Technorati is probably one of the most well-known blog search engines online. It’s definitely the place many bloggers turn to when doing research or looking for blog entries on a particular subject, but one of the great mysteries appears to be getting listed in Technorati and making sure your blog’s pages are being properly indexed.

Get Your Blog Listed In Technorati

This isn’t the difficult part, getting your website listed in Technorati is simply a matter of pinging their update server whenever you update your blog.

You can have WordPress do this automatically for you every time you publish a blog entry by adding http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping to your Update Services list (found under the Options » Writing tab).

Pingomatic will automatically update Technorati, along with 21 other websites, whenever you post a new entry to the blog if you have pingomatic listed in the Update Services list.

If you’re worried that your site will not be properly picked up, then you can always manually ping Technorati.

Use Tags

WordPress automatically adds the rel="tag" attribute to the categories so it’s treated as a tag by Technorati and other similar services, however, tags and categories can serve different purposes. To ensure that you’re listed for appropriate terms and get the most exposure possible from Technorati, be sure to incorporate tags in your blog entries.

Increase Your Exposure In Technorati

There are a few ways to increase your exposure in the Technorati listings beyond the use of tags, and one of the easiest ways is simply to sign up for a Technorati account and claim your blog. Once you’ve claimed your blog, you’ll have an opportunity to update your description, add highly targeted tags to your blog, and get listed in the Technorati directory.

After updating your description, make sure to add an avatar (an image). This avatar will be shown next to your blog’s title in the search listings, and if we’ve learned anything from the “images next to Google AdSense” wave, it’s that people are drawn to images. Bear in mind, you don’t need to use your photo, your website’s favicon would do just fine (just make sure it’s 64×64 pixels).

Check Your Technorati Results

Sometimes it can be difficult to know where you stand with Technorati, but doing a quick search for your website’s URL will show whether it’s listed in Technorati or not. Technorati will return a result with all the sites linking to you or an message saying the website is not in Technorati’s database.

To see whether Technorati is actually indexing your posts and tags properly, simply do a search for one of your tags, but be sure to wait about an hour first. Sometimes it can take Technorati a while to crawl and index a new page on the blog.

Use Technorati To Network

Technorati can also be used to find other bloggers discussing the same topics that you are. Head over to their blogs, see if there’s material you can link to or refute from your own blog. Also, don’t be afraid to participate in the conversation if they have comments open.

All said, go ahead and dive in; start using the service. When you begin to use the tool more yourself, you’ll start to learn more about its inner workings and how to make the most of it.

, , , , ,