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Finding authoritive blogs in your niche is very handy for a few reasons:
- You can have a look at what blog posts are popular and model them
- You can post comments that add value on their blog
- You can build a relationship with the blogger and even do a guest post for them (Tips on how to get a guest post)
There are a few ways to look for good blogs, it also helps to have the Alexa Sparky firefox plugin. Basically you can look at the Alexa rank to have some sort of gauge how much traffic the blog gets. Also what their PR is. (The higher the better).
Managing all the blogs can be difficult, I recommend using google alerts and google reader to manage the blogs you find. I wrote about it in more detail at 7 Steps To Use Google Alerts For Improving Your Blogs Content and Authority.
How to find Authoritive Blogs in Your Niche
- Searching for blogs using the delicious tag search
Basically you can search for bookmarks that people have tagged. You want to look for tags with your keyword and “blog”. In the above screen shot that is a search for a boxing blog.
Go through the list and look for ones with blue boxes with a number. That shows how many people have bookmarked it. Obviously the more the better. It is still sometimes worth looking at the blogs that dont have multiple bookmarks. It’s up to you.
- Searching for blogs using Technorati blog search
Here you can search “Blogs” or “Posts” make sure you’ve selected to search for “Blogs”. Enter your keyword and it will find blogs related to the keyword. The higher the “Auth” number is the more popular it is.
- Using Google Blog Search
Type in your keyword, I’d also recommend typing in longer tail keywords, not just your top category. Sometimes this search works great for a certain keyword, other times not so much. Give it a try.
So now you know how to find good blogs in your niche using Delicious, Technorati and Google Blog Search. When you find good blogs, look at what is popular and write similar posts with a different angle. Another good tip is to look at their blogroll to see what blogs they like.
Also when you find blogs with a lot of readers, begin building relationship with the blogger to do guest posting in the future.
Have fun with it
Ben Brandes
