Pinging - What is it and why should you ping?
Are you getting frustrated that Google and other search search engines never seem to be indexing all the pages on your websites? Or perhaps you’ve been consistently adding some new content, but every time you do, it always takes FOREVER to get indexed and search engine traffic never develops?
As a business with a web presence, there are plenty of times when you feel like giving the search engines a slap and told to hurry up. Fortunately, there is a more effective way to do it than yelling at your computer!
Pinging your website is the internet equivalent of waving a flag and yelling, “Hello! Over here – look at me!” to search engines whenever you add content or make major updates to the structure of your site. Using a Ping tool will increase indexing performance because it sends search engines and other services a message telling them that there is new content and to come crawl it. You then get added to their crawl list and they will start coming back more often.
Although ping tools were originally created for bloggers publishing daily, they can be used successfully on any website with fresh content, including your Squidoo lenses and business websites. I recommend pinging your home page, and site map, and then pinging each new blog post or new content as soon as it is created. This will give the search engines the best chance of finding new content, and understanding how to crawl your site each time they come back.
The most popular service out there is Pingler. Pingler is a web based service which will allow you to ping for free from their home page, or install some of their tools and ping from your browser. If you sign up for a premium service you can have a larger number of sites pinged automatically every few days and get extra features. Currently they are pinging to 87 different sites, and are very google centric at this time.
Pingler tools:
- Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Explorer plugins/tool bars: Pingler has developed a handy set of tools which load into your browser and allow you to directly ping the site you are currently on. Excellent for easily pinging a new blog post or new content on your site. They can be used for free and allow up to 5 pages to be pinged each day, Paid users get more features.
- Wordpress plug in: Similar to the Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Explorer tool, but this is a plug in for Wordpress which will automatically ping new blog posts on your Wordpress blog. Free users get upto 5 posts pinged each day, paid users get more.
- Pingler Feed: This tool helps users automatically post RSS feed updates to Facebook and Twitter. Very helpful form a marketing and back link point of view. Pingler feed is currently free to use for all users and there is no limit set for the number of feeds you can load.
If your website is new or doesn't change that often, pinging is the best way to ensure Google and the other search engines are made aware of changes so they come back and add pages to their index. This will ensure your hard work shows up faster in search engine results and bring new traffic to your website.
Tags: Google
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