Since starting my Race for Rank series, I have received a lot of questions about my motive for such a series and why I feel it’s important to address a blog’s rank.

I can sum up this answer quickly. However it wouldn’t be the most affective answer in the world. When we’re talking about something that all bloggers deal with, I feel it’s best to go in depth.

The point of the Race for Rank series is not just to learn new methods to improve the rank your blog is given by various ranking systems but to boost your understanding of your own blog.

It’s been pointed out, many times, in the comments of my Race for Rank posts that one ranking system or another is inaccurate, not relevant, or just useless.

Then I dare to ask you, why do you care so much? Because even if you don’t feel that ranking system is relevant, you’re still paying attention to it.

Authority

It’s been pounded into the heads of all webmasters (not just bloggers) that for you to have any authority in your website or blog’s niche that you have to have good rankings. As if to say that your word doesn’t mean anything without ranks attached to it. I don’t agree with this statement.

I believe that most of my content is worth much more than the PageRank 3 that has been given to my site.

However, I believe it’s important to note that by improving our ranking, we can reach to the skeptics that look at rank as an authority and those who simply don’t care about it.

The end result puts us into a world that has a larger target audience.

New bloggers visit your site because they’ve heard about you. And big bloggers look to you because you have some authority due to your rank.

PageRank

A system that is highly respected and confusing. For example: I’m Blogging That has a PageRank of 3 and Google reports just 309 back links. My personal blog, Raise It, Clean It, Blog It where I rarely blog also has a PageRank of 3. Google reports for this domain 0 back links. Yet, according to Google’s rank, both of these sites are given the same authority.

Does this seem right? Of course not, but it’s Google’s rank and we all know by now, they do what they please.

Getting PageRank for your site seems to be somewhat of a mystery to a lot of the everyday people. It would be logical to think that you could turn to Google for advice on reaching a better PageRank. However, the only piece of advice they have in their Webmaster’s Tools is to just get more back links. [ Source ]

Alexa

Traffic is only calculated by people who actually use Alexa’s system. Meaning they don’t ever account of the hundreds, sometimes thousands of people who visit your site without any ties back to Alexa.

Honestly, it’s easy to get a great Alexa rank. And I’m telling you that from my own personal experience and have given you two blog posts to improve your Alexa rank. I’m proof of this.

At the end of February when I started the Race for Rank series, my Alexa rank was 168,322. This is a great Alexa rank for a lot of bloggers. But the authority and prestige in Alexa is when you break into the top 100,000 blogs. So there I set my goal and today my Alexa rank is 90,438. A drop of 77,884 with traffic sources being unchanged in the 1 ½ months since I started the series.

Technorati

Honestly, I’m unsure Technorati was able to break onto the blogging scene and become so well respected so quickly. It’s a technique I’d love to learn but like it or not, Technorati is also looked at to give blogger’s some of that prestige by assigning ranks. And they did one better; they didn’t just give your blog one rank but two!

Authority is assigned to your site based on “blog reactions” which isn’t much more than people linking to you. And then from that, a rank is assigned to your blog showing where you stand out of all the blogs that Technorati tracks.

So, what makes this rank more or less important than PageRank who says that they do the same thing?

Are you confused yet?

EXACTLY… none of this makes sense.

Change Your Mind

I won’t tell you to abandon the idea that rank is something you shouldn’t care about. For bloggers looking to monetize and rack in the big bucks, rank is required – at least initially. Work on your rank when you have time and don’t let the idea of it consume you. You’ll find that by taking the time to work on other areas of your blog, ranking is something that will come more naturally.

I’ve stressed the importance of networking before. Over and over. Networking is going to take care of rank for you in ways that are natural and more rewarding than downloading that Firefox add-on for Alexa!

By networking you:

• Get back links because you’ve increased people’s awareness of you, your blog, your content.
• Receive more Authority and Rank on Technorati because you’ll have people linking to you.
• Drop your Alexa rank because you’ll have new visitors (most of whom know the importance of Alexa and will use something that will help you.

Change your mind on how you view rank. Work on it indirectly by taking care of other aspects of your blog. And realize, that it doesn’t really matter what another site says your rank is when you’ve given yourself more value than any of these other systems.

You just might make it on one of those Top 100 lists. But I’m willing to bet that by the time you do, you just won’t care. Something else will be too important.

Instead of doing something great because it’ll improve your status on a ranking system, change it up to do something to improve your status in social networking. Register at a new site, make a new connection, link to another blog, how will you change your mind starting today?

Today I’m actually going to pay attention to Mixx and Reddit. Because registering there just isn’t enough. Now it’s time to participate!