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!
Yae! 
In the state of the blogosphere report last October, Dave Sifry posted about 4 different authority groupings.
- The Low Authority Group (3-9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
- The Middle Authority Group (10-99 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
- The High Authority Group (100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
- 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 meâ€. We just do what we do and people point and say “famousâ€.
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.