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The Technorati Top 10k of blogs. I think this is one goal most serious bloggers shoot for, at least they should in my opinion. I just happened to recheck my standings this morning and noticed that this blog broke into the Technorati Top 10k of blogs sometime over the weekend! That little white “Top 10k” icon really looks sweet next to the image of this blog on Technorati!

What was my secret?

Well, in reality it’s readers and fellow bloggers like you who made it possible for this blog to break into the Technorati Top 10k. Without you, I’d still be sitting back there around 2.5 million or so!

I also did this on a shoestring budget. My wife calls the time I spend on “the computer” as an addiction and refuses to let me spend the money I’d like to on it, unless it comes directly from these efforts. So I had to do it the old fashioned way. Lots of hours at the computer!

Why is it important to be in the Technorati Top 10k as a blogger? Simple. For me it was the challenge. I love a good challenge. For others it can mean a big increase in pay. If you plan on making money with your blog doing those paid reviews, paid post or put up paid links, many of those companies figure in your Technorati ranking into the equation when deciding how much to pay you. If anyone tells you that the Technorati ranking is useless, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

In a nut shell, here’s how I was able to break into the Technorati Top 10k in about 6 months. This list is in no certain order, I just wrote it down as it came to me.

SEO Optimization - I tried using suggestive titles and keyword rich articles. I’ve also been experimenting in getting pages out of the Google Supplemental rankings. I’ve had varying degrees of luck with that. My traffic from the search engines seems to pick up every day and I’m beginning to see a steady stream of new readers.

Link Building - I’ve searched out link partners by asking for links from other bloggers, joining in programs like ViraTags and ViraLinks along with participating in events like the ProBlogger writing assignment and John Chow’s site review and others. This effort has increased my traffic and links quite a bit.

Recently I submitted my first articles to Blog Carnivals. It’s still too early to see how this traffic pans out.

I also dedicate time each day to visiting other blogs and commenting if I found a post where I believed my input could be useful. I’ve met some really cool bloggers this way!

I sponsored 3 WordPress Themes as well, although I’m not sure yet how much this helped. I will tell you, it can get real pricey real quick!

Getting several articles Dugg and StumbleUpon’d didn’t hurt either! Just remember Kids, Linkbaiting doesn’t work!

Content - I’m not the sharpest or brightest writer. I like writing about things I know and about things that will help someone else. I like solving problems for other people. My “real job” consist of helping people solve their Real Estate problems. I spend a large amount of time writing my articles, re-writing and then re-writing some of those to get them to where I think they are “good enough” to let go. Then I usually end up second guessing myself after I hit the ‘Publish’ button.  I do try and write right, but it’s a real challenge for me.

I like Shoemoney’s attitude about writing. He just writes the content and sends it out the door. He knows that people will get the jest of the message and that’s the important part. As my time to blog becomes less and less, I’m more prone to go along with the Shoemoney method.

And that’s about it. It’s not that hard if you’ll just focus and have patience. If I had a large budget of thousands upon thousands of dollars, I could have done this within a month or so. Since I ddin’t, I had to spend hours in front of the computer doing it the hard way, by myself!

As I said above, this can be done quicker. If you’ll look at my Archives, you’ll see there was a lull this Spring in writing and working on the blog. I had some sickness in my Family I had to attend to plus there was a lot of work around the hacienda in preparation to putting our home on the market. My blog took the back seat during those times.

Now I’m back and AffiliateWatcher.Com has broken into the Technorati Top 10k! Thanks to all my readers and fellow bloggers who made it possible!

My new goals? Break into the Technorati Top 5k and come in under the Alexa Top 100k.