Yesterday Easton offered some insight on why backlinks are important and explained how to find out how many any website has. Today, Kimberlee Morrison shows you another way to find backlinks and shares a success story of sorts.
Another way to find out who's linking to you is by using Technorati. For all the talk about Technorati being cumbersome and almost obsolete, it is still the only site I was able to find that is an effective way to find blogs in specific topics. Technorati also ranks those blogs by authority, and is authority determined? By backlinks.
It is very easy to figure out what your blog authority is and find out which blogs are linking to you on Technorati. For those of you with non-Know More Media blogs you can just log into your Technorati account, select your blog at the home screen and you'll be directed to a page listing all of the blogs linking to you. The process for your Know More Media blogs is a bit different and you don't have to log in to check your backlinks or authority.
Once at the Technorati site, go to the advanced search page and enter the URL
of the site you want to find backlinks for. The result is a list of sites that have linked to yours and a brief blurb of what they have said about you. You can even find out the authority of the sites that have linked back to you.
You might be wondering how knowing which blogs are linking to you is useful so let me share this story with you. Recently I was using Google Analytics to look at where my referrals were comming from - of course this was prior to registering VinylNotes with Technorati. I noticed a site called Shame-Free had referred about 20 visitors to my KMM blog, visited the site and sent her an email via MySpace thanking her for the referrals even though I couldn't find any particular post from which my blog was linked from the site. It could have been as simple as the author visiting my page from hers, regardless I wanted to show my appreciation. Check it out:
I also recommended Shame-Free for Listen In's weekly music blog review. Like any good blogger, Liz (the author) tracked down the review, made a comment and offered the reviewer a T-shirt. For whatever reason he declined but I'll gladly accept swag from all corners of the world, I asked (rather loudly perhaps) if I could have one. I got the shirt a couple weeks ago, posted a shout out on VinylNotes, Liz left a comment...I think you get the picture.This story demonstrates how backlinks from blogs can help you create real connections in a virtual world. Had I not made the effort to let the author of Shame-Free know that I liked her site and appreciated the referrals from her site, and recommended the site for the music review series, I might have missed out on an opportunity to connect with another music blogger.
While this story may not have anything to do with Technorati, I believe that the same principle can be applied to the backlinks located using the Technorati search. Find out who's linking to you and contact them to let them know you appreciate their interest and support. You never know, you might make a new friend.
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