Your WordPress Blog talks to Google

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 6:45 pm

Many people question whether or not they need a blog. My answer is yes, without a doubt! Not only do you need a blog, but you need a WordPress blog and you need to host it yourself. By hosting it yourself, I mean that it will be on a hosting account that you have with a company like GoDaddy or Host Gator. That blog will also have a name that does not include the word ‘wordpress’ like this one, which is http://JeffAndSharonReed.com .

Now to the issue at hand. After you write and publish a blog entry, your blog will do something that is called ping. The Ping that I am writing about is not the little duck from the childhood book that we remember, but an electronic signal that is sent from one computer to another. Your wordpress blog comes preconfigured to ping several sites and let them know of your new blog post. To find the setting, go to you blog dashboard and follow the settings, writing, update services path.

One of the sites that gets pinged when you add a new blog entry is Google. Try this to prove it to yourself. Publish a blog entry then go out to Google immediately and do a search for the url. The url for this entry is: http://jeffandsharonreed.com/wordpress-blog-talks-google/

You are guaranteed that it will be there in a matter of seconds. With a regular old web site, that is not true. It could take days, weeks or even longer for google to find and index a new page.

So why would you want your blog to ping these sites? One word: traffic.
Blogrolling scripts like blogrolling.com and WordPress check update services to see if you’ve updated and then shows it on everyone’s site — usually by moving you to the top of people’s blogrolling list or putting a recently updated indicator by your link. Services like Technorati spider your links to track who links to you and who you link to; almost in real time.

If you show up on someone’s Technorati link list (often called an “egorati search”) they’re likely to visit your site to see what you said, increasing your exposure. Other sites like weblogs.com and blo.gs list recently updated blogs. Lots of people browse these when they’re bored. Many of the services offer their own forms for pinging their own service.

Jeff and Sharon Reed are Internet Marketing and Home Business Consultants. Now, let’s Conquer the Internet and get your business growing. Thank you for visiting Jeff and Sharon Reed’s Blog