When I started the Race for Rank series at the end of January, it was to help my readers increase their rank with Technorati, Alexa, and PageRank while testing my own knowledge. Often times I find it easy to believe that I know less than I do. So, this was a great test of my knowledge and applying it. And the results have been great; along with rank I have newfound confidence in myself.

Before I evaluate the results of Race for Rank with you, let me first remind you of what the goals for I’m Blogging That were, to be met by the end of April:

PageRank: 4 on index page
Alexa: 100,000
Technorati: Authority 100; Rank 70,000

On January 28th, when the series began my ranks were:

PageRank: 3 on index
Alexa: 168,322
Technorati: Authority: 65 Rank: 132,210

Every goal that I have set for all 3 ranking systems I have achieved. To improve my ranks I did nothing that I believe is black hat or unethical. Which further goes to tell you that what I have done you can complete. And you don’t have to be an SEO (search engine optimization) guru either.

Google’s PageRank

Let’s start with PageRank because by far, I think this ranking method is the biggest mystery to a lot of people. And I’m not going to claim that I get it or understand how I achieved the rank that I have (4). I’m simply going to tell you the effort I put forward that I believe would be helpful in achieving my PageRank.

Content

While I always write first for my visitors and myself, I kept Google in mind with every article I published. And after just a few posts, my thoughts became completely natural and I didn’t have to think about what I was doing.

There are a lot of tips out there that suggest you should put a lot of keywords into your articles. I don’t disagree with that theory but I took a different approach. When writing my articles I thought “if I was searching for this piece of information, how would I ask Google to retrieve it?” Honestly, Internet marking, a highly competitive search term is something that I wouldn’t find myself going to Google and inputting. I wanted something natural and to achieve that, I looked at the search terms that people were already using to reach my site.

Oddly, you find that people tell their lives to Google and other search engines. I don’t have search results for Internet marketing but I do have a search results for “promote my blog” and “how to sell something on my blog.” Both search phrases sound like marketing to me.

Lesson: When writing my posts, think like the person using the search engine and not the search engine.

Deep Linking

I’ve vaguely suggested this before and it’s on my list of things to write a dedicated post about, but let’s touch on this again.

Deep linking is the act of linking to other pages within a post. Have you noticed that in almost every post I publish, I have linked some sort of anchor text to another post I’ve made? This is incredibly easy to do when you have a niche blog because all of your posts run along the same topic therefore it makes anchor text easy to find for the right posts.

By deep linking my posts, I’ve given Google keywords to associate with my posts. The posts that I did this the most with are the ones now that have some of the best internal PageRank here. Additionally, those posts are also found with search phrases that match the anchor text I used to deep link.

Lesson: Find ways in every post to deep link to relevant helpful posts that are on topic using anchor text that will promote searches to the post.

Keywords

Without using any keywords tool other than what Google provides, I added keywords to the index title for I’m Blogging That. The ones that I chose are Blog Ranking, Blogging Tips, Search Engine News, WordPress Tutorials, and More.

For most bloggers, they would have seen these keywords as a chance to use them within posts and link to their site’s index page using these keywords as anchor text. I probably could have done that but didn’t.

I do know that I don’t rank well for these keywords. Although I do find being on Page 5 for “Blog Ranking” out of nearly 5 million results something. It’s not wonderful, it’s not great, but it is what it is.

Lesson: Do more keyword research for natural anchor text and keywords that are easy to link in posts.

Alexa

For Alexa, I relied a lot on traffic from other webmasters and bloggers who understood the importance of Alexa to other bloggers and webmasters. This means that they’d have the Alexa toolbar installed and/or Firefox’s Sparky add-on. Either would help my ranking.

My best resource for lowering my Alexa rank was Stumble. Every day I get more and more StumbleUpon traffic (thank you!) and these visitors are particularly helpful in dropping your Alexa rank.

I easily reached my Alexa goal several weeks ago when I saw a rank of 70,833. Then Alexa changes their system and my rank goes up. With the new ranking system, I’m still happy that I’m sitting at 100,833. While almost under the 100,000 mark, I’m still including this a success. Had Alexa not changed their system, I’m sure that I would be significantly past the 70,000 mark but I won’t stress on this.

Lesson: Unknown – further research on Alexa’s new ranking system needs to be done to render a better rank.

Technorati

Seriously, I think Technorati is the most misunderstood website for bloggers. The Race for Rank series has opened me up to that much! The comments and EMails that I received about Technorati were just crazy (even though I loved it)!

The biggest key with your Technorati rank is to actually use the site. I included some of my personal favorites with how to use Technorati posts during Race for Rank. Both posts I saw huge spikes of traffic with which further led me to believe that more information needs to be put out there about Technorati.

Here, you need to be active by adding favorite blogs and becoming a fan. In the last three months, I’ve gotten a boost in fans (though not many) and the posts that I have written have been linked a lot which has contributed to my Technorati authority.

How my blog’s rank is calculated with Technorati I haven’t done enough research with but will.

Lesson: Use the website to best of your ability but adding blogs as favorite, pinging Technorati with new blog posts, and discovering new and interesting ways for the site to become a great resource.

Post Frequency

I used to take on the attitude that I would post when/if I could. And I still very much have that attitude. This blog is my passion, not my obligation. It was important for me to understand the statement and then work out a schedule that worked for me and my levels of creativity.

To boost the frequency of posting, I have started writing posts whenever I feel like it. I feel that this is enabling me to write better posts. Currently I have a folder of about 30 posts that are formatted and ready to be posted at a moment’s notice.

My reason for this was two fold: I wanted to provide regular new content. That is why you come here, right? Secondly, this summer I will have a need to be absent from this blog for about 4 weeks. That’s quite some time. And while I will have time to respond to comments and talk during those 4 weeks, I won’t have the thought processes to actually publish anything (nothing really major to talk about but I’m going in for surgery). Having these posts ready cover me while I’m gone and when I’m not feeling creative enough to write.

From three or four posts per week, I am now publishing six or seven posts a week. This has done great things for my subscriber count and my motivation.

I believe that the constant flow of new posts, information, and comments helped me gain rank and authority with all three ranking systems.

What’s Next

I won’t be setting new public goals for myself. However, I believe that I have properly understood the advice of many now and have done significantly better at applying that knowledge. Reading and understanding informational posts is the easy part, it’s applying the lessons to work for you that becomes the challenge and for me, it’s one that I’m up for now.

Questions for You

Have you followed any advice from my Race for Rank series that has worked? Do you keep track of where you rank and what’s your reasoning for doing so?

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