One of the most important ways to attract traffic to your site is to ensure that your Blogger (Blogspot) blog is properly indexed by popular search engines such as Yahoo. If you want to increase your chances of having your site quickly indexed by the Yahoo search engine it pays to submit your site and your feed. In this tutorial we will be covering the process of signing up with Yahoo, authenticating your site and adding your site feed to Yahoo Site Explorer.
Yahoo can be notoriously slow at indexing and will not necessarily include all crawled pages in its search results. For guaranteed inclusion you can opt for a paid service but if you follow the steps below you have a good chance of having your Blogger blog properly indexed relatively quickly and without any cost.
1. Sign up for a free Yahoo Account if you don't already have one.
2. Sign in to Yahoo Site Explorer where you will be taken to the MySites page.
3. Submit your Blogger website by entering the URL of your blog and then clicking on the Add My Site button.
4. You will now see your website address included in the site list. The 3 columns to the right contain information about feeds, actions, and status. You will notice that the status of your site will be set to new (represented by a yellow circle). Click on the link to your site or click the Explore button.
5. You will be taken to the results page and should get a message like the one pictured below.
6. From the menu on the left click on the Authentication
7. You will be presented with 2 authentication options. Choose Add a META Tag from the dropdown menu then copy the code provided using Ctrl + C.
8. In a new window of your browser login to your Blogger blog. Keep the window of Site Explorer open as we will be returning.
9. Navigate to Layout > Edit HTML in your Blogger (Blogspot) blog
10. When you arrive at the Template page it is a good idea to make a backup of your site's template as a precaution. Go ahead and download it your computer by clicking on the Download Template link. Remember if you inadvertently overwrite some code you may not be able to restore your template so it is worth taking an extra few moments to do this step.
11. Once you have backed up your site locate the Head tag. It will be only a few lines of code down from the top. Now insert the copied code from Yahoo in the position suggested as shown in the picture below using the Ctrl + V command. 
12. Once you have pasted the code into the template there is still one further action needed. You will need to add a trailing slash at the end of the new line of code to avoid getting a parse error. Once you have added the trailing slash and are certain you have placed the code in the correct position go ahead and click on the Save Template button.
13. Return to Yahoo Site Explorer and follow the mysite link. You will see that the status of your site has been verified and is represented by a green checkmark.
14. From the lefthand menu select Feeds. You will be taken to the feeds page where you can go ahead and add a feed for your blog by entering the URL of the feed. Notice in the example below I have set an extra parameter to handle redirection of the feed by services such as Feedburner.
15. Once the feed has been accepted it takes around 24 hours before it is active. After this time and provided there are no errors Yahoo displays "processed" followed by a green tick as can be seen in the picture below.
You have now completed the steps involved in having your Blogger (Blogspot) blog crawled and indexed by Yahoo. All that is left to do is to check back periodically to see if Yahoo has indexed your pages. This process can take time so don't expect overnight results. However once Yahoo recognises your feed your pages will be regularly crawled and any updates in content indexed. The process of adding a feed and verifying your site will have gone a long way towards ensuring your site is included in Yahoo search engine results.
Tips for Adding Blogger Blog to Yahoo Site Explorer
Tips for Submitting Your Blogger Blog to Yahoo
Yahoo Search Engine Optimisation for Blogspot Bloggers
SEO For Blogger Blogs with Yahoo
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How to Ensure Your Blogger Blog is Indexed by Yahoo
Speed Up Indexing of Your Blogger Blog by Yahoo
Yahoo Search Engine and Blogger Blogs
In this tutorial you have learned how to submit your Blogger (Blogspot) blog to Yahoo Site Explorer by authenicating your site and adding a feed which Yahoo can use as a sitemap to improve its indexing of your pages.
23 comments:
Thanks for tips. I'll use it with my website which I hope works the same.
Thanks again
G.
Great to get feedback on this post. Thanks heaps!
Thanks for your great tips. I have used this in my blog. Hope it works well. Visit my blog.
http://foreverpics.blogspot.com/
Welcome aboard Ravi. Nice to have you reading along.
Not sure if Yahoo! was having issues, but my blog URL wouldn't show under Mysites.
Hi Bobbi. I don't know why Yahoo wouldn't accept your blog. I would give it another go. If you still have problems let me know. Thanks for joining my followers by the way. Welcome!
thanks 4 the tips.
Thanks for your interest jucarii. Hope you will visit again
Sometimes we tend to forget about the traffic from Yahoo. Thanks so much!
The Entrepreneurial Independent
http://www.smallbusinessincomecenter.com
Thanks Sector Analyst for dropping in. Yes you are right about Yahoo which I believe still directs about a third of all traffic
tfs...
looks folkswhat i found...
submit your blog to 20+search engines..
see here-->http://myfundoo-blog.blogspot.com/search/label/blog submitter
Hey Wizz,
This may be off topic a little but here goes.
I am getting an error code on my google webmaster tools sitemap. Here it is... Warnings 1
Invalid tag value
This XML tag has an invalid value. Please fix it and resubmit.
I have two sitemaps. I think because I switched to a private domain midstream.
My questions are...
1) Do I need to be concerned with the error message? (by the way, I asked the question to Web Tools help and did not get an answer.
2) In the last few days, I am getting fewer pages indexed. How does this happen and should I be concerned.
3) I tried to scrap both of the sitemaps and start new but the new sitemap doesn`t seem to recognize the old blogspot domain. Any suggestions?
Thanks for all of your help. All of suggestions have been great!!! Mike
P.S. I`m not real great with the tech stuff!!
What sitemaps have you submitted to Google Mike?
Wizz,
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100 (This one has error message)
new one: same as above with 101 to 200 (no error)
Mike
Hi Mike. Have you tried just adding atom.xml?redirect=false to Google now you have your custom domain name. This will capture the latest 25 posts in your feed. Alternatively just resubmit
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100 for new domain.
It will take some time for Google to reindex now you have a custom domain.
I submitted the new sitemap.
Is this important? Should I be concerned about the error message?
Why doesn`t Google index all of your pages?
Why would I show a reduced number of indexed pages?
Sorry if those are too many questions!
You have been a big help. I appreciate you!!!
Thanks, Mike
Hi Mike. With regard to the error message I would keep an eye on it but once your new sitemap is read by Google it will update anyway and that point you will be in a position to delete the old sitemap that is causing problems.
The vagaries of how Google indexes would take a book and then some. Make sure your posts are at least 250-300 words as Google will often not index short articles I have noticed. If there is repeated content sometimes this will have an effect too.
As far as the reduced indexing it probably just means Google hasn't caught up with itself. I suggest you just monitor the situation. Give it 3 weeks to a month as Google can be slow sometimes and keep adding new content as this encourages Google to crawl your blog more regularly.
Wizz,
Makes perfect sense!
Thanks again, Mike
P.S. I like the "vagaries". They can change the rules and set us back to zero in a heartbeat.
Mike you are welcome. The "vagaries" um ... the minute you think you have found a work around ... the goal posts shift ... It makes life interesting though!
Thanks for the tips..
All good piedotcom
thank u for this post
Really FANSTASTIC and great tips!
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