A few friends have been having some issues including Technorati tags in their blogs so I thought I would put together a how-to of what I've done.

The simple modifications I have made to my MovableType software makes sure that any tags I include are quickly indexed by Technorati and other services that utilize tags. Using Blogger? Richard Massoner sent me a link to a Greasemonkey script that helps put tags in Blogger.com blogs.

Common Mistakes

- Include Tags in Your Post (RSS): The tags must be included in the post and not just a part of your blog template. That's the problem that MindComet has with their blog. They've just listed the tags on the blog template and not the individual post. Only content that is part of your post is included in your RSS feed. Items that are part of your blog template are not included in your RSS feed.

- Publish Full Text in RSS: If you are not including the full text of your post in your RSS feed the blog index tools will not see your tags. This is because most people put the tag code at the end of the post which is often not included in a partial feed.

- Failure to Ping: You have your tags coded correctly, you're publishing a full text feed but still nothing? You might not be pinging the blog index tools each time you publish a new post. If you are using MovableType of TypePad your blog should be configured to automatically ping Technorati. If you are unsure you can always use Ping-o-Matic!

- Technorati is Not the Only Game in Town: There are other blog search tools that are starting to use tags. IceRocket is another blog search that you can ping with your tagged posts.

Background Info

You can review Technorati's help page on Tags to get the basics. The two most important items are:

1. Including the proper code in your RSS feed or blog post
2. Pinging the blog index such as Technorati

Failure to do both of these will result in your tags not being indexed. Every time a friend contacts me with an issue it's because they have a problem with one of those items.

As the Technorati page says:

If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware, Radio), just use the included category system and make sure you are publishing autodiscovered RSS/Atom and we will automatically include tags with your posts! Your categories will be read as tags. For example:

<category>[tagname]</category>
<dc:subject>[tagname]</dc:subject>

The [tagname] can be anything, but it should be descriptive. Please only use tags that are relevant to the post. You do not need to include the brackets, just the descriptive keyword for your post.

The big problem with this is that many times you want to 'tag' an item with a category that you currently do not have in your blog software, for example google. I don't want to create a google category on my blog, but sometimes I do want to use that tag. Technorati says that you can still include other tags in your page by:

If your blog software doesn't support categories or you're not sure, you can still participate. To associate a post with a Technorati Tag all you have to do is "tag" your post by including a link with a defined tag relationship. For example:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]" rel="tag">[tagname]</a>

The [tagname] can be anything, but it should be descriptive. Please only use tags that are relevant to the post. You do not need to include the brackets, just the descriptive keyword for your post. Just make sure to include rel="tag".

Your best bet for quick indexing of your tags is to include your tags in the <dc:subject>[tagname]</dc:subject> line of your RSS feed followed by a ping of the blog index.

My MovableType Tag Hacks

I have three MT plugins installed to get tags to work properly for what I need. Your situation may vary depending on what other needs you may have.

TechnoratiTags 0.3: This is the basic plugin that will convert any words placed in your 'keywords' field on MovableType into tags.

PerlScript Plugin: This plugin allows you to include Perl directly in your MT templates. More on this in a bit.

MTIfEmpty: This plugin allows you to ignore certain items if the corresponding MT fields are empty.

How I Use Them

Looking below you will see that the tags for this post are: Tags Technorati Blogger MovableType. I have entered these in my 'keywords' entry box in MT.

Notice that my keywords are separated by commas. This is not how the TechnoratiTags plugin was designed to work. The reason I need to separate my keywords with commas is that I also use the keywords in my meta data and these need to be separated by commas.

I have slightly modified the TechnoratiTags plugin to use the keywords/tags with commas. For the meta-data it keeps the commas, for the tags it removes the commas.

I use the MTifEmpty to include the Tags on a post only if I enter keywords:

To keep my blog design clean I only include the tags on the individual archive pages. The tags are not displayed on my main index page (even if the full post is shown).

Next up is including the tags in my RSS feed. Using the following Perl script I create my RSS feed with a separate <dc:subject>[tagname]</dc:subject> for each tag I provide.

This Perl script allows me to include other tags such as google, that I don't want to create a category for in MovableType. Another benefit of using the Perl script to create my RSS feed is that I am not using a Technorati-specific link. Remember that other search tools such as IceRocket are now supporting tags.

With these simple modifications I am always confident that my posts are being properly indexed with the tags I provide. I hope this helps a little bit.

Notes

- If you modify your RSS feed to include the <dc:subject>[tagname]</dc:subject> for each tag then you really don't need to include: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]" rel="tag">[tagname]</a> in your post, but I do both just to be safe.

- If you are using another blog tool and can't easily modify your RSS feed you will need to include the tag code in the post: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]" rel="tag">[tagname]</a> and make sure you are sending a full text feed in your RSS reader.