Technorati Guide: Network Using Tags
Perhaps you have read just as many posts as I have about finding your niche competitors. There are many tips out there to find your competitors and how to use that information to leverage your blog.
However, few of those posts actually tell you to make friends with your competitors. Why not?
It’s initially obvious that you’re going to have something in common with anyone blogging in your same niche. Becoming networking friends with anyone within your niche will help gain authority for yourself, especially when the relationship becomes mutually beneficial.
What I have never read in any of these posts is that Technorati can help you find your competitors. Technorati archives and tags a great vast of bloggers talking about your subjects. Digging up this information can give you a great deal of knowledge to leverage information about any blogger you choose to network with.
In this second part of my Technorati Guide series, I’ll show you how you can use Technorati’s website to find your blogging competitors to network with.
Blog Tags
Upon signing up with Technorati, you’re asked to define tags for your blog. These are keywords most commonly used on your blog that help define your placement in your niche. Once you have defined tags for your blog, you can use these same tags to locate other blogs.
Tags are also displayed when someone views your Technorati profile.
Login to your Technorati account, view your profile for your blog and click on the tags used to describe your blog. By clicking on these tags, you’ll bring up a blog tag search for the tag that you have clicked on in your profile.
Browse the blogs that are using the same tag and use their Technorati authority to gain insight to size of the blog.
Not all blogs that come up for a specific tag will be worth taking the time to read and network with the blogger (splogs). However you’ll still find quite a few that are worth taking the time to check out.
Post Tags
When viewing your most recent post on Technorati, tags are automatically defined for your post based on the tags and categories you used to define your post.
The image above shows the tags that I used in my post, Effective FREE Blog Advertising. By clicking on the tags Technorati is displaying for this post, I can locate blogs who have used similar tags.
Of course I may not find too many people using the tag K&M Kreative Productions but blog promotion might be an easy one to find more people talking about a similar subject.
By finding bloggers who have used a similar tag I may find a link exchange opportunity, a blog to comment on using my post URL instead of my blog URL, or another blog in my niche and a blogger that is interested in networking with me.
Search Tags
Searching tags on Technorati has many benefits. I’ll point out two of them:
Networking: Of course, that is the subject of this post right? Searching Technorati for tags you’ll be using in an upcoming post may result in the ability to reach out to another blogger with some link love in the new post you’re creating.
Make sure that you find a blog you’ll be interested in linking to and that the author is someone you’d want to network with. Starting a networking relationship with a link is always a good step in the right direction!
Research: Sometimes we write posts that we don’t exactly know everything about. When you’re in the process of doing that, research is key. Searching tags on Technorati will let you check out what other bloggers have written on the same subject. It’ll also help you narrow down what should and shouldn’t be included in your new post.
Final Thoughts
With my first Technorati post, there were a lot of comments and emails that people didn’t feel that Technorati was still relevant and especially didn’t send any traffic to their blog. That may very well be the case according to your stats. However, that doesn’t mean that using the site isn’t still useful and worth it.
Many third party sites use the authority and ranking from Technorati as a gauge in your blog’s value. So while you may not receive a ton of traffic from Technorati, it’s still quite worth it to use to the site to reach out to other bloggers.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:27 am
hey Katy,
great follow up post from our comments lol! I am going to take your notes and update my Technorati tags because when I first used the tags, i didn’t know what i was doing. However, I did notice that I received several incoming links from the individual pages of the tag words. I am also starting to think about adding the plugin to my site to see how it does for my Technorati authority. All you bloggers are such influences to me! Good in this case haha
April 7th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I really need to make sure and use the technorati tags on my post. Wordpress is making it easy for me, I just need to remember to use the tag feature every time. Okay - Starting now I’ll try and use at least one or two tags on each post :)
April 7th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Good post Katy. Now I have a better understanding of tags. I usually just surf around Tech to find new blogs to read, I use it as a past time. =0)
April 7th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Nice work dude, i was not knowing importance of tags ever before. i have to just re-look at me tags. Your work is fully appreciated.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Paul » There’s nothing like a great post to help with commentators questions or concerns. It’s something I often do around here. Feel free to stick around and inspire more posts. ;o)
Ah, I should have mentioned updating tags on Technorati. You’re not the first to tell me that they didn’t know what tags were when asked to define them. Heck, I didn’t know the first time I was asked. Should have touched on that, glad you mentioned it.
Congratulations on the hits from tags. With the recent reports of the lack of success with Technorati traffic, even just one seems to be a big deal!
Alan » There was a long time there where WordPress didn’t make it so easy. Now that it is, it’s worth it. And even more effective when used in combination with All In One SEO Pack. Gives you a whole slew of stuff to fill in for best web and search presence.
Manda » Thank you, glad I could help. I used to use Technorati to just pass time as well… then one evening the purpose of the entire site just clicked. Now that I have more experience using it for my needs, the blog posts are coming about!
Rostyslav » Hey, thanks man. Glad I could be helpful.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Interesting article. I didn’t get to read the entire thing, but I will definitely favorite it and come back for more later.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Thank you,this is a good post
April 18th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Taylor » I hope you find the article useful when you have a chance to read through the whole thing.
Eddy » Thank you and you’re quite welcome. :D
July 15th, 2008 at 10:05 am
This is my Technorati week where I am reading up on improving my Technorati authority. I use a WP plugin to convert my tags into Technorati tags. Not sure it helps much in traffic or with Technorati, but conventional wisdom says Technorati tags are better than any other tags.