Google has recently come out with some very nifty tools for your search engine. One of them I actually discovered because of scoping the web for any buzz on the wine industry (and I am sad to say I cannot remember *where* I first saw it, only remember it was a wine blogger out there).
I made a quick video to demonstrate how you can pick targeted keywords for your posts to rank well and hit your audience.
Ok, for all you visual people out there, here is a new and funky search engine. Spezify. I tested it for the terms “areallygoodejob” and “murphy-goode” and had a great time seeing many trusted faces and noticing a few new people, posts, pics I have yet to discover!
In blogging, the act of pinging allows you to notifies a server that your content has been updated. The ping signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which continually generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one. A small breakdown of which tools automatically do this and how to do this manually follows below.
There are two ping “camps” on the web. Those ping servers which let other web services subscribe to a list of blogs that have recently pinged them, for example VeriSign’s Moreover Technology. This allows blog search engines to provide fresh results very quickly by polling only the newly updated blogs. These ping servers tell subscribers which items on their subscription lists have fresh material.
Most of the major blog search engines operate with ping servers that gather information only for their own applications . Propreitary servers with their own subscription applications have no icentive to share their received ping data directly with other servers, which may offer competeing services. In this case, bloggers have to ping a large number of individual servers to receive the desired publicity. To effectively syndicate your information to these various search engines, you must learn to ping as there are ping services out there which ping multiple proprietary ping servers.
Ping from Point of Publish
The easiest way to ping is to leverage the ping option in your blog software. All wordpress self-hosted blogs have this option. Other self hosted blogs do offer this as well, however I personally have never used other blog platforms so you would best be served if you contact the “help” section of your individual blog service.
To set or change your ping list on a self-hosted wordpress blogs you need to go to your admin area /wp-admin/options-writing.php and scroll down until you come to the last option, which is your ping list. Here you will see a standard list offered with every wp blog. This is not an exhaustive list! My suggestion is to go back to Jack’s post about ping lists, do a copy & paste and dump Jack’s list into your ping list. Be sure to delete the current list to ensure you are not double pinging any services before you past Jack’s list.
It couldn’t be easier than this to ping. For this list essentially sends pings to all those sites listed on your ping list each and everytime you hit “publish” (which means that when you update a post it is re-pinged!). Each time you post something to your blog, the bots are sent to spider your content and send your keywords, hyperlinks, scrollover texts, picture descriptions… EVERYTHING back to the ping services and they in turn constantly send their information to google and co.
This is very beautiful. And powerful. And easy.
Now, just because you can put this on autopilot does not mean that you may not want to look at the “post publish pinging” services mentioned below — especially King Ping (no, I do not get any affiliate brownie points for any of the payed services mentioned below, which is tragic, I know).
Post Publish Pinging
There is one reason why I chose this wordpress.com blog. To purposefully put myself at a disadvantage and enable myself to remember what I have learned and observed in blog publishing instead of relying on automatic set-ups, plug-ins and widgets. And to show you that even with a wp.com or blogspot.com blog you can still create not only awesome content, but you can do all that savvy stuff self hosted bloggers do. You just need to work a wee bit harder. So do not fear, if your blog system does not allow you to change a ping list in the admin section, you can do this externally. There are free services out there or you can use payed services.
Free post publish pinging services:
ping-o-matic — a solid short list of “must” ping sites.
Feed Ping — by far the most exhaustive free ping list.
King Ping — these guys have a pretty funky set up and a free ping option.
Paid post ping services:
pingler — an exhaustive list of about 100 ping sites, pingler allows you to add 25 different URLs to their services which they ping automatically for you every three days.
King Ping — you can submit 30 different URLs to ping with thier services. This service is more expensive (at $17 a month) but they come and spider all your URLs many times a day for new content. The URLs you submit can be blogs, twitter, squidoo, scrbd, hubpages, ezine articles… and the list goes on. May very well be worth your money.
Get the help from the pinging websites which will ping your latest post permalink and rss to hundreds of websites ! As you make the pings, you will be able to spread your blog post all over the web. This way your blog post will get lot of visibility and your blog will get lot of quality traffic and valuable links.
As usual, I have learned heaps in the process of researching this topic for you! I am going to go back to some of the sites to see which service I am going to use in the future!
Do you have any other ping sites you use? Have you pinged your twitter feed? Or do you only ping your blog? Why?
This post is a conituation of my syndication series, you might also be interested in:
I have noticed that most blogs I have seen in the MG gig are not “pinging” (to be honest, I have not seen very many of the 300+ applicants stuff, so *yours* may be pinging just fine). On top of that I have noticed that people associated with you are also not pinging, which kind of defeats the term “social media networking”. What good is it to you if someone sets a hyperlink from their blog to your blog if they are not telling the world that this has happened? Sure, you get exposed to their readers, but why on earth would that be enough for you?
Same goes for all the effort you go to to give someone else a hyperlink coming from your blog. Yeah, he is getting exposed to your readers, but would it not be more savvy to let the search engines KNOW about this so that say if someone types “[place search term here]” into google, they have a chance of finding your blog? I mean, social media is partly about letting people who are looking for the information you have to offer actually find you… right?
Pinging is important if you want to build serps within your network. Which is why we are here, right? Essentially there are at least 8 of you who will go on to blogging success (for I am certain that blogging will be an important part of your social media strategy). Potentially there are 9 going on to wine web2.0 fame (if MG chooses someone other than the VinTank 4 + 4).
And it is my firm belief that even more of us can go places with this gig up and going (see the post by Caveman Wines So you didn’t get the Murphy-Goode job, now what? ). Ergo it follows that pinging will be very important for all of us to understand and master.
Now before you get intimidated, “master” does sound like loads of work…, it can all be automated, to degrees, depending on your blog platform.
What is a ping or what is pinging?
I tossed the ping question out on a forum the other day and this was one answer to “What is a ping and how does it work?”:
Using my tech. knowledge, I would assume it’s when my blog will “ping” or touch/announce to a search engine or other site it exists. Sounds like a push mechanism vs. waiting for a crawler or bot to find you.
Then someone tossed the WordPress Glossary terms into the discussion, which I will copy here to be able to differentiate between what WP means and what I mean:
Pingback -
Pingback lets you notify the author of an article if you link to his article (article on a blog, of course). If the links you include in an article you write on a blog lead to a blog which is pingback-enabled, then the author of that blog gets a notification in the form of a pingback that you linked to his article.
Trackback -
Trackback helps you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what he had written on his blog, even if you don’t have an explicit link to his article. This improves the chances of the other author sitting up and noticing that you gave him credit for something, or that you improved upon something he wrote, or something similar. With pingback and trackback, blogs are interconnected.
These definitions are not poor and actually describe how wp uses pings and trackbacks well, however pings are *more* than what is stated in the glossary.
Ping comes from U-boots (submarines)–they send out “pings” (as ina noise) which go forth through the water and when that noise wave hits an object, it gets pinged (sent) back to the submarine. This brings us up the first definition: it is the blogger informing the bots (from various search engines) that you have published fresh content. If you ping, you tell google, yahoo, technorati etc to come and crawl your site, index everything it finds and send that information out to whomever is searching for it. So pinging is KEY for SEO purposes — to up your own ranking and findability.
It is also essential if you want to build a stable and strong network (which is why I mention it here). I have noticed that some of you (and the term *you* may mean someone in this group directly but is generally meant for all those involved with blogging and the MG situation) are not pinging. You see, each time you mention another persons blog (with a hyperlink to their blog) this information also gets pinged and this strengthens both the other persons seo as well as the network you have together. Think of a spiders web… when the bots come and spider your content, this is exactly what they do: make connections.
Why is pinging important to networks?
I hope you could see in the video how important pinging is for each blogger in your network to be pinging. It is fine to be giving your networks “link love” by setting up a hyperling in your post linking to them. This is a great way to present their work to your readers — but why would you be satisfied with ONLY going this far and “limiting” the exposure to those who already read your blog? By pinging you are letting all the pinged all pinged search engines know you have published new content and immediately upon getting pinged by you they send their bots over to spider your content, turning over every word, checking the hyperlinks, the hover texts, the titles, the pictures as well as the descriptions to the pictures, the videos, podcasts = EVERYTHING. It all gets indexed and in the process connections are being made (on the side of the search engines) while you are weaving a tighter web within your network. Just imagine if everyone who links to you from his or her blog were aware of and actually implimenting good pinging tactics?
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention: SERPs are the S.earch E.ngine R.esults P.ages which if you and your network bloggers are pinging correctly should start to become stronger for your chosen keywords… (oh, keywords, another topic we could discuss here on my blog!)
Now that you understand the importance of pinging not only for yourself, but for your network, I look forward to presenting you in a new post the “how-tos” to pinging.
If you find this to be valuable information, then pass this post on to your network buddies. Let’s work at strengthening the great work you have already done by understanding and using the social media to your advantage. It is not about working harder, it is about working smarter.
If you have any questions, hit me up in the comments.
* other posts of interest concerning pings, syndication and/or tagging for seo savvyness:
Recently we discussed how to use tags internally on your blog with examples of *self-hosted blogs, *blogspot blogs and *wordpress.com blogs. Did you know that you can also increase your traffic driven to your blog or website by harnessing the power of the “tag”?
Today I want to approach something which I personally have been neglecting with this blog so far: external tags. Specifically — technorati tags.
Keeping in tune with the idea of increasing your findability and reaching people who are seeking the very information you have to offer (in contrast to you searching potential readers and saying “here I am! come and read/vote/befriend me!”–which takes up loads of your time and comes across as very spammy), let’s have a look at what you can accomplish with technorati tags.
Tagging for Technorati
If you are not familiar with technorati, please click here to go there. In the words of Technorati, “It is a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere — the world of weblogs.”
It is a tool that people who read and publish weblogs use to find things. It can also be used by weblog publishers, like you and me, to help those who are searching for information. The way this works is through the use of tags. A tag is like a subject or category (for more information on tags, please read part one: How to use tags–a lesson in organization) . By tagging the post in your blog you are helping people that are searching for that tag to find you.
If you go to have a look at the technorati tags page, you will see by size (largest is has the most posts tagged with that term): today’s hot tags were weblog, life, music, news, blogging… you get the picture.
Over at the technorati tag help page, you will discover the easy directions of “how to contribute to technorati tags” and notice that there are two ways to particpate and leverage the technorati tag system:
If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom feeds (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware, Radio), just use the included category system and make sure you are publishing RSS/Atom feeds and your categories will be read as tags.
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 special link in the body of your post. Please note that two word tags should be joined by a “+”. For examples please go to the technorati tag help page.
* note: to be really effectiv with technorati tags, you must ensure that your blog or web site is pinging technorati regularily… a topic which I will cover soon.
So have a look at some examples of technorati tags:
And here is the beauty of it all: now that I have place the above tags on this post, if someone is looking for those tags they will see an entry to this page there.
Notice how I did not go and find these people, they were looking for the tags (or keywords!) I produced for search engine leverage. This is actually continuing our conversations about syndication — this time not via feeds, but via tags.
Tell me about your experience with tags: are you generating hits by using the right tags? Are you finding what you are looking for by using tags? Are you lost when I mention the word? Or what other search engines do you like to use for tag searching? Let’s talk about it, meet you in the comments.
To be honest, if you dropped by my house for a cup of tea today I would be the last person you would categorize as “organized” — ever since taking up the Murphy-Goode application process I have *harrumph* neglected more than just those dust bunnies who are happily reproducing in every nook and cranny. However I do hope you stick around my blog and learn a bit about virtual “organization” with me.
I received an email request for some lessons on “tags” — how to use them, what benefit they have etc. So I quickly realized that this might actually interest some of my readers. Let us start with the essentials:
What is a tag?
It’s really simple. Tags are keywords you can use to organize your posts and make it easier to find what you’re looking for, especially when you have tons of stuff on your site. Using tags is similar to using folders on your computer to organize your documents. The main difference between folders and tags is that a document can only be in one folder, but you can categorize a post using many different tags, by adding multiple tags to a single post.
Example 1 — if you have your own URL:
For a great wine blog example of organization, hop on over to Caveman Wines — just pick any post and if you can actually scroll down to the bottom (ok, you may also read the post ) to the “tags”, and hit one… you will see how this helps the reader to find stuff as well as helps Mike keep his sight clean and accessible: a user friendly layout.
Example 2 — if you have a wp.com blog:
If you click around here on my blog, you will notice that a wp.com blog does have a different structure: the “categories” are what keeps the *blog only* structure, whereas the “tags” take you to all wp.com tags. A great example can be found over at the not so cluttered blog of Todd Havens — check The Average Wine Consumer and hit the tag “Ashley Bellview” and you will see how a wp.com blogger can use tags to reach an even broader community than their own readers.
Example 3 — the blogspot solution:
Rarely do I find blogspot to do something better than wordpress, however I do like how they solve the “tag” issue by keeping it all “in the blog” — meaning blogspot tags work just like in example 1. For an example of this hop on over to Ashley Bellview’s A Really Goode Girl and have a look at her tags.
Summary of playing tag
Not only do tags help you organize your stuff so it’s easy to find things, they also make it more fun and interesting to visit someone else’s site. Suppose you saw Caveman’s write up about his guest post here and read it. Maybe you agree with Mike that this is just the beginning of a wonderful wine web2.0 era so you clicked on The Talking Stick tag when you saw it. You’d have seen all those tons of other wine pr-related posts that you might not have otherwise known about without taking time to look around Mike’s site.
So off you go to greater blog success!
Hopefully this gives you a good idea of how tags work. If you have a question about tags that wasn’t covered here, feel free to catch me in the comments.
Many of the Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent applicants are on blogspot. This is unfortunate but please do not break out in panic. I chose myself to go with a second rate hosting service (but WP is miles better than blogspot) to show you all that really everything is possible if you know how to play the game.
Naturally those of you who have your own URLs are should be at a key advantage (which some of you are not using very well, others–well you seem to be the true savvy social marketers amoungst us). Over at my blogspot blog (also opened for the sole purpose of the MG gig and solidarity to all you awesome people stuck with mediocre blog-service) I have given you an instructional post on how to create search engine optimized hyperlinks.
Hope this helps you a bit along your way: here is to your blogging success!
In light of the big buzz around the niche of wine blogging, wine marketing and web2.0 savvyness for the Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent position, I present you all with yet another tech simplicity to increase your attractive services in the wine industry–well, for any industry gone online, for that matter!
Intorducing a custom search engine which is so easy to configure while also remains a “low profile search widget” yet helps drastically improve the visitor experience, collects relevant data and presents the publisher (that would be the blogger, you!) with excellent user-related statistics to help improve your own content.
Lijit
Lijit provides an impressive search network creation dashboard where you can define and manage your trusted social networks connections. Basically you are creating your own search engine that searches your blog, bookmarks, photos, blog roll, and more…
But before I write up all about it, let me SHOW you lijit in action — working for the Goode of Murphy:
Don’t you agree: being able to pull in your network to expand search results on your blog is great and an awesome way to increase the power of your network? Social media goes bezeerk with lijit!
I mean, there are lots of bells and whistles, but their big service comes down to this–we can all search each other’s blogs from our own blogs… Awesome!
Did you want to check it out again in action? Try Ed’s Winetonite or Rick’s Back to Bakas. Go on, I dare you!
So if you have your own URL and can put up a lijit search engine, you might find it as awesome as I do! It is a wonderful way to learn more and leverage the power of your networks network.
Now only if the guys at wordpress.com would create a way for the little foot-people of the blog-sphere–I know I would not be the only one here interested in such great services!
Note to Joel: Would this not be an amazing tool to introduce to all your bloggers at the Wine Bloggers’ Conference next month? Just imagine the power you unleash if everyone got into the loop!
87 % of all internet activities begin with “search” — users feel that search engines are very powerful. How are we discoverable via search? Search is the way to be found today (and yesterday): the emerging way to be found is through social media.
We stand on the threshold of the mergence of SE (search engine) and SN (social network). Ladies and Gentlemen, this goes way beyond “followfriday” (which some see as the new “spam”…). This is an unleashing of the Force: and may the Force be with you!
Do you know the Force? It is the power of FriendFeed (thanks for tossing this tidbit out for us, Jack!), the simplicity of Hootlet, the very fact that RSS is not dead! (Who in their right mind would think that RSS is dead, anyway?) And it grows deeper and deeper. It pivots on the convergance between search engines and social networks.
The Share Economy: those who share, share liberally and accurately, those are the ones who will be more discoverable than those who don’t. This is the emerging Force. It captures the ambiguous friendships on the web and takes peer relationships to a higher level.
This brings us to the all important question, the one which will place the “to choose” candidate for the really Goode job above all others: How does one put themselves in “the pull”, the Force, the magical balance between SE and SN?
1. The successful candidate will have built a digital embassy: A connecting point between the “old” and the “new” world, between the SE and the SN. Not only this, but you must do this in all the “communities” and “niches” which matter to you. And it is imperative to understand that as an embassador, you are here to serve the people: the more you share, the greater the quality of your sharing, the stronger your embassy will be. Do you have a digital embassy? (Yesteryear this was MySpace… today it is Twitter and Facebook… tomorrow?)
2. The new Jedi will be a corporate allstar: Are you the lone rider, an ace in your field but a little lonely at the top? Or do you see yourself as part of a whole? How is your networking peer-to-peer? Are you supporting each other, pulling each other forward, or are you looking our for your own interests first? The collaberation of great minds within a niche will increase any individuals Pull or Force.
3. Finally, to successfully be found by the masses, you need to create tools: Today it is Google, i-phone… what are the tools of tomorrow? The key to be part of this developement and innovation. Applications, widgets — create them, use them, offer them generously to those who will benefit from them and you will have the Force.
Murphy-Goode, you are at a pivotal time in your winery’s history, ready to take the quest to boost you to encounters of the digital kind. May the Force be with you and may the Force be with the successful candidate.
This article was inspired by Steve Rubel‘s The Power of the Pull. Special thanks to Andrea Vascellari for posting the video.
) to the “tags”, and hit one… you will see how this helps the reader to find stuff as well as helps Mike keep his sight clean and accessible: a user friendly layout.
