Verifying Ownership Of Your Site To Yahoo Site Explorer

As a web master (blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity which is almost as time consuming. You will be constantly connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog.

For links to some web sites, you'll not use email, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though, with blogs you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

One of the most important web sites that you can add your blog to is Yahoo Site Explorer, which provides you the web site (blog) owner the ability to monitor and tune the relationship between your web site (blog) and the Yahoo Search Engine. When you add your web site to YSE, you add a file of specific name and content, to the root. When you add your blog, you can't do that, so you add a record of specific content - a meta record - to the template.

This meta record, which provides your verification of ownership to Yahoo Site Explorer, may be one of the most important single lines of code in the template. Add this with care.

1. First, and always, backup the template for the blog.
2. Sign in to your Yahoo account (Yes, here, too, you have to sign in! And you will need a Yahoo account, too!)
3. You start from Yahoo Site Explorer - My Sites.
4. Under "My Sites", you'll see the "Add My Site" button.
5. Paste or type the URL of the blog into the box to the left of "Add My Site".
6. Hit "Add My Site".
7. Now below the box where you added the URL, you'll have a 1 line entry for the blog.
8. Click on the URL of the blog.
9. This will take you to "Summary" for the blog URL. Above that you'll have a link "Authentication". Click on "Authentication".
10. This will take you to "Site Explorer - Authentication".
11. Below "How would you like to authenticate your site?", you'll find the choice "By adding a META tag to my home page.", and the meta record. Copy the meta record.
12. You'll take the record as provided, and reformat it slightly. Here's what they provide.
    

    <META name="y_key" content="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx">
    

    
    Here's what I use.
    

    <meta content='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' name='y_key'/>
    

13. In another tab or window, open the template editor window, for the blog.
14. Copy the record into the template for your blog, just below the record added for Google Webmaster Tools verification.
15. Save the template.
16. Back in the Yahoo Site Explorer window, and just below the meta record that you copied, find and click on the link "Ready to Authenticate".
17. You'll now see "Your site is pending authentication.".
18. Take a deep breath, and find and click on the link "My Sites"
19. You're now back at "Yahoo Site Explorer - My Sites".
20. Below "My Sites", you'll have a one line entry for the blog, and hopefully, "Active".
21. And again, backup the template for the blog. Save both backups.

Having verified ownership of your site, you now can add a feed, or use the other features of Yahoo Site Explorer.
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