Breaking the next barrier on Technorati

Just today, I was checking out the links coming in to this blog (using the WordPress dashboard) and I realised that these two days marked a milestone achieved for this blog, well, at least, in terms of Technorati authority.

Technorati measures the rankings of a blog in terms of the number of incoming links from other blogs in the past 6 months. So today I found out that my number finally tipped across 100!

technorati authority

Yae! :mrgreen:

In the state of the blogosphere report last October, Dave Sifry posted about 4 different authority groupings.

  1. The Low Authority Group (3-9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
  2. The Middle Authority Group (10-99 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
  3. The High Authority Group (100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
  4. The Very High Authority Group (500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)

So its up a notch for me today! 🙂

I remember I posted about this figure with my post about the report, and in early November I had like only 16 links. 102 links is not a lot compared to many in the blogosphere, especially those in my daily reads, but its at least an affirmation to me that I’m doing some things right. 🙂

To be frank, I haven’t been actively building links these couple of months. I have been busy reading books (all the “digital junk”) and preparing my course materials. Perhaps the only link building activity I have been doing was to go around contributing to others’ blogs and adding to their conversations.

That said, I think rankings are just rankings, inbound links are just inbound links, and traffic is just traffic! For the regular content publisher, traffic may be the bloodstream for their business, because some of them live by monetizing their traffic through advertisements. However, I guess what many bloggers aim for is to build credibility for themselves.

I was inspired by one of Lorelle’s recent comments:

I’m always stunned at the “fame” assigned to me and others like me. We just do our thing and do it to the best of our ability. I don’t go out chasing traffic or holding up signs that say “point to me”. We just do what we do and people point and say “famous”.

Famous is relative. It’s nice for people to think so, but there are a lot of people who would be envious of my traffic (if they get less than 50 visits a day) and others who think my traffic is child’s play.

Do what you do (and you love to do), and do it well – the links will come. If you are doing your stuff right, incoming links should not be the result of a link building campaign, but because people want to link to you.

Comments

  1. What you say here, is exactly what Google wants. No need search engine optimization, no need to exchange links, no need to solicit links, no need to buy text link and… then, no need search engine. Just word of mouth, just referral traffic and direct traffic.

    However, it didn’t turn out that way because there’s too much money to be made.

    So we still need links. The more the better. And we need truly great content to have great numbers of good quality links.

  2. Hi, Kian Ann,

    Congratulations to your blog achieving another milestone!

    “Focus” is a recipe of success. I can see you are getting this right and you are building up your blog as one of the better ones in blog marketing, in particular in Singapore.

    Regards,
    Harrace
    http://www.eOneNet.com

  3. It’s all the little victories that keep you going on the path of success as they remind you that you must be doing something right.

    Congrats!

  4. Shi – well, yeah. Since links are the things that bring in traffic (whether its from the referrals or from the better search engine position), and traffic means exposure… we do need links. However, it is also important not to focus on just building links, but focus on giving good content!

    Char – thanks! 🙂 Yeah, small victories along the way are the morale boosters.

  5. Harrace,

    My sincere apologies, your comments fell into the spam box! The spam filter Akismet is doing a great job is getting rid of spam, but unfortunately, the job is not perfect – there are some good comments like yours that get chucked in as well.

    Thanks Harrace for your dropping by. 🙂

  6. Nice work on building your site! I would say ranking is not pretty important, although people do use it for ‘bragging rights’. Generate good content and have great relations with others on the net, and anyone is all set to go.

  7. Thanks Lyndon,

    Hahaha… rankings bring “bragging rights” as you said. 🙂 It is true that rankings give you perceived credibility.

  8. Hi Kian Ann,

    Congrats! Hey though the ‘tomorrow’ saga is over, I think this will just prove those people wrong. Though I guess it’s a matter of wrong target market so there’s nothing to prove.

    And it’s true, once you have good content ppl will want to link to you as who wouldn’t want to direct their visitors to a site with good content?

    Great site Kian Ann!

  9. Hahaha Calvin,

    Thanks! That experience was a learning session for me, and I believe, for many of my readers as well. I had fun handling the comments which weren’t very helpful – even though its not an experience that I (or anyone) would like.

    Everybody has their own niches and strong points. That “saga” also brought me to be aware of what is really going on on the other side of the blogosphere. It doesn’t appeal as much to me, but its interesting to know.

    The comments feed on Tomorrow.sg is interesting one to subscribe to.