I finally claimed my blog.
It was a relief. I was just doing one wrong thing and I corrected that.I have read about people waiting for ages to get their blogs claimed at Technorati. And they were still going nowhere with what they had written. I was lucky I suppose, or rather shall I say .. prepared.
I appreciate the leads I got from various articles regarding claiming blogs at Technorati.It helped. But none of the mentioned solutions were helping me solve my problem. After successfully claiming my blog, I decided to write an article regarding the problems that I faced and how I got through it.
I have not seen this solution in any website or a blog till now. So I decided to let you all know in this article with the help of screenshots. The following worked for me and I hope it works for you too.
I had two things with me before I started with claiming my blog.
1) My blog was about 8 months old. Not to focus on eight but I think that a blog must be some months old. Not sure about this though.
2) My blog had a good amount of articles in it.
I have mentioned these two points because I believe that a blog must have a good lot of articles in it to get crawled through by Technorati.
I had read that Technorati had done some changes in their 'claiming' process. Because of which many users were not able to claim their blogs. Whatever the reason is, I am of the opinion that the above two points must be considered while getting started with the claim process.
So I started out with the process. Here are the following steps:
1) Go to Technorati
2) Click on Join after which you would be taken to a page to fill information about certain things.
3) Below in the page you would need to enter the blog URL address that you need to claim. After entering the correct details, you would get the following at the bottom of the webpage
4) After hitting on 'Check Claim', you will get a 12-digit alphanumeric code and they would tell you to do the following,
5) The three words 'new blog post' in the image are very important. I have read about so many people inserting their claim code in their existing blog and then reporting that the claim process doesn't work. To avoid this situation, create a new post and in the post content put only the claim code and nothing else. For my blog, I had kept the post title as 'Technorati Claim Blog - 12-digit code'. This is not a defined format though.
6) Make sure that this new post appears in your RSS feed(to check click on the RSS Feed button on your blog). This is one of the condition's that I have read in other blogs. After clicking on 'Verify claim Token' you would get the below as seen,
7) They mention that it takes them 24-48 hours for evaluation but usually it happens quickly and then you get a mail. If everything is fine, you would see the below,
If you don't see this image, then, well something is wrong. And you will get this message when you have not followed the process correctly. It may so happen that you are entering the correct information they need it in a different format.
Twice I couldn't successfully claim my blog and I didn't know where I was going wrong. However, the most important and crucial details that Technorati would need is your blog address and your RSS feed URL. So I knew that something may be wrong in those two fields.
The error that I received was a fault with my feed address. Technorati then gave me a website name wherein I could validate if my feel URL was indeed a correct one or not. The website name is http://validator.w3.org/feed/.
On validation, the website gives a validated path. I just entered that path in my feed URL and viola !!! it worked. I received a mail in some time and the following lines were written in it,
'This is an automatically-generated email.
Congratulations, your claim is now complete! Please allow 24 to 48 hours for Authority and recent posts to begin showing for your site now that it has been successfully claimed. Once they are there, we will update your site's Authority once per day.
At first you may not see your site listed in the Technorati Blog Directory for all of the categories you've selected. As you write blog posts around those topics, you should see your Topical Authority in those categories begin to rise.'
I read some few points when I was trying to claim my blog. You may try these things to help claim your blog.
1) The 'Allow Blog Feed' option must have the selected option as 'Full'. Blogger users can find it in 'Other' options under 'Settings'.
2) One user had given his URL address that started with 'www'. It worked for him. That's what he said.
3) The fresh new blog post that contains the Claim Token must be visible under your RSS feed.
4) Pray and cross your fingers ;)
I have mentioned in detail whatever I could with my claiming experience. Feel free to comment :)