I'll first start off with why rankings do matter- and it's not really for the reason you'd think.

Of course, a high ranking means that you may appear in the 'What's Hot' section of Wattpad but you'll only really be noticed by potential readers if you're ranked in the top 30.

The reason why rankings may make a difference is if you are ranked in the top 100, it looks impressive to put that in the description of your story- let me explain why.

Any rank in the top 100 shows that your book must be pretty darn popular and even if you were only ranked there for like one hour you suddenly have credibility. By putting something like 'Highest Rank: #43 in Romance', potential readers will automatically assume that people must like your book.

As far as I know, rankings are based on recent activity on your book (e.g votes and comments) not just reads so encouraging your followers to vote and comment will improve your chances in being ranked.

However, ranking doesn't actually matter that much in the grand scheme of things and they only really give you bragging rights. So don't stress about them too much because being ranked isn't a life or death scenario for your book.

: tips on how to get ranked:

* encourage readers to vote and comment

* regularly post chapters

* post your work in relevant yet less popular genres/categories so you don't have as many books to compete with e.g I put this book in Non-Fiction rather than Random so it would get noticed more often. With this tip, don't go and randomly put your SciFi book in Historical Fiction cause that won't work.