Technorati determines how popular your blog is by the number of incoming links. The more incoming links that you have created, the higher your “authority” and the higher your ranking. With authority, you want the number to be higher, while for ranking, you want the number to be lower. It can seem a bit confusing, but its actually not too difficult to understand if you take a step back and look at how it works.

Now how can Technorati help you promote your blog? Well first off, you have to claim your blog over at Technorati. Once you have claimed your blog, Technorati will take your feed and aggregate it onto its site, with your posts appearing as they are posted. Of course posts appear all the time from thousands of blogs, so yours likely won’t stay at the top. However, people can add your blog as a “favorite” and then your headlines and excerpts will appear on Technorati for that particular user when they log in. As the number of favorites is much less than the number of blogs, it is much more likely then that your blog will appear at the top of their news aggregator.

Simply claiming a blog at Technorati does not guarantee an explosion of traffic to your blog. You have to make sure to tag your posts appropriately, so they will appear to the people who are searching those tags. Another thing you have to focus on is creating a great title. It’s not always the easiest thing to do, but having a great headline will make it more likely for someone to click thru to your post! One of the blogs I read, Bryan’s Journey actually went over the topic of creating great blog titles. He used Cosmo… of all sources to explain why. It’s a great read, so check it out!

I hope that I’ve piqued your interest in this method of promoting your blog. Do you have any other tips with Technorati? Please feel free to share them!

EDIT:  In one day I’ve racked up 100 credits, and have had 13 ads bought from me.  Those are some pretty good results, I’d say.  Of course I’m still waiting for those private ad sales!

So.. what is entrecard? Entrecard is a promotion tool that is kind of like Blog Explosion. When you sign up for Entrecard, you design your own card, which is a 125 x 125 banner. The banner for this blog is rather plain, but that should be changing soon. Anyway, once your card is all set, you can get the code for the Entrecard widget. There are several formats for this widget. The currently available sizes are 127 x 148, 200 x 127 and 250 x 127. This is great because the widget does not take up a lot of space on your sidebar.

Once the widget is placed on your blog, you are all set to start promoting. To promote your blog, you simply visit another site that has the Entrecard widget and “drop your card”. Dropping your card will earn you credits, which you can use to purchase ads on other Entrecard blogs. The amount of credits it takes to display your ad for a day is equal to the number of credits that blog receives in one day, times two. People can also buy ads on your blog for the same pricing scheme. Keep in mind that “dropping” your card will not make your card display, you must purchase it. However, this is great because purchasing ad space with credits is much cheaper than dropping $500 for a banner on John Chow!

Lots of blogs are currently promoting this service, so its a great way to get your name out there. I don’t see things getting too flooded, as the wait time on a big blog such as John Cow is only 11 days. I’ve had good results even having placed no ads. There have already been 25 clicks to this blog just from me dropping my card on other people’s blogs! I also have a cool user number, 1234. I should mention that when you drop your card, it shows up on their dashboard and they can click thru to your blog. This will definitely get your blog out there on the radar.

So what are you waiting for? Grab an Entrecard and get started promoting your blog!