How to "Authenticate" Your Blog Using Yahoo Site Explorer

My last post was meant to help you gain more visibility on Google's search engine. Yahoo has its own search engine, so you must be asking how you can similarly improve your chances of getting included in Yahoo! search results.

If you want guaranteed inclusion in all Yahoo! search results, that is possible but it would come at a certain price. It is called a "Sponsored Search," which is keyword- and click-driven (meaning you pay only when your ad is clicked in search results—not every time it is displayed). If you're a novice, hobbyist blogger like me, why spend at all?

Fortunately, it is possible to have your cake and eat it too at Yahoo! You see, Yahoo! has its own blog "authentication" procedures, using Yahoo! Site Explorer. To use Site Explorer, however, you need to create first your Yahoo account, if you don't have one yet. It's free anyway, so that should not be a problem. Once you have a Yahoo account, follow these procedures:

1. Login to Yahoo! Site Explorer.






2. Input your blog's address or URL in the indicated box, then click the Add My Site button:







3. Once your blog gets added to the list, click the Manage button:






4. Input your blog's Feed address or URL in the indicated box. If yours is a Blogger or Blogspot blog, simply type "Atom.XML" on the box provided, because that's the default Feed address of all Blogger/Blogspot blogs. Afterwards, click the Add Feed button:








5. Once you see your blog Feed listed, click the Authenticate button:







6. You will be presented with 2 authentication procedures as shown below. Choose Add a META Tag and copy the code provided for your blog:









7. Open a new tab in your browser so you can login to your blog, without logging out of Yahoo! Site Explorer (you need to go back after pasting the META tag to your blog template).

8. For Blogger/Blogspot blogs, login then go to your Layout Page. Click the Edit HTML link, then on the Edit Template page which contains your blog's XML coding. Locate the opening "Head" tag in the template (not very far down from the template's first line of code) then insert your META tag below the Head tag. Enclose the META tag with a forward slash (/) at the end, as highlighted in yellow below, so that you won't encounter any "parsing" problem like I did during my first-ever attempt last year (don't forget to click Save Template before logging out of your blog):

















9. Go back to the Yahoo! Site Explorer tab, then click the Ready to Authenticate button. After you do, this is what you will see in a new window:











10. When you go back to your Yahoo! Site Explorer dashboard after clicking the My Site link, this is what you will see.






The "Pending" status is usually replaced with "Authenticated" after 24 hours. With your blog verified by Google and authenticated by Yahoo!, your posts should now appear in search engine results. Look, I didn't say on page 1 of the search results, did I? This is because there is more to blogging than just being "visible" to the search engines. You will find that out as you go along.