Five Ways To Increase Your Second Life Blog's Authority

SL entrepreneur ArminasX Saiman has heroically gone through 1800 or so (!) Second Life blogs, found the 585 (!!) which are still active, and ranked them in order of their "authority", as measured by Technorati. There's the top ten above -- read the full list here.

Since he's published this list, however, I've noticed many of my fellow SL bloggers complaining or puzzling over their rank. Interested in boosting it? Here's five suggestions, based on practices that I myself generally follow:

Basically, Technorati ranks blogs according to the number of links a blog attracts, and the quality of links it attracts. With that in mind, the way to earn the biggest boost is:

1. Get your posts linked by higher ranked bloggers

The higher a blog's Authority, the more weight a link from it is given. This means attracting larger blogs that aren't necessarily even about Second Life or virtual worlds. This is not as difficult (in theory) as it sounds; if you look Technorati's most popular chart, you'll notice that 8 of the 10 top blogs cover SL, some frequently. They're interested in Second Life as a cultural, business, and Internet phenomenon, but generally speaking, they're not avid insiders. So the desire to link to SL blogs is there, it's just a matter of communicating to them in your post why they should link to yours.

Next question, then, is how do you get a higher ranked blogged to link to you? That's point two:

2. Write concise, clearly titled, short posts understandable and appealing to non-SLers

I cover this more in an advice guide I wrote a few months ago, but let me re-emphasize two points: from the larger Internet's point of view, a post with a vague or poorly-worded title might as well not exist. Use specific nouns, and yes, especially "Second Life", "virtual world", "avatars", and other keywords in them, and explain why the topic is important or interesting.

Just as crucial: the overall point of the post must be obvious in the title and the opening paragraph. Anything longer than 1000 words is extremely unlikely to be read by many besides the most dedicated insiders.

This is so important, I'll cite two examples by name: I have great admiration for UgoTrade and the Gwyn's Home, so it's frustrating to read the epic, discursive posts these blogs often publish, because I know these won't reach the wider audience they deserve. Were these posts edited into several bite-sized informative chunks, or at least include short summary of the full post at the top, their readership would greatly increase.

3. Create a Technorati profile and tag it with variations of SL

This is as an easy one. If you don't have a Technorati profile for your blog, make one. If you haven't tagged it with variations of "Second Life" and related topics, do so. Check out NWN's profile for ideas.

4. Syndicate your content (or excerpts of it) on RSS feeds

Readers who use RSS feeds are likelier to also have their own blogs, notice your posts as they come up in their RSS reader, and link to you.

5. Write a lot of original posts (or link a lot to others)

There's no way around this one; with few exceptions, blogs with a lot of Authority are blogs that are frequently updated. This doesn't necessarily mean writing long posts every day; you could follow the format of blogs like Boing Boing, Instapundit, or Jason Kottke, and just offer a lot of short, pithy links.

That's just a start, of course, and there are many blogs that have gained Authority without necessarily following them.  Then again, my own blog is way back in fourth place, so what do I know?

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

Indeed Hamlet. Everyone needs to begin writing about topics such as the metaverse (3D internet that will not be controlled by one company) in general, entertainment as relates to law, entertainment in general, Fashion, Gaming entertainment, Art, etc. Move the focus to the future and efforts that are moving forward instead of walling themselves in.

Look at your dashboards and see what all sorts of searches lead non Second Life eyes to your blog.

[Doubledown Tandino]

I completely appreciate the SL blog list that's been compiled through the use of Tecnorati.
The rankings on Technorati usually related to other links linking back to the site, so it's not quite the best system, but who cares... it's a great way to get a full list of SL blogs together.

What's (hopefully) most important to all SL bloggers is getting the info out there, and making sure it's viewed by all who are or would be interested.

[Jago Constantine]

The number one way to increase your Technorati rank is to make a link of hundreds of other blogs ranks so they link back to it :P

[Bettina Tizzy]

I may go down in flames, but I'm just not given to short blogposts. C'est la vie. I'm actually surprised that Not Possible IRL is ranked 7. I think there are SL-related blogs that are much more popular than NPIRL.

[Crap Mariner]

Um... Instapundit?

Oh just what SL needs... link to someone else in the Pajamas Media echo chamber, then "Heh. Indeed?" 50 times a day.

Ranks, schmanks. Instead of worrying about ranking, here's a novel concept:

- write what you know about
- write what you enjoy writing about
- read what interests you
- link and cite what you find useful from that

Hasn't changed since the first cavepaintings.

-ls/cm

[Hamlet Au]

@ Bettina: Remember, I'm saying longer posts can work but generally you want a summary (or what we call "nutgraf" up top) so people immediately know what the post is about.

@ Crap: Yep, those are all good editorial principles that should be followed, the suggestions above are how to *present* that editorial so it has a maximum impact.

[Nimil]

i'm on that list and all i do is piss and moan and write about dumb day to day stuff.. oh and not update my blog for months at a time. i don't see the point to rankings really..

just write what you want and enjoy it. if you are dead set on nothing but rankings and who's listing you where then in the end its not going to be enjoyable..

[ArminasX]

I'm busy redoing the list based on the (huge) number of suggestions and several new blogroll sources. It's simply impossible for anyone to know all blogs, but myself and a few helpers are going to run this again one final time and try to include everything.

[Morris Vig]

If my blog's stats are any indicator, the blogosphere is interested in only 3 things: 1. bondage, 2. A Clockwork Orange, and 3. (SLer) Jennifer Hana.

Don't look at me...I don't make the stats up.

[Gauge Laville]

Very helpful suggestions, as we've come to expect from NWN.

Unfortunately it appears that many of the most effective networkers, from the SL blogosphere, are also unbearably unoriginal and uncreative.
If generating traffic is dependent upon posting how "LOL" the latest freebie hat looks, i'll continue to sit comfortably outside the typical indistinguishable, and uninspired, blogroll.

Our readers deserve more than links to veritable black holes. Such masturbatory reciprocation should be accompanied by a "time suck" disclaimer.

[Doubledown Tandino]

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA Morris.

@ Arminasx... now that many of the bloggers have begun utilizing technorati now, and also after Hamlets suggestions, it'll be cool to give the rankings a run again in a few weeks or so.

I doubt anyone really cares about their blog's rank... but it gives every blog owner a good perspective. It gives an idea on how they can improve their rankings to place higher.

Meanwhile, yes, technorati rankings are based on linkbacks... and you can either push your link onto other sites, or not and only have your blog links added passively.

[Dizzy Banjo]

This is an interesting discussion.. I guess for me the point of my blog isn't really about reaching a big audience. It's more about documenting stuff I'm up to and things I'm interested in - which generally revolve around music composition and how it relates to VWs, games and other social situations. Because its actually quite a niche area people tend to find my blog as they are already searching for terms it has as tags etc.. Unfortunately I don't really have the time to deliberately try to maximise the impact of my posts.

[Renmiri]

lol.. The most popular thread on my forum is one where I complain about Pokemon Hentai spam. Guess the Google surfers get disappointed when the click on it :p

The advice here is great! I'd add have lots of cool images, google image search brings a lot of hits too. NWN has some awesome ones!

[Connie Sec]

Which is why Morris,I take "rankings" "popularity" and the so called "wisdom of crowds" with a grain of salt.