
  4. Fill in the holes – you might even start noticing that certain areas of interest are not being covered in other blogs. This is your chance to open a new door!
  5. Write from the heart. You do not want to pass up this step. Do not write just for search engine rankings or Google clicks. Don’t even write just for traffic. You can achieve all these things in time, but before you start promoting your blog, you’re going to need the content.

As for the writing itself, I found a really cool blog that has created a list of 12 essential blogwriting tips. I reviewed each one and they are phenomenal. I have tried to sum up everything on that site above, but to get the full effect, you’ll want to check it out.