My Technorati Targets

Technorati is a blog search engine, according to their site they track over 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

Here is a quote from the Technorati about page:

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

Technorati uses several different methods for ranking blogs:

1. Authority


2. Number of Fans


3. Ranking

The Technorati Authority is the number of blogs that have linked to your blog in the last 6 months. The higher the number the better.

The number of fans is simply the number of people that have added you as a favourite on Technorati.

The Technorati Rank is based on the Authority of your blog, the blog with the highest authority is ranked #1, with the smaller the number being better.

Technorati also has a Top 100 section that lists the top 100 ranked blogs, the top 5 current blogs are:

1. The Huffington Post


2. TechCrunch


3. Gizmodo


4. Engadget


5. Boing Boing

All of these can be increased, and that is what I am looking to do. I am setting myself a target to reach by the end of July. July is going to be a big month for ProTycoon.com. I will be competing in Blogging Idol, I also have my blog redesign which should be ready in the coming weeks. I am now going to raise the bar by setting some extra goals to add that little extra motivation.

These are my current Technorati stats:

Authority: 23

Fans: 1

Rank: 293,031

I am looking to improve all three of these stats. The targets I have set myself are:

Authority: 200

Fans:20

Rank: 200,000

As you can see I am sticking with the number 2 a lot. These are just some rough targets to give myself something to work towards. I will assess how I have done at the end of July, then set some new targets for the following month.

Help me reach my targets, become a fan of ProTycoon.com. Why not share your blogs stats, do you have any goals or tips for Technorati.

Use of Images in Blog Posts

It is no secret, blogs that use images in their posts are more attractive than blogs that don't. The use of images in blog posts is something that I have not done from the start, but something that I have started doing recently, as a way of adding something extra to my blog.

Images can draw the attention of your blogs readers to your posts and create an atmosphere for the post. They are also a great way to emphasize the content of your blog post.

The process of adding images to your blog posts however is not as easy as it sounds. There are some things that you need to consider before placing an image into your blog post:

1. Copyright


2. Is the Image Neccasary


3. Is the Image Useful

I believe that the majority of bloggers could and most of them probably do search Google for images and drop them into their posts. The problem with this is that the images may be under copyright, meaning that using them in your blog post could land you in some trouble, with the possibility of being sued. That is why great care needs to be taken when using images from unknown sources. The best way to over come this is to use images that are not under copyright, or ask the permission of the person who owns the image if you can use it on your blog. The best place to find images that are available for use on your blogs is Flickr. For more information on using Flickr to find images that you are allowed to use on your blog, I suggest you read: 'A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images' by Skelliewag.org.

The next thing you need to consider is whether it is neccasary to use an image in your blog post. Don't add an image for the sake of adding it, only add images that are going to add something to the post.

When you have decided that you are going to use an image in your post, make sure that it is useful and related to the content of the post. There is no point having a picture related to RSS feeds inside a post about Search Engine Optimisation. The image needs to backup the overall topic of the post.

Images can be a very powerful addition to a blog if used well, I want to know about how you use images in your blogs as well as any positive and negative feedback you have about blogs that use images.

What Is A Blog?

I was having a conversation with my mum the other day, and she asked the question: "What Exactly Is A Blog". At first I was surprised that she had never heard about blogs, or knew much about them. This also made me realise that if she did not know then there may be many other people who don't really know what a blog is.

So, What is a blog?

Wikipedia defines a blog as:

A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

A blog essentially is just like any other website to look at, it is built of posts that are ordered chronologially with the newest being found at the top of the blog and the older posts towards the bottom.

Blogs are usually run by a single person (ProTycoon.com for example) but there are blogs that have multi-authors such as bloggingtips.com. Blogs are now common in most niches on the internet and are usually updated on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

One of the main functions of a blog is that it allows the readers to participate by way of commenting on what they have read. This makes it stand out from normal news related sites, where the news is read and no feedback can be left. It creates a sense of community and gives the blogs readers the opportunity to express their opinions.

You should now have a clearer understanding of what a blog is and why they are different from standard news sites. For those of you that do not understand the following video should clear things up.

>What Is A Blog<

Blogging Idol Competition

DailyBlogTips owner Daniel Socco announced last week that Blogging Idol will begin on 1st July and run all the way through until 30th July. Blogging Idol is a competition which currently has over 50 participants, with the winner of the competition being the blogger who can increase their RSS feed count the most during the month of July.

I have entered the competition, so you can expect to see me working really hard through July in an attempt to increase my RSS subscriber count. I have previously posted about how to increase your subscriber count, so I will now be able to prove to you all what works and what does not.

You are more than welcome to enter the competition, just so long as your subscriber count it below 1000 subscribers, this is to give the smaller blogs a chance to make a name for themselves. If you would like more details head over to DailyBlogTips.

The current prize value stands at $1500 of which $800 is a cash prize and $700 comes as a complete SEO Consulting from Joost the Valk.

I would like to hear your ideas on how to increase the RSS subscriber count on a blog, I can then put all suggestions to the test in a hectic month, to see what works best.

My RSS Posts:

1. 8 Ways to Increase Your RSS Count


2. Increase Your RSS Subscribers


3. RSS Awareness Day


4. RSS Hugger: Promote Your Feed

Set Blogging Goals

Starting a new blog is not an easy process and it is very easy to lose your motivation. Many blogs do not make it past the 6 month barrier because the blog owner loses their motivation when they don't receive thousands of visitors, or earn the fortunes that are boasted about on many blogs.

The fact is that starting a new blog is not very difficult at all, most people can upload a blogging platform such as WordPress and publish content on the web, but only a small percentage of these people recieve substantial traffic to their blogs, allowing them to earn a decent income.

The first 6 months of any blog are the most difficult, you may be publishing fantastic content on a daily basis but may only be receiving 20-30 visits per day. This can lead many blog owners to lose their motivation. One way to keep your motivation and help get your blog past the 6 month barrier is to set yourself blogging goals.

Setting goals gives you a focus, it provides you with a target to work towards. The biggest mistake that most blogger's make is to focus on getting 1000s of visitors to their blog from day one. This is an unrealistic target for a brand new blog.

I believe that if you want to build a successful blog, the unique visitors and visit count are the stats you want to avoid setting goals for. Sure, everyone has an idea of the visitors they want to achieve but for the first 6 months you should not look at these in much detail, as low levels of visitors can lead to a loss of morale.

Instead you should focus on building the blog itself, some goals I would suggest for a brand new blog may be:

1. Write at least 4 posts a week


2. Increase the average comments per post


3. Increase the number of RSS subscribers


4. Write a guest post at least once a month


5. Achieve 5 quality inbound links a week

By focusing on smaller goals such as the once mentioned above you can help grow your blog. If you post at least 4 posts per week, you are providing search engines such as Google with quality content that can increase your search engine traffic. Increasing the number of RSS subscribers on your blog allows you to build a community on your blog, which helps to draw new readers in. Guest posts are a great way of making yourself known, most guest posts will include a link back to your blog, which will help with point 5. Increasing your inbound links not only helps to bring some extra traffic to your site, it also helps to increase other aspects such as your Technorati rank.

Make sure the goals you set yourself are realistic, there is no point setting yourself a goal that you are not going to reach. You should also reward yourself when you reach a goal, maybe by buying yourself something nice. By building a positive outcome to reaching goals, it helps to motivate you to reach your new goals.

As this is a post about goals, I will share with you my current goals. This blog was launched in February 2008, so the blog is currently around 4-5 months old. I am close to the 6 month barrier and still going strong. My current goals are:

1. Reach 150 RSS Subscribers


2. Write at least 5 posts a week


3. Guest post at least once a month

I am currently reaching these small goals, which are helping me to reach my current big goal of receiving 25,000 hits in a month, which by my current growth should be the end of July.

I would love to hear about your current blogging goals, as they could provide great motivation for other blogger's.

BlogRush: The Jury Is Still Out

When I started this blog I said to myself that I would test different approaches and give them all a fair shot and report the findings, I wanted to give honest and valued opinions to products and services, on the whole I think I have done this on this blog and on some of my others, but there is one service that I did not give a fair chance to and I am giving it another go, in terms of fairness.

I mid-February I wrote a post entitled 'Crazy Traffic From BlogRush' where I told people that they could gain alot of traffic from BlogRush and that I was going to test it to see how good the service actually is.

By mid-March I still had the widget on my site and ask for people opinions on the widget itself on my blog ('BlogRush: The Visitors Experience'), the response was varied, some thought that the widget was fine on my site, others thought that it slowed page load times, many said that they have stop using the widget because of bad experiences with it, and within 3 days I said 'Goodbye BlogRush'.

After a week or to I remember the promise that I made myself when I started this blog and re-added the BlogRush widget to my site, without posting about it, just to take some stats and get a fuller understanding of the product.

I have now decided to share some of my findings. I guess the main reason people use BlogRush is to bring traffic to their site, so I will look at that aspect first.

My bes performing post to date is 'Reinvesting Your Blogs Income' which has brought 503 visitors to my site. This is not a bad return, it is however alot higher than some of my other posts, but as an average I received around 28 visitors per post from BlogRush.

The page loads times are not majorly affect, I have loaded my page on many different PC's with different specs and using different browsers and the load time is not as much of an issue as it has been previously.

Overall I am currently happy with the performance of BlogRush on my ProTycoon.com.

I would however be interested in your views a few months on from my previous posts, are you using BlogRush? What are your experiences with it?

If you have not tried it then you can sign up here: Register With BlogRush