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You’re a blogger and are constantly hearing about pinging… The thing is, you don’t know what it is and what it can do for your blog. I did not know either to begin with.
Well that’s fine because a lot of bloggers don’t quite
understand pinging.

What is pinging?

When a blog is pinged, it essentially tells a web blog tracking system that the blog has been updated. So, pinging is the process of telling these tracking services that a site has been updated.

So how does pinging work?

A ping service scans regularly blogs for updates. Whenever there is a new update for a particular blog, that is reported back to the pinging service’s site.

You can almost think of ping services being just like
search engine spiders—both scan sites looking for information, and both report that information back. The difference is, a ping service only reports back new blog
posts.

Why is pinging useful for my blog?

Pinging, in effect, tells people that there is a new blog
posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog will see the ping and want to visit your blog.
Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells
people when your blog is updated.

Those who visit sites with pinging services will see this information in the form of a scroll on the left or right side, or top of the page. The scroll is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and URL of your blog, as well as the date and time of the update.

Who offers pinging?

The answer is, there are several pinging services available
which you can use to have your blog pinged.

Weblogs.com

Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service. Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is available to use Weblogs.

Yahoo’s Blo.gs

Another popular pinging service. This one is offered by Yahoo and has a built-in integration with movable type and other tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the ability to give out updates via Instant Messenging services like AOL and ICQ.

It is a direct pinging service, so those who sign
up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime your blog is updated.

Blogrolling.com

Blogrolling allows its bloggers to manage their
blogrolls(updates) through a web-based interface. Recently
updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site.
Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like
blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Search on the site first for your URL before signing it up.

Technorati

Available at http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping, Technorati is another service that pings blogs. It gets its data from a variety of places and is definitely a site you should go to for blog pinging.

These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services
available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. It is best to sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that your blog is well-pinged. A well-pinged blog will definitely help your blog attract more visitors. So sign up for as many as possible and watch your blog traffic increase.

There are countless methods that you can use to generate fresh traffic to your blogs. Before we begin however, you should understand what RSS means and how important it is when generating traffic to your blog.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a method of delivering content on a regular basis to news sites, online publishers, and other blogs.

Bloggers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed that is made available to anyone interested in becoming a subscriber.

The more subscribers you have, the more people are reading your updates and visiting your website.

The great thing about RSS is that you do not have to create it manually, it’s built into the WordPress system, and each time you create a blog post it will be added to your RSS feed.

However, In order to offer your visitors the ability to subscribe to your RSS feed, you will want to subscribe to a free service such as http://www.FeedBurner.com

Feedburner, owned and managed by Google.com, is one of the most popular methods of serving up your RSS feeds through visitor subscriptions.

In addition, Feedburner provides additional information including stats relating to your blog. You can just log into your Feedburner account and look at your stats and charts.

If you manage multiple blogs, you can create and track feeds for all of them with FeedBurner.

Feedburner also makes it extremely easy to encourage your visitors to become RSS subscribers by offering you a piece of code that once inserted into your blog, will offer a RSS subscription box, enabling your visitors to instantly subscribe to your feed.

Once you have created your Feedburner account, you will want to locate the code that allows your readers to use your new Feedburner feed.

You can do this by using the Feedburner plugin available to WordPress users running self hosted blogs.

http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=78483

Or you can add it to your sidebar manually, by copy and pasting your Feedburner code into your blogs sidebar.php page to make it available to everyone who visits your blog.

WordPress automatically notifies popular Update Services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post.

The Update Services process the ping and updates their proprietary indices with your update. So people browsing sites like Technorati can find your most recent posts.

When you look at the pinging services your blog may state that it has failed . You need a list of ping services rather than just one because of this .

WordPress comes with the pingomatic service listed under options within WP itself. An alternative is FeedShark which pings some 60 services free.

Title Tags

Modifying wordpress title tags within the pages that you will create directly affects the SEO of your entire wordpress blog.

To ensure that these are set up correctly you will need to modify the header.php page associated with the current wordpress theme you are using.

Note: Some of the newer wordpress themes are already optimized for SEO, however it’s important to check to ensure that they are before you begin to use the theme.

To do this, click on DESIGN and then click on Theme Editor.

You will see a listing of files associated with your current theme. Look for the one titled “header.php” and click on it to load the code into the editing window.

In order to edit any pages of your theme, you will have to change the permissions of the file by logging into your FTP, clicking on the header.php page and setting the permissions to 777, so it can be writeable (changed).

Once you have made the changes, you can set the permissions back to their default settings.

Within this header.php file, you want to replace the code that is contained within the tag with the following:

elseif (is_single() || is_page() ) { single_post_title(); } elseif (is_search() ) { bloginfo('name'); echo " search results: ";
echo wp_specialchars($s); } else { wp_title('',true); } ?>

Like I mentioned previously, check the current page before modifying it as it may already be optimized this way.

Click “Save” to apply your changes.

There are a few things to keep in mind when you are entering in titles for your blog posts and pages.

Google only shows the first 70 characters of your title within search results, so be sure to include your most important keywords within each title, stripping away any clutter.

You should also focus on using different page titles for each post, and avoid using the same keyword at the start of every page title as well to optimise the wordpress seo results.

Mix it up and be creative with your titles while remaining consistent and taking measures to ensure that each of your titles directly describes the content of each particular page.

Customizing WordPress

Before you launch your blog and make it available to the public, you will want to customize the way it looks as well as the way it functions.

We can do this by uploading a professional theme, and activating it from within our blogs admin area.

There are also a handful of plugins that I strongly suggest when optimizing your blog for best performance in search engines and blog networks.

To start, you can choose a free blog theme from any of the popular template directories online.

While paying a designer to create a customized blog theme will certainly help you gain a bit of edge over the competition, it can be quite costly, so until your blog is generating an income for you, you can always use a free theme, that is clean and well designed.

One of my favorite places to look for themes is on fellow blogger sites, rather than the popular theme directories.

The reason I tend to seek out smaller networks showcasing free templates is for the obvious reason, that fewer bloggers are likely to be using these themes.

The more common a theme is, the less appealing your blog will be since those visiting it would have seen the design on another site before.

One thing that many new bloggers tend to overlook is the unique factor.

Here are a few of the places that I scour for new blog theme releases. Some of these sites offer affordable pay-to-use themes as well, which can be a wise investment and a lot cheaper than paying for a custom design.

http://www.BlogOhBlog.com

Explore the archives for previous releases that are hidden away. Fewer bloggers will notice them, and the quality of Blog Oh Blogs themes is very impressive and easy to work with.

http://www.WPSalon.com

http://www.BloggingPro.com (search the archives)

http://www.BlogsTheme.com

If you are good with editing CSS and HTML, you could choose to purchase one of the more popular premium themes such as the widely used “Revolution” theme by Brian Gardner, but I only suggest using these themes if you have the ability to customize them so they don’t look like the thousands of others using them.

Setting Up Your Twitter Account

In order to begin using Twitter to broadcast your messages, attract new website visitors and potential customers, you will need to create a free Twitter account.

Here’s how to set it up:

Visit http://www.Twitter.com

Click on the “Join For Free” link to get started.

I do suggest using your real name on Twitter if you are comfortable with doing that, or another name that represents your brand, website or blog.

Once you have created your account you will be able to log in immediately.

The first thing you should do is create your Twitter profile.
To begin, click on the “Settings” link in the navigation bar on the top right corner of your Twitter account.

On the profile page you see various options including “Account, Password, Devices, Notices, Picture and Design”.

To begin, click on the Account tab. You should take a few minutes go o over the various options and fill out your account information.

This includes:

Name: Once again, I suggest entering in your real name so that people can easily recognize who you are.

Username: Whatever you choose here will become part of your unique Twitter link that directs people to your front page so they can choose to follow you or read your current updates.

Example: http://www.Twitter.com/YOUR-USERNAME

Since your username is part of your twitter link, choose carefully!

Email Address: Enter in a valid email address. This will not be visible to your followers.

Time Zone: Select the time zone applicable to your location. This is important if you want to read notices according to your actual time.

More Info URL: This link will appear on your profile page so be sure to choose a valid URL that will direct people to your website or blog. It will count as a back-link to your website.

Online Bio: Write a few lines that describe who you are and what you do. Your bio page is limited to only 160 characters.

Location: You can choose to leave this blank or enter in your country or city.

Language: Choose your preferred language.

If you select to keep your updates private, only people that you have manually approved will be able to follow your updates.

If you plan to use Twitter to promote your websites, blog and general activity, you will want to leave this box un-checked.

The next tab on the top is marked “Password”. If you ever wish to update your password for security purposes, this Is where you would do it.

Twitter devices

Twitter offers the ability to receive updates via your cell phone or through Instant Messenger such as gTalk.

You can use Twitter mobile regardless where you live, but you need to ensure that you add your country code with your direct number.

You can visit the following site for help locating your country code:

http://www.consumer.att.com/global/english/country_codes.html

Once you have entered in your mobile number, you will need to confirm it before you can receive mobile updates.

The verification code will be sent to your phone number, and you will need to enter it into the site before your phone is activated.You should also check with your service provider to determine ifany charges will be applied.

For more blogging success tips on twitter and microblogs, visit
BlogSuccessmachine

The most popular microblogging service currently online can be found at http://www.twitter.com

Twitter is also considered to be the pioneer of microblogging, as it was one of the first to receive attention from thousands of bloggers and online businesses when it first started.

Twitter is an online social community that allows you to broadcast short messages and updates to those on your list. The people who are able to see these updates are called “Followers”. Just the same you can also choose the people you wish to follow and be added to their list as well.

Twitter is a very simple program to use, in comparison with the never-ending options available on social sites like Facebook or MySpace. It is also one of the fastest ways to get your message across by simply typing in a line or two of your current activity, launch or project and having it shown across your network of followers and friends.

If you are limited on time and are interested in joining only one microblogging network, I highly suggest choosing Twitter simply due to its popularity and global outreach.

As a member of the Twitter community, you should spend some time learning the lingo and the controls, so you can take advantage of the many features that Twitter offers.

Here is a quick overview of some of the things you should know:

With Twitter, whenever you post an update or send a message out, it’s called a “tweet”.

Twitter features an instant URL shortener, so each time you include a URL within your tweet, it will be converted into a Posting links within your tweets will automatically convert them to clickable hyperlinks, however these are no-follow meaning that you cannot get back links from posting URL’s in your tweets.

http://www.TinyURL.com/is the service they use.

Twitter’s traffic comes from SMS, Instant Message, Mobile Web, and all those wonderful API projects out there. About 60% of Twitters’ web traffic comes from outside the United States.

A popular term within microblogging communities is what is referred to as “lifestreams”. Lifestreaming is simply a collection of information about you, compiled from various microblogging networks and social communities that you are a part of.

The difference between microblogging and lifestreaming is in the way the content is delivered. With Microblogging, you are posting direct messages to your subscribers, followers and readers, while lifestreaming compiles the updates and other media that you have developed and links them together into a single, ongoing stream of current information.

And with over 250 microblogging services available, there are no shortage of options in which you can connect with friends, family, co-workers, employees, and customers.

Here are a few ways that marketers are using to take advantage of the global popularity of microblogging and apply it to their business:

Instantly generate interest in your products and services at absolutely no cost.

Maximize your income by expanding your outreach through the use of micro-blogging communities.

Build a list of active subscribers and increase retention by allowing your followers and community members to get to know you on a more personal basis. It’s the perfect branding tool.

Instantly announce the launch of new projects and generate feedback, or develop a team of beta testers easily. Limit exposure to specific microblogging communities as test promotions to determine how well they do, before expanding your marketing, or purchasing advertising.

Build a brand for yourself and your business effortlessly by repeatedly placing yourself in front of a crowd of potential customers.

Establish or build relationships with potential Joint Venture partners, and other like-minded individuals for possible partnership and mutual promotion.

You can poll and survey a large network of users by posting questions relating to product ideas currently in development, or generate new ideas from posts, questions and messages from others in your industry.

The more contacts that decide to follow your updates, the greater your outreach will be. This is why it’s so important that you do your best to allow your personality to shine through.

WordPress Search Engine Optimization

Once your WordPress blog has been installed, there are a few things you need to do in order to ensure that it is optimized for the search engines.

To begin, log into your WordPress admin panel and click on the Settings tab. Under General Settings make sure that you enter in your blog title and tagline.

For your blog title, do not just enter in your domain name but instead focus on entering in keywords that relate to the theme of your blog based on the content you intend to create.

For example, if I was creating a blog that focused on the parenting niche, my blog title might be something like this:

Parenting Pulse: From Diapers To College, Parenting Tips For New Mothers

Just the same, my tagline would also incorporate my keywords:

Example: Parenting Tips And Information For Parents

Next, make sure that your WordPress address is correct, and that you enter in a valid email address as well.

Under the “Membership” option click both fields, “Anyone Can Register” and “User Must Be Registered And logged In To Comment”.

Then, click Save Changes.

Next, click on the Writing tab to configure this area.

Within the Writing section, you will want to add a list of blog ping services.

Pinging your blog simply means that each time you update it, you are able to send an alert out to blog directories and news sites telling them that your blog has fresh content.

This is a very important step, because just by notifying these ping services that your blog has been modified can result in increased traffic. However when you get the default version of WordPress, it only has one ping service listed. This is not enough on its own.

I did not know that at the beginning and how crucial this is for blog marketing. Sometimes these ping services get hammered with all the blogs out there so you get failure messages at times when you make a post and publish it. This is normal with everyone else trying to ping also.

We will discuss this in depth later on, but for now copy the ping service list below and enter it into the text box at the very bottom of the Writing sections’ page.

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

Click Update Services when you are finished.

The “No Ping Wait” plugin that you uploaded to your blog will ensure that your blog sends out pings immediately after each update, rather than delays in between ping updates.

For a more comprehensive list of ping services to get you noticed in web search engine submissions go to
BlogSuccessMachine

In the second part of this topic we are going to modify the basic free package from WordPress so that we get more love from Google by making our blog search engine friendly. For the purposes of website traffic marketing we need to add the proper function. We do this with bits of code known as plugins.

Plugins

Once you have uploaded a theme of your choice, it’s time to download and install a handful of plugins.

Here are the ones we will start with:

All In One SEO Pack

http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/

This is one plugin everyone should install. WordPress does not come in a friendly enough state when you first download it.

Google XML SiteMap

http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

Related Posts Plugin

http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/archives/2006/02/02/wordpress-related-entries-20/

No Ping Wait Plugin

http://onemansblog.com/2007/04/15/no-ping-wait-wordpress-plugin/

Once you have downloaded these plugins, upload them into your WordPress wp-content/plugins directory.

Then, log into your WordPress admin panel at http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin and click on “Plugins” to load the listing of plugins and the activation link that will appear next to each one.

Make sure to activate every plugin before moving on to the next step. I will add some video content for these posts so that you can follow by pausing and repeating as many times as you like.

There are many additional plugins but when wordpress ugrades come regularly, some of these plugins won’t function with the newer versions.

To find out more about optimizing your blog to make money, head over to
BlogSuccessMachine

Installing a WordPress blog

Once your domain name and hosting account are all set up and ready to go, we will go to a folder on your desktop where you download WordPress. To download wordpress got to http://www.wordpress.org

Unzip the wordpress file (you can use a free version of www.Winzip.com if you need to), and upload the files to your hosting account.

In order to do this quickly, you will need to set an FTP account with a program such as http://filezilla-project.org/ (a free service).

Follow their instructions to download and configure the FTP client, so that you are able to connect to your hosting account. You can also contact your Host for personal help if you need it.

When you do connect to your hosting account via FTP, you will see a directory structure that includes a folder called: public_html

This is where you would upload all of the WordPress files, in the event you want your blog to appear immediately when someone visits your domain name.

For a quick start guide to installing WordPress, I recommend reading their Five Minute Installation tutorial available at:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install

You should be able to install WordPress within 30 minutes or less, following the documentation available on WordPress.orgs’ website. If you need help, WordPress offers a public forum where you can post your questions.

Customizing WordPress

Before you launch your blog and make it available to the public, you will want to customize the way it looks as well as the way it functions. Also this will increase site traffic to websites in general. WordPress is not set up to the max where seo is concerned.Of course you may not want a blog to make money but you should still set it up so that posts are easily seen in Google.