To Ping or Not to Ping, That is the Question!

This is my first blog. I’ve written blog articles for clients but I haven’t had my own blog before. It’s another world complete with a language of its own. I’ve used various traffic generation techniques with my website, but blogging is a world apart. I suppose that’s why they call it the ‘blogosphere’.

As I researched how to build the popularity of a new blog, I came across the term ‘to ping a blog’. My first coherent thought was “What the..?” And yes, that was coherent compared to well… brain freeze! “To ping a blog.” It sounds like something in a Dr Suess book doesn’t it? “I pinged before lunch. I pinged before tea. I pinged my blog to get traffic, you see!”

I discovered with a little investigation, that pinging one’s blog was simply notifying blog index services when a blog was updated. This information is then made available when people search their directories. It also increases the likelihood of major search engine spiders finding and indexing your blog pages. When I realized what pinging was, I jumped in boots and all and used Pingoat.com to ping a number of directories. A little step in the right direction, I thought.

Unfortunately, when I went back to the Google search page for my search term “What is pinging a blog?” and continued to read the results, I was confronted by cautions about using ping notifications. A number of people warn that 75% of all pinging is spam and it is having a devastating effect on user confidence. Many people filter out free blog services such as Blogspot because of this and there are rumors that pinging may become outlawed. After just having pinged, I hoped I hadn’t done something that would permanently harm my blog.

Yet, are these simply ‘nay sayers’? After all, so many credible people who have successful and genuine blogs have used pinging to their advantage. Some say they receive about a hundred visits to their blog with every ping.

It seems that the internet can be a minefield for unwary travelers. Fortunately, the internet itself has the answers. We just have to ask the right questions. I’ve pinged my blog, but I think I’d better become a bit more knowledgeable before I ping again.