Monday, April 2nd, 2007...10:05 am

3 Steps To Getting Technorati Traffic - If You Want It

It’s been a week now since I wrote about wanting to get more traffic from Technorati. I have managed to get some hits but the numbers are nothing to write home about.

In the past week I’ve had about 50 hits from Technorati. The month prior I received maybe the odd hit once a fortnight, so it is possible to squeeze some traffic out of them but how sustained it will be depends on a number of factors.

It really comes down to these 3 things.

  1. Tags
    You need to install something like the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin and tag your posts with relevant keywords. Technorati automatically uses the category of a post as a tag, but because most people only assign one or two categories per post you won’t cover as broad a range of keywords as you would with tags.
  2. Technorati Rank
    When you do a search on Technorati there is an option to specify the authority of the sources that are listed in the results. This essentially narrows down the search by Technorati ranking. I’m not sure how big a hurdle this actually is. To be honest I think most people doing a search will be too lazy to specify the authority of results so chances are your post will get listed. But will people actually see it? Search results are sorted by date, so the newest sources will always be listed first. Even if you do get in the results pages the window of opportunity you have to get noticed is quite small, and once you’re off the first page the chances of getting noticed are slim.
  3. Topic Of Content
    This is probably the most important factor in getting traffic from Technorati. Your content needs to be in sync with whatever is popular at the time. I happened to have a post ready to go about Twitter which is one of the top 10 most searched keywords at Technorati at the moment. I got about 20 hits from the Twitter post. Not a great number is it. These keywords are popular for a reason. Everyone is writing about them, meaning you will have to compete with half the blogosphere to get seen. You’d probably have a better chance with long tail keywords but figuring out what they are would be a whole new challenge.

Is it worth the effort to fish for Technorati traffic? I’d have to say no.

If your blog happens to be about Britney Spears or American Idol then you might be able to develop some consistant traffic but for most of us it looks like Technorati is a dead end.

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32 Comments

  • I do basically all these things but still the traffic from technorati is quite less.

  • What are you using for your rel attribute? I saw something the other day that you should use rel=”tag-cat” or something, but I always used rel=”tag”.

  • I’m using rel=”tag”. Technorati’s own tag help page here says to use rel=”tag”. Where did you hear about tag-cat Ryan?

    Madhur I don’t think many people are getting good traffic from Technorati so I wouldn’t worry about it.

  • One of Technorati’s help pages… It wasn’t tag-cat, but something similar.

  • “Is it worth the effort to fish for Technorati traffic? I’d have to say no.”

    I tend to agree.

    You end up in a situation where you could be chasing down traffic based on a popular tag, which might lead you to post about stuff you’re not into…

  • I have given up on Technorati. My blog marches to a different drummer than that of Technorati. To paraphrase Wayne Smallman above, if you try to chase Technorati traffic, your blog might end up having an identity crisis. Btw, thanks for visiting me.

  • I used to be diligent in adding Technorati tags, but not so now. There are ‘almost’ worthless as far as getting traffic through them.

  • @ Armen: “I used to be diligent in adding Technorati tags, but not so now. There are ‘almost’ worthless as far as getting traffic through them.”

    I’ve just swapped out a couple of tags. So now I’ve added: “Adobe Apollo” and: “DRM” and the chances are, I’ll do OK.

    But I think the funky stuff really happens when you’re in the 50k ranking and above spot. Anything below that and it’s typically just left-overs.

    And I’d say Sarzi has the right idea: don’t march to their beat. I just write my stuff and if people link, then that’s all good & well…

  • This topic has been extremely informative for me. I am still learning about all of this “traffic driving stuff” (that’s a technical term by the way ;) ). It’s good to get the other side of the coin because a lot of the people who are advocating things I think do so because they already have the traffic and therefore will get more. A bit like the rich get richer I suppose.

  • @ coach: the other thing to be wary of is the fact that the established bloggers aren’t going to share their really good secrets with anyone. It’s the nature of the game I’m afraid.

    @ wayne: this blog is just about to crack the 20k mark on technorati and so far i’ve got nothing to show for it. i think it’s more likely the top 1000 are the ones who get the most out of technorati.

    I hate to sound like a broken record but when you strip away all the bullshit the best strategy is to optimize your site for google, write compelling content, and get out there and socialize/promote your blog.

  • I don’t think I even got technorati traffic on blogger after a years worth of keeping the links up. Meh, no matter - guess I’ll just seek popularity elsewhere ;0)

  • I’m enjoying the chat here. You know why? Because I finally confirmed that i’m not alone in my observations about Technorati. I’m not one person who loves to rant (I prefer musings any day) but now that the cat is out of the bag, I’ll continue with it. Technorati may not own up to it but I think there is something deficient in their system or software or what, because even the number of links that they display is not updated. Also, one of my blog’s feed never seem to get updated anymore despite repeated pings everytime I have new posts (however, when I do a Google Blog search, the new posts showed up in the results, so what does that mean?) . I brought it up to their Support team but beyond promises to look into the matter, the problem never got solved until I delisted that blog from Technorati, out of frustration (would you like readers to see that your last post was “30 days ago” when you just had a new post 1 day ago? I cannot bear the embarassment that goes with that information). Sorry if got carried away. I’ve kept this to myself or so long.

  • […] Wrong Advices has been exploring getting traffic from Technorati and did explain that users can search and filter for high ranking sites which could explain my […]

  • @ Sarzi: Your comments are always welcome here. Technorati definetly has it’s fair share of glitches. It is understandable though, their servers must be under a ridiculous load trying to service some 70 million odd blogs.

    What I’m wondering though is if it wasn’t for the fact that many advertisers put so much stock in Technorati rank, would they even be relevent any more?

  • I’ve read various opinions and critiques of Technorati, and the feeling is that while it’s a ‘good enough’ metric, it’s a flawed metric.

    Rather than return a search based on more broad relevance, the relevance comes out of tags and number of ‘blogs linking in (to the best of my understanding, at least.)

    And given that there a few other metrics out there, as we say ‘ere in Yorkshire, it’s better than nowt!

  • Yeah, I sometimes follow the top search in technorati and blog about them if they are related to my site

  • Dan - I’d say probably the treasured Top 100 are the only ones that really benefit.
    I’m in the top 25,000 Wayne, and like Dan I reckon it’s of little benefit. I definately get more traffic from Google.

  • I was just making (what seemed good at the time of writing at least!) an educated guestimate.

    Obviously a pretty low estimate.

    But there’s another side to this, and it’s the quality versus quantity argument which I’ve mentioned before on this ‘blog.

    Because the search on Technorati is slanted towards the bigger players, when we do get visits from Technorati, I have to wonder if there’s a perception that you’re a trustworthy source, and their one visit is worth two or three from elsewhere, in terms of signing up, clicking on stuff et cetera…

  • Wayne, what do you mean about the perception about a trustworthy source? If you look at this post about IE6 on my blog, for the tag internet explorer, I am already on page four, but if you add a 6 to that tag I am #1 and if you add 7 to it I am #2. I would say it would be more of a chance it somebody searched for that tag.

  • @ RyanB: I think he’s referring to the way Technorati searches work. If you do a search with the criteria being “high authority blogs”, if your blog turns up in the search results the perception will be that your blog is trustworthy. Following from that if they do visit your site the perception of trust and authority may convert into a new loyal reader, more so than just a normal hit from a search engine. This is all speculation of course. :)

    Do correct me Wayne if I’ve misinterpreted your comments.

  • @Dan, at one point Technorati did have a sliding scale with adjusted the authority or something like that when you did a search. They have got rid of that it seems, but the scale took out some posts as the scale was moved, I think it was based on your technorati ranks.

  • […] The Fire (WTF) blurbs to try to generate traffic. After the discussion that was had in this post the results may not be what you expect. Is Technorati WTF a social website you should use to […]

  • I have to agree with you. I haven’t got any notable traffic from Technorati till now. My trafffic has increased a lot over months now but never from Technorati.

  • Yes, and if you saw the post on DoshDosh about the WTF test, it seems that was a washout in terms of creating traffic.

    I do use Technorati to search for topics, also another service called “Clips” , to see what other blogs are writing about.

  • There has to be more to technorati than people are giving credit to. It took guys a long time to figure google.(They still haven’t yet figured google) surely it’s too early to say that we know or understand technorati don’t you think?
    One in a while i do get traffic from technorati tags. i believe there is more to technorati than meets the eye.

  • nice tips thanks and have a nice day

  • I recently am questioning the usefulness of Technorati. I guess it is worthwhile as a marketing talking point, but not much more.

    Alexa rank seems more important, and better as a traffic building tool. Am I wrong?

  • Can Technorati really bring massive traffic to website? i only get quite less everyday.

  • I think these are all relevant comments, but it looks like Technorati is only good for those wanting to promote rank.

    Not a real traffic builder. IMAO

  • Technorati is hard to squeeze traffic from.

  • Thanks for the tip i was really going to fish traffic out of there but now ill turn somewhere else. Thanks

  • thank you.nice post.

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