Make Your Blog more Popular

Wired Magazine gives us Sifry’s (CEO of Technorati) advice on five ways to increase your blog traffic and getting your blog on the top 100 a-list. Coincidentally I am also working on articles about this, especially the importance of linking, posting and optimizing your template, so stay tuned:

1) React quickly. Commentators like Andrew Sullivan and Michelle Malkin draw megatraffic with immediate rebuttals to A-list pundits at The New York Times and Fox News.2) Make your posts easy to read. Italian comic Beppe Grillo broke into the Top 10 by setting his key points in boldface.

3) Optimize for search engines. Put the name of your blog (even if it’s just your own name) in the main URL and the title tag of your site. On Technorati, identify your blog with search topics, like “politics” or “sewing.”

4) Link, link, link! It’s counter-intuitive, but the busiest blogs in Technorati’s index are those like Insta-Pundit.com that link prolifically to other sites. Linking works because most bloggers reciprocate by sending their readers your way.

5) Post, post, post! Chinese actress and director Xu Jinglei has the most popular blog on the planet. At first we thought it was a glitch in our system, but it turns out she’s a real-world celebrity who makes time to post almost every day. What’s your excuse? Link

6) Tora, Tora, Tora! Whoops, I got a little carried away with that one but you get the point. Getting the word out is also important but I’ll save that for another post.