Yahoo Webmaster Tool Site Registration: Telling Yahoo About Your Web Site

For several years Google has used several webmaster tools to help everyone tell Google about their websites. Now Yahoo has finally started that process with a service to register a website with the Yahoo Site Explorer. >> Keep in mind to do all these things you’ll need a Yahoo ID that gives you access to pretty much their entire network.

#1 - Insert the URL of the site, in my case the Rich Sage was entered, and then press “Authenticate”.

Click below to continue setting up Yahoo’s Site Registration Tool…

#2 - Following that, you’ve got two options -first you can insert a code to the META tags and then proceed with authentication or a simple file upload to the root of the web site directory will work as well. I opted for the file upload. Just paste the given code into NOTEPAD and save the file as an HTML file with the name given. There’s no need to download any files -just create it in 10 seconds.

#3 - You’ve saved the file to the desktop or a directory area for the site with the given name, that’s rather long, ending with .html –make sure it ends in HTML!

#4 - Now you are ready to upload. Which I have done below. I’ve erased the file name, but you get the idea. Just put it in the root area of the hosting folder and you are ready to proceed.

#5 - The last step in the process is to return to Yahoo’s Site Explorer and press “authenticate” which they do in less than 24 hours. You will then get a clear indication of what Yahoo has indexed, the incoming links, which you will find are coming from surprising corners of the web, and even details on sub-domains.

When all is done, you’ll get a “Pending Authentication” message, which is replaced by the site details the next time you visit Yahoo Site Explorer.

If you are running WordPress, there is another aspect of this that you need to check. I have recommended Google xML SiteMap plug-in which creates a sitemap that is also Yahoo compliant. Make sure that is working. Those are the details Yahoo will display from your website. Yahoo crawlers will use that file to capture all the details, especially from the posts that are done daily.

#6 - Register your sitemap

I’ve seen in my WordPress administration area that on occasion the sitemap to Yahoo is not automatically sent, as the plug-in (Google xML Sitemaps) does with Google. To insure that there is no problem, I took the above step to register the xML file. You just need to enter the location and press “Add Feed’ and you’re done. I am sure that this is just the beginning for Yahoo’s webmaster tools. To be a serious force in the search business, Yahoo will have to have an arsenal of tools to help catelog and sort the vast ‘net. I hope this is just their start!
Success with your traffic building,

Rich Sage