Avoiding a Downturn in Blog Traffic, Ad Clicks and Revenue Pt 4 - Pinging Your Posts
(If you have not read the intro to this mini-series of entries, please do so.)
Factor 4: Number of blog search engines and directories pinged per post.
To acquire regular traffic to your blog, you need to be listed not only in regular search engines, but also in blog engines and directories. The more listings you have, the better. The fastest way to get listed in these specialized blog engines (and directories) is to use a "pinging" service.
To date, I use three "blog pinger" services regularly: Pingoat, Pingomatic and Pinger, in descending order of preference. Pingoat seems to be the fastest, and submits your URL to the most engines/directories. Pingomatic appears to be a close second. Pinger is also fast, but submits to only a handful of listings.
I also make sure that I add Technorati-style tags to my posts. Tags are essentially a means to apply multiple categories to a single post. My blogging client, Zoundry.com's BlogWriter, let's me automatically add tags to listing services such as Technorati, Del.icio.us, Ice Rocket, and others. On the other hand, I have found absolutely no traffic has come from RSS-listing services like Feedburner. Although I'll admit I haven't exactly done my part in promoting this properly.
Moral of the story: Find your favourite pinger, or use several without overdoing it. Always ping the blog engines each time you post a new entry, even if it's a couple of hours later. Keep in mind that some services penalize you for over-pinging. Pingoat has an unwritten daily frequency. My guess is that it lets you ping the same URL about every 3 hours, although I may be mistaken. You could, however, use the "permalink" URL of a new post to pinging a listings service, if you are posting to the same blog many times a day. (But Pingoat is very good at detecting sp.am. Sometimes a little too strict.)
Series Navlinks:
(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Factor 4: Number of blog search engines and directories pinged per post.
To acquire regular traffic to your blog, you need to be listed not only in regular search engines, but also in blog engines and directories. The more listings you have, the better. The fastest way to get listed in these specialized blog engines (and directories) is to use a "pinging" service.
To date, I use three "blog pinger" services regularly: Pingoat, Pingomatic and Pinger, in descending order of preference. Pingoat seems to be the fastest, and submits your URL to the most engines/directories. Pingomatic appears to be a close second. Pinger is also fast, but submits to only a handful of listings.
I also make sure that I add Technorati-style tags to my posts. Tags are essentially a means to apply multiple categories to a single post. My blogging client, Zoundry.com's BlogWriter, let's me automatically add tags to listing services such as Technorati, Del.icio.us, Ice Rocket, and others. On the other hand, I have found absolutely no traffic has come from RSS-listing services like Feedburner. Although I'll admit I haven't exactly done my part in promoting this properly.
Moral of the story: Find your favourite pinger, or use several without overdoing it. Always ping the blog engines each time you post a new entry, even if it's a couple of hours later. Keep in mind that some services penalize you for over-pinging. Pingoat has an unwritten daily frequency. My guess is that it lets you ping the same URL about every 3 hours, although I may be mistaken. You could, however, use the "permalink" URL of a new post to pinging a listings service, if you are posting to the same blog many times a day. (But Pingoat is very good at detecting sp.am. Sometimes a little too strict.)
Series Navlinks:
(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
