In this article I’m going to show you how to claim your blog with Technorati. The reason you want to do this is so your blog gets additional traffic from Technorati. When we “claim our blog” the next thing we do is put in some tags and a brief description about our blog, that way others can find us on the web. I created a video that covers the process which is located at the bottom of this post.
What Does It Mean To “Claim” A Weblog on Technorati?
According to Technorati’s FAQ “Claiming your blog helps to increase the visibility of your blog”. The main benefits are; 1, you can add a blog description, and 2, you can place your blog in 20 different categories (by typing in tags).
A Brief Warning About Claiming Your Blog On Technorati
In my enlightened blogging course, I talk about doing a lot of things that in the beginning do not really help you. When you are first getting started with your blog, or you setup a new blog, there are lots of things you need to do that are very important to ensure your success. Sadly, many of these do not give “immediate gratification”.
Technorati is a search engine for blogs. It is not as important as it used to be, but in today’s world, every little bit helps. Technorati has a process called “Authority” and your “Authority” is generated based on backlinks to your websites over a 6 month period of time. What this means is, if you just setup a blog, you will not have any authority for a while, it is something that will have to build up, and something you will notice in a few months. Another important thing to remember is, Technorati does not redirect your blog when you switch to a new one.
So if you are using a different domain name, and you switch to a new one, even with 301 redirects (when someone clicks a link from your old domain they will be sent to the new link) you will be starting from scratch. This is why I always recommend starting a self hosted blog, own your domain and run a self hosted blog (I recommend WordPress). I say this only to say, when you follow these steps, today, you will notice no difference, but 3–6 months from now, and further own down the road, you will notice huge results. This is all cumulative.
Claiming Your Blog On Technorati
Now that we know what Technorati is, and why we need to claim our blog (and realize that this is one of those things that helps in the long run), I’m going to cover step-by-step how to do this, and the best way to do it so you do not upset your readers.
Quick Overview Of The Steps Involved
- Login to your blog
- Visit -> technorati to signup, or just login if you already have an account
- Choose to claim your blog
- Enter the URL
- Follow The Steps
- You’re Done
Step 1 — Login To Your Blog
You’re going to have to login to your blog to add a link. The method I describe here does not force you to write a new post. What you need to do is login to your theme editor, and prepare to edit a page. For this example, I edited the footer file. (this is for WordPress), you can just as easily add a text widget for this method if you want. We will be deleting this code in about 5 minutes, and as such there is no need in writing a post called “I’m claiming my blog!”
Step 2 – Claim Your Blog
Signup at Technorati, and choose to claim a blog.
Step 3 – Compete Your Claim
Type in the URL for your blog, then it will give you some code like the image shown below.
On your blogs dashboard, either create a text widget, or add the code to your footer (we will be deleting both later), and copy and paste that code into the widget or footer. When you are done click “Compete Claim”.
Step 4 – Clean up
Remove the widget or line of code you added earlier.
How To Setup Your Technorati Blog Profile
You need to write a nice description for your blog (250 characters is the max), and then you can assign up to 20 tags. You might as well fill them up. If your site is on dog grooming you can mention different breeds of dogs for your tags. The more specific the better. Once you are done with that, go ahead and setup your profile for Technorati (your personal profile), just add a brief description about you, and your picture. You can then start to use Technorati to find new blogs, find new resources and make new friends. You will not notice an influx of traffic from Technorati today by doing this, but in the future you will be thinking yourself for doing this now.
Video Overview
Conclusion
In this article I showed you why you want to claim your blog, I covered how to claim your blog, and the best thought processes to do it. I want you to go ahead and claim your blog, and do so right now. If you want to go ahead and start building your authority on Technorati, you can feel free to post an insightful comment here on my blog (which will then link to your blog) to help you get started getting links. If you have a blog, post that URL as your website, so visitors will see your latest post here. Feel free to link to this article and post a comment below.
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ahhh…thanks for the step by step. I had claimed an old blog in the past but forgot about putting the code in when I switched over. Great tutorial!
Thanks a lot =) Really annoying to try to do this with wordpress btw. If you could add that step in , it would help some I think.
Twitter: jasonannas
June 9, 2009 at 9:41 am
Hey Alex,
Check out Step 3.
It can be quite annoying, most people recommend creating a post and putting the code there, but I advise against that approach as you’re alerting search engines, and rss subscribers that you posted new content when you’re really not.
You could edit an existing post, visit html mode, paste in the code, update, then claim, then delete and revert to a previous save in WordPress.
But I think by just adding a widget or adding the code to your footer for a few minutes is the best approach.
If you’re having problems feel free to email me, thanks
Thank you for your step by step instruction. I’ve looking for the way how to claim technorati for 2 days. And finally I succeeded
thanks again!
Thank you for the video. I was having difficulty claiming my blog. Now it is a done deal. I will be sending more people to your page to watch your video.
Lissa’s last blog post..Changing Your Beliefs About Health and Illness
Jason,
I can’t thank you enough for this post. I have tried for about a month to get Technorati to accept my claim. You’ve probably heard the horror stories about claiming, so I guess you’re familiar with it.
For some reason, adding the Technorati code to an existing post didn’t work, so I added to a new, blank post. Then I deleted it. I should have listened to this video first, because now I realize that subscribers are going to be confused!
I was going to terminate my Technorati account, but now that it works I’m going to keep it.
Thank you,
Scott
Scott Hampton’s last blog post..Style Guide: The Active Daddy BBQ Apron
I have problem with Technorati claim. My site use 301 redirect from Http:// to http://www. and i am unable to submit www site version. Any tips?
Hello Jason,
Many thanks for the very useful guide with the good advice to be patient for results to show up.
I have followed the steps and claimed my first and only blog yesterday. My blog also appears in the Technorati site’s blog search results as a thumbnail. But its description shows something else not filled in by me! I think it was present as default before I replaced it with mine while claiming. But when I click my blog name in the search result it shows the right Description filled in by me along with the rank!
Can you throw some light on this? Do I need to correct it ? Will it change itself later?
Thanks again in advance for your great help to new bloggers like me.
Shayyer
Hello Jason,
Re: My query in my earlier comment
The description of my blog is now ok. I updated the Description again because when I did it first the count was exactly 250. So I made it a little less! Of course I am not sure if this was the problem OR it does take a few days to update!!
In any case, it is done now.
Thanks. Keep up the good work. It is really very useful for newbies like me.
Jason, excellent post.
I’ve tried to claim my blog with Technorati numerous different times by placing the code in different places on my Columbus marketing blog home page—http://www.topdogmarketinggroup.com/blog—but so far to no avail. Any advice?
Thanks,
David
Hello Jason, I wonder if you can help me. I’ve been trying to get my blog claimed on Technorati and followed your steps but am not succeeding. I’ve been trying this for several weeks. I don’t know if it’s because I put in the exact address of my blog into the URL field. My index page has two links to 1) my website and 2) my blog. Do you think I should just put photosunderthesun.com and then include the code in my landing page’s footer? This is done in Dreamweaver. I hope you can help. I’m at a complete loss! Thank you
Patricia
This is really a helpful post for those starting with technorati. I would suggest next time, you do a video screen capture of the entire process. That will really help your audience.
Thanks,
Ramzi
I have a brand new blog. I wrote a new post, claimed it and deleted it (after I saw it show up in my Tech acct under claimed blogs). Now another few hours later my blog does not show up in the claimed blogs under my Technorati account. hmmm.…
Anyone else?
Maybe start over and not delete it?
Thanks for the explaination. The process has change a little bit, but your intro got me up and running. Hopefully in a few days they’ll email me the code snippet to insert into my footer!
–D
Since Technorati change the look of their website and their server everything is happening slower. I think that they are still working on their upgrade. It might take you a while before you get your code. Technorati had not updated my page on their site for close to two weeks. They finally updated it this weekend. So be patient eventually they will.
Hope this help shade some light on what is happening with Technorati.
This was a great post for me. I searched around for a while before finding something that turned the light bulb on about this “claim your blog” stuff. I couldn’t find the box to do it until I listened to your video and understood to click on my username. I’ll browse through some of your other post to become a more enlightened webmaster myself.
Thanks
Yup, the process has changed. I didn’t claim a bog for age, now, they tell to add the snipet (a little code) in one of your post and also in your feed to show that it’s really your blog.
Franck
Hey great post thanks!
I couldn’t just be spammy! ;] Seriously though I had no idea about technorati until I read this which I’m ashamed of. I’ll make sure to apply all of what you have said
Cheers
Thought I could add the claim as a hidden html comment in a post, but apparently not…? Very annoying…
This is really helpful, Seems like I’ve done it right!
Taking weeks though :]
Thanks for this information. I just did what is instructed here.
Cheers!
Can you please rewrite this post for the new version of Technorati? I know there’s a lot of frustration out there (including myself) by users who don’t know how to go about it.
Twitter: jasonannas
January 13, 2010 at 10:34 am
Hey erik, I’m actually working on rewriting and updating EVERY article here (just finished the redesign).
Check back in about 2–3 days and this article will be magically updated!
Thanks Jason,
In the meantime, for those in a rush, since I couldn’t find where or how to claim my blog, sign into your account. That’s where you enter your blog URL.
Cheers,
Thank You very much for nice article
This was very helpful!! I spent three hours figuring it all out before and you explained it so well. Again thank you for the info!!
cheers!
Magaly Ohika
Magaly Ohika´s last blog ..Las palomas salvan a Frida una ves mas!
Twitter: KenKaminesky
February 7, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Thanks for the tutorial video on how to claim my new photoblog that I’m launching today at Technorati. It made the whole process effortless and I appreciate it! I’ll be coming back to read you other blog posts in the future, keep up the good work.
Ken Kaminesky´s last blog ..Chunyaxché Mayan Ruins at Muyil, Mexico