One of the many ways of increasing website traffic and gaining backlinks for your blog is by getting it listed on Technorati. Technorati is the biggest blog directory, or blog search engine on the internet, listing more than 150 million blogs. Millions of people search it for information every day. If your blog isn’t listed there, you’re missing great opportunities every day! It has become somewhat of a standard, much like Google, but in terms of the blogosphere. That’s why every blog owner must submit his/her blog on Technorati. In this post, we’ll teach you how to do it, why you should do it, and what it takes to be listed well on Technorati.

Quite simply, Technorati is the largest and the best blog directory. The simple listing of a blog can be very useful. Imagine a website that isn’t getting any traffic through social media channels. That’s a handicap right there. Your blog will be similarly handicapped if it isn’t listed on Technorati.

Secondly, and best of all, you get a free high quality backlink! At the time of this writing, Technorati had an Alexa ranking of 1,356, and 8 Google PR! Now who wouldn’t say no to that? In Google’s eyes, the higher the PR of the backlink, the better it is, exponentially! One 8 PR backlink is better than 8,000 1 PR backlinks. So the free backlink alone might do wonders for your website.

And then there is the associated traffic. Millions of people search on Technorati. And since Technorati will be linking to your blog, even if a fraction of this number follow your link, you’ll be a lucky man! (or woman)

Submitting your blog to Technorati is no rocket-science. Anyone who has full access privileges to a blog (the owner, usually) can submit that blog to Technorati. To do so, you will first need to sign up, or sign in if you already have a Technorati account. It’s totally free!

Once signed in, click on your account ID at the top-right of your screen next to your profile image. It will take you to your profile. Fill out any information that is incomplete.

On the same page, you’ll see a field labelled “Start a blog claim“. There, you’ll need to fill out your blog information such as name, URL, description etc. Then, submit your claim.

Technorati will send a verification code to your email, along with instructions to use it. You have to create a new blog post with that code in it. It will be a temporary post, and you can delete it afterwards. It is Technorati’s way of ensuring that you really own the blog.

Once you’ve made a new post, go back to your Technorati profile, and click “Check Claim“. All you need to do now is click the Verify button, and Technorati will check your blog for a post with that code in it. Once claimed, you can delete the blog post.

That’s pretty much it! One thing to remember though is, you’ll need to pick categories for you blog. The option will be presented to you. Just make sure you choose the right category so you might get some targeted traffic through Technorati.

Every blog on Technorati has a Technorati ranking or Technorati Authority. This Authority is based on one simple principle; backlinks. The more the unique blogs linking to you, the better. They also have a time-based ranking, meaning they’ll check the number of backlinks to you in the past 6 months, and rank you accordingly. That way, you stand a chance against the top websites to be featured in the top 100 blogs list.

In short, the more backlinks you have, the more your authority, and the better you’ll rank in search results. And you’ll lots and lots of traffic if you rank well. It is like a gold mine where the more effort you put in, the greater your reward will be :)