Blog rankings are essential in determining what are the top blogs in the world.  There are many different types of blog rankings based on pageviews, pagerank, engagement levels, authority, and reach.  Sites like Technorati and Bloglines try to rank blogs based on their own algorithm, but they’re not transparent and few people really agree with their rankings.  In this article we will dive into Blog Ranking metrics and determine what are the best ways to rank a blog.

Blog Rankings: Influence

A blog’s influence can be measured by the engagement levels and overall reach that it has.  Engagement is measured by the number of comments per post.  Sites like Zen Habits and The Four Hour Work Week have extremely high engagement levels because their comments per post are very high.  There are two things that draw a person to comment on a blog post:

1. Actual engagement with the author

This is when the blog reader actually loves the content, learns from it, and wants to communicate with the author.  These are the bloggers that take the time to build community on their own blog through care.

2. Self-promoting comments

Unfortunately, the internet is full of these people.  These are the commentors that just write a comment to put a link on your blog post.  Though it will not give them an increase in Page Rank, they’re hoping that if people see they’re name enough people will eventually click through on the comment to see who the comment author is.  If the blog has a high readership, then being the first to comment can actually drive you some serious traffic.

Blog Rankings: Traffic

Every blogger wants more traffic.  But is that really all there is to it?  The more traffic you have, the more influential you are?

It turns out, there are two main types of traffic that determine how influential you are on the internet:

1. Direct and referral traffic

Direct traffic means that someone typed in the url on their browser and went directly to your site.  Referral traffic comes in a variety of forms: other site linking to you, digg, stumble, facebook, or twitter.  The referral source that exemplifies influence are links from other sites and bloggers.  This means you are influential because people actually take the time to link out to you.

2. Search Engine traffic

Search Engine traffic can be gamed by SEO.  It is a great source of traffic; however, it does not measure your influence because people who show up on your site can just go there and immediately leave because your content may not be relevant.  Search engine traffic is still relevant when dertermining influence; however, direct traffic is still the most relevant.

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The purpose of blog rankings are to measure the online influence of the author.  A site is only a site, but when you have a face behind the words, people will engage with you and become influenced by you.  So if you’re new to the blogging world, remember to add personality into each blog post.  Sooner or later, you will build a following and they’ll know you for your name and not just your dot com.