Verify Technorati Claim Token

Verifying your Technorati claim token is very easy. Here are the steps:

#1 Make a new post
#2 Paste your claim token on the post content
#3 Publish post
#4 Go to your Technorati account and click on “Check Claim”

As a proof, this post was the post I made to verify my blog on Technorati.
My Technorati Claim Token : MNCAHSXDFAAT

Getting Started With Technorati - A Begginers Guide T0 Technorati

What is Technorati?

Technorati is an almost in real time search engine focused primarily on blogs, but really it picks up anything with an RSS feed that has been "claimed" in Technorati.

How do I claim my blog in Technorati?

It's a very simple process; in fact, I've claimed two blogs now with nary a fuss. Just go to the Technorati Claim Your Blog page and follow the directions.

How does Technorati benefit me?

If you own a blog or website, and would like other people to find you, Technorati is an excellent resource to drive targeted traffic. First, you'll need to understand a little bit about Technorati Tags.

What are Technorati Tags?

Tags are basically just a way to categorize something. You can tag your blog postings, images, links, etc. with any tag you want. When other people search for something within Technorati, say "cheese", all the posts, images, links, etc. that have been tagged with the word "cheese" will show up.

Now, there is a bit of coding involved with this, but it's very non-scary. Go to the Technorati Tags page to get the code format that you'll need to use for your tags, or, you can check out a few of the Technorati Tools to automate the tagging process.

How does all this Technorati stuff fit together?

Okay! Here's what it all looks like:

1)  Sign up for a Technorati account.
2)  Once you sign up, you'll be asked if you have a blog to claim. Go ahead and complete this process.
3) Now that you're all claimed and good to go, you can start tagging your posts (see above for more discussion on tagging).
4)  If you've claimed your blog and there's no problems (knock on wood), it should automatically update to Technorati without much help from you. However, if you'd like more of a say in the process, check out Technorati's developer center.

And that's it, at least, the very bare bones of getting claimed in Technorati and starting to learn how to tag your posts.

Want to learn more about Technorati? Check out Technorati Search Tips.

Technorati Search - Tips How to Search Technorati - Find Something Using Technorati

If you haven't already, check out my Beginners' Guide to Technorati to get the lowdown on signing up, claiming your blog, and the bare basics of tagging.

Searching Technorati

You have a few ways to search for what you're looking for in Technorati.

Search by keyword: Use the main search box and drop-down menu to search for a keyword in blog posts, in tags, or in the blog directory. If you want to search for a phrase, use quotes: "cheesey poofs."

Refine your search: Once you've initiated a search, you can further refine it with Technorati's stable of interesting search parameters: authority, languages, and related keywords (takes you to more topics that are related to your original search query).

Search a specific blog: You can use Technorati to search within specific blogs, much like Google Site Search. Just enter in the URL of the blog you'd like to search, and you'll be prompted to search within the blog (that's where you'd enter the keywords you're searching for).

Keep track of your Technorati searches: Is there a particular search that you'd like to keep getting updates from (without any help from you?) Then Technorati Watchlists are for you. In order to set up a Watchlist, just add a keyword or phrase or URL that you'd like to keep track of, and Technorati will update your Watchlist every time it finds an instance of your request.

Use Technorati Advanced Search: All of Technorati's search services are conveniently located on one page: the Technorati Advanced Search page. You can do all kinds of really complicated (or simple) searches here.

What Most People Search For - Which Are The Popular Keywords To Use

Every Blogger wants huge traffic to his/her blog. Although by using social networking websites like StumbleUpon and Digg, you may get many visitors, but this traffic usually doesn't last long and is mainly focused to any particular page.

So to get consistent traffic, the best option is always the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. And even out of these search engines, the most preferred search engine is of course Google.com

So if you want to know, exactly which keyword to use, whether to use American English or UK English (as different people use different spellings like colours or colors), visit the link below to get all your answers:

(The tool helps people to calculate the worth of any word, by it's popularity in the global searches, but you can use it in another way too, that means, you can use those words which are mostly searched for, in your articles and posts.)

Google Adwords Tool

Type the words one-by-one then enter the captcha and click on get keyword ideas
So for the words entered by you, now the results will be displayed, along with similar phrases, and you will see how many people have searched for those phrases in the recent past.
In the Approx search volume(for last month), the numbers displayed tells you the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network in the previous calendar month. This number is specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu.

Another way to get huge traffic, is the utilization of Hot Trends tool, given by Google Labs, which displays the 100 Most searched words in Google by the people of United States.
Google Hot Trends (Although limited to US searches only)
By having a look at that page, you can see what word is being searched the most in the last 1 or 2 hours, and then quickly find out why, then present the whole story in a more better way so as to attract more people. And as the story behind the keyword spreads more, & so even more number of people will start searching for it.

The above mentioned tool is actually a part of "Google Zeitgeist", which means "the spirit of the times", and Google reveals this spirit through the aggregation of millions of search queries we receive every day. Several tools of Google give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for you to play with, explore, and learn from. Use them for everything from business research to trivia answers.

Add your blog to Google Blog Search

If you are a blogger, but not using Google's Blogger (or Blogspot blog), even in that case, you can easily allow your blog to be shown in Google blog Search results. The process is very simple, just visit this page [Google Blog Search Ping Service], and enter your blog's url/address and click on the submit blog button.

Hide Sitemeter Tracker Button

In my previous post, I discussed about the most accurate visitors tracking websites. And as I said, some of the features provided by Sitemeter and Statcounter are only available to paid members, one of such feature is an invisible counter. Although from StatCounter, you can easily get the code for an invisible counter without paying a penny, but in SiteMeter, the code is only available for the paid members. So here is a simple method/trick to hide that meter button completely from your website, without upgrading your account.

Log in to your sitemeter account and click on "Manager" link. Now click on "Meter Style" green link in the left sidebar. Then click on the sixth radio button (For a display of numerical count of visitors).

Now when you click the "Select" button, you will be asked for selecting the background and font(digit) colors. So simply select both of them as "transparent". Select "Shrink width" and remove tick from the "Commas" option. Save it. That's all, go to your website, and the button will no longer be visible :)

How To Track Visitors And Optimize Your Website

If you haven't used Blogger in Draft (Beta-Blogger) till now, then do it right away. It is where, Blogger releases all its new features before officially adding the services to Blogger blogs. To access Blogger in Draft, instead of logging in to Blogger.com log in at draft.Blogger.com

The latest Beta add-on from Blogger is a "Stats" section in the Dashboard - to monitor and analyze your visitor traffic in near-real-time.

Tracking your visitors' activity on your blog is an important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So, if you haven't yet accessed the "Stats" section of your Blogger-account - then do it right now. And as of now "Blogger Stats" is relatively new and limited in terms of the information these tools provide, so even now I advise everyone to sign up at the below mentioned websites/services, start tracking to give your visitors what they want (that's what SEO is all about)...

You would have seen many fancy and flashy visitor counters in hundreds or rather thousands of blogs, but simply counting the number of visitors or page views is totally of no use to any blogger or webmaster. Visitor-Tracking is a much more advanced and useful method as compared to those simple counters.

So here's a list of important tracking websites, providing free and fabulous features to all the bloggers...
The tracking reports and statistics from these websites mainly contain:

1. Of course, unique visits & page views, averaged and archived to weekly, monthly and yearly graphs. (And all the reports are in real time)

2. You can also view the details like, visitors IP addresses, time spent by them browsing your website, pages visited, and their returning visits. Moreover, you can even check the operating system your visitor is using, their screen resolution, their browser with version and whether Java or Flash is enabled on their system or not.

3. And the most important statistical-reports for you are of course related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO); these include the keywords through which they entered your site, list of search engines which referred visitors to your website.

You can easily track the activities of your visitors for completely FREE, by placing simple JavaScripts on your blog provided by websites like StatCounter and Google. Statcounter gives a simple script, which when placed in to your template starts collecting all the above mentioned information, which is then displayed to you. The stats are simple to browse-through and understand. Using these stats you can improve your blogs structure & content. You should also focus and improve the important posts of your blog which bring maximum traffic to you.

The most important tracking site of course belongs to Google. Being a blogger you cannot afford to miss this one: Google Analytics. Although it may take a little more time to understand all the statistical data displayed at G-Analytics completely and even more time to analyse the data and use it to effectively plan your SEO strategies, but being a Google product it will not only provide complete tracking details as provided by other similar services, but it does help a lot in Search engine optimization (SEO) too.

In Statcounter, to get some of the advanced features, including an increase in log size, a paid account or an upgrade is needed, but at Google-Analytics everything is free, rather they even have an advanced beta section for interested members.

And finally a must for everybody is an account in Google Webmaster Tools, where you have to simply submit your websites sitemap to access the most important SEO details.
The stats shown by GWT are not directly about your visitors, but are
You can see the number of pages indexed by Google, pages/articles deleted by you, pages restricted for Google. And you can even see how many website/webpages around the Internet have linked to your website (and to which specific page). How well are your internal pages are connected. And again, one of the most important, you will be shown how many pages of your website has high, medium, low or no PageRank.

So finally I will suggest you to get an account in:

(1) Google Analytics, (2) Google Webmaster Tools and (3) Statcounter

And just for fun, if you want to know how many people are online on your website at a time (real time), then put a widget from Amung.us, that doesn't even need you to register :)

How to add Separate Meta Tags for Individual Posts

Previously I have written on "Why and How to use Meta tags for Search Engine Optimization in Blogger". Now through that method, you can although add meta tags for your entire blog, but not separately for each and every blog post. As you know, Google and other search engines now rank each page (article) separately, so it is very much needed to gain PageRanks for every post you write.

So follow this easy method, to add meta tags and keywords to each of your important post.
Log in to your Blogger.com account and go to "Layout" section.
Then click on "Edit HTML", and then back up your present template first.

Then in the first 10-20 lines, find this :

<head>

 Now immediately after this code, add these lines:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://URL_OF_YOUR_NEW_POST.html"'>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="ENTER_KEYWORDS_SEPARATED_BY_COMMAS" />
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW"/>
</b:if>

If you want you can add description and author meta tags too, simple add these two lines along with those above:

<META NAME="description" CONTENT="WRITE DESCRIPTION HERE" />
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="YOUR NAME" />

Meta Tags - Importance and How To Use

For any website, a good percentage of traffic comes from search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN Search etc. But when search spiders from these search engines come to your website for archiving and indexing, they may or may not pick those important keywords, words, phrases, information from your website, which you actually wanted to be indexed.
So you must guide those search engine spiders, what to be indexed and what should not, which can be done by Meta Tags.
Meta tags are placed in the <Head> region of any blog/web site. These tags mainly contain the Title of the website, general information, all keywords, pages to be indexed / left, author's name, e-mail, language of website, copyright information etc. These meta tags are optional, you may add all of them or some of them or even none. But for Search Engine Optimization, and better indexing, and to get more traffic from search engines, you must add meta tags to your website.

Here are the simple code lines to be added in the <Head> </Head> region:

<title>TITLE_OR_NAME_OF_YOUR_WEBSITE</title>
<link href="mailto:YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS_HERE" rev="made"/>
<meta content="ALL_KEYWORDS_HERE_SEPARATED_BY_COMMAS" name="keywords"/>
<meta content="YOUR_NAME_HERE" name="author"/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content="GENERAL_DESCRIPTION_HERE" name="description"/>
</b:if>
<meta content="SEE_BELOW" name="ROBOTS"/>

In the last meta tag, where "SEE_BELOW" is written, select one of these as per your requirement/choice.

- INDEX,FOLLOW  Index this page and follow all links.
- INDEX,NOFOLLOW  Index this page but do not follow or index links on this page.
- NOINDEX,FOLLOW  Do not index this page but follow all links.
- NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW  Do not index this page. Do not follow or index links on this page.

For any particular page, if you want to add any keywords or if you want to add "nofollow" / "noindex" tags to that page, you can add these code lines:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "URL_OF_THE_SPECIFIC_PAGE_WITH_http"'>
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW"/>
<meta content="ALL_KEYWORDS_HERE_YOU_CAN_ADD_MORE_LATER_TOO" name="keywords">
</b:if>

 **UPDATE: The Description Meta Tag, if not modified, causes a serious error in Blogger/BlogSpot blogs, please read this post : Duplicate Meta Tags and Titles Issue - Solved to avoid the error.

Duplicate Meta Description and Titles Issues In Blogger

To add Meta Tag to your blog, refer to this post: Meta Tags - Importance and How To Use

Solution for the problems:
1. First of all, in the template (Blogger-> dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML) find (CTRL+F) the code for meta description tag, something like this:

<meta content="GENERAL_DESCRIPTION_HERE" name="description"/>

Now put that tag in an "if" condition, so that it will be displayed ONLY in the HOME PAGE:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content="GENERAL_DESCRIPTION_HERE" name="description"/>
</b:if>

 2. For the second issue (duplicate titles); in the same page (Layout -> Edit HTML), click on "Expand Widget Templates".
Then find (CTRL+F) this code:

<a expr:href='data:comment.url' title='comment permalink'>
<data:comment.timestamp/>
</a>

 Replace the entire code with this new code:

<b:if cond='data:post.commentPagingRequired'>
<a expr:href='data:comment.url' title='comment permalink'> <data.comment.timestamp/> </a>
<b:else/>
<a expr:href='data:blog.url + &quot;#&quot; + data:comment.anchorName' title='comment permalink'> <data:comment.timestamp/> </a>
</b:if>

Swap Title Position

Swap the position of Blog's name w.r.t. the position of the post's title, like in the two pictures below:

Before:

After:

Follow these simple steps :



1. Log into your Blogger account.
2. Select the Layout option of the desired blog (from your dashboard).
3. Go to Edit HTML section.
4. Under the Edit Template Box, Find this code (in blue color) :

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

And replace it with this code :

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
</b:if>

And then save it !
Open the blog to see the magic !