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Can A Ping Really Help Your Blog Get Top Search Engine Rankings?

by: Tinu AbayomiPaul

Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

It�s been all over the SEO-student rumor mill for weeks now, and has finally made it into my Inbox � in droves.

The new get-traffic-quick scheme for search engine results has arrived � flooding ping notification sites with update announcements, even though your blog hasn�t been updated.

The question is does this- or some variation of it work? If not, where did this idea come from?

Okay, bad news first.

Pinging sites like Yahoo and Syndic8 every half-hour for several days or weeks, to notify of updates when they haven�t been made, does nothing but clog up the system. It�s called spam-pinging and it has been around since 2002.

If you haven�t updated your blog, or you�re pinging updates of a site that isn�t even a blog (or RSS feed, where applicable), in the long run it�s just going to make it harder to get listed at these sites.

In the short run, you could get yourself banned from sites like Yahoo, though it isn�t officially their policy to drop sites for spam-pinging.

Yet.

True, not all sites that have recently updated lists you can ping to be on are set up to block pings of sites that aren�t updated. But they�ve found ways to block certain sites and users before � it�s only a matter of time.

So even in the unlikely event that you could find some way to make this work temporarily, you�d just be setting yourself up to be dropped, in as little as a day in some cases.

So if this method doesn�t work, why are there tools available to help you flood these directories?

Well, let�s look at the situation logically.

Until the middle of 2004, certain adult web properties were able to create several bogus blog sites � in particular, blogspot.com. They�d found that the links leading back to them from those sites helped their page rank in Google, as well as their search results placement.

Although Google got wise to them and closed this loophole by fall of this past year, several legitimate blog sites have found that they continue to enjoy high rankings for some keywords that are easier to get. Some people erroneously assume that it�s because their updates appear on Weblogs.com and/or in Blogger�s Most Recently Updated pages several times a day.

Having noticed that occasionally, they would get spidered around the same time they posted, they realized that there was a correlation between pinging and better search engine listings.

And they�re not completely wrong � there is a parallel. But a parallel is not a cause. It�s just one facet of the relationship between blogs and getting better results in Yahoo, Google and MSN.

Their frequency of updates had something to do with their rankings, yes. But it is not what guarantees they get spidered � and if the blog isn�t set up to take advantage of the visit from the search engine spiders, they don�t get listed.

To begin to have an understanding of how to get similar results for your site, you have to look at the bigger picture. Spam-pinging isn�t going to do it, and as I�ve said in other articles, there are other ethical, faster, simpler ways to do this.

So what is this bigger picture?

First of all, blogs have a natural tendency to rank higher in search engines because they

Have well-structured site architecture
Make use of anchor text linking
Are well linked,
Are frequently updated, and,
Are focused tightly around a narrow theme, among other things.
Couple this with the ease of being able to get one-way links from several sites favored by the search engines, and you have two-thirds of the formula for a well-ranked blog.

However, just because these sites appear on publicly displayed ping notification lists and other sites that keep abreast of blog updates, this doesn�t mean that you can get away with pinging them without updating your site.

It also doesn�t mean that sites that have authentically updated and sent pings will appear in Google, Yahoo or MSN simply from being frequently updated.

The good news is, you don�t need to deluge the ping sites to get noticed. Doing so is often a waste of time, and may be a harmful one.

Your best bet for now is to continue to achieve your natural search engine position through blogging, basic search engine optimization, and a common sense approach to frequent updates.

And yes, by the way, there IS an ethical way to get into search engines and achieve high rankings with a blog, but it�s not a matter of volume. It�s more a matter of timing, supply and demand. But explaining that process takes a level of detail and an amount of space not available here.

About the author:
Read about real, ethical back doors to higher rankings that the search engines actually encourage you to use, free at .

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Tracking and Measuring RSS Feeds
by: S. Housley

Measuring and tracking RSS while a fairly simple concept, is really anything but. Unlike websites, RSS have the added caveat of potential syndication, making accurate tracking a challenge to anyone but the extremely tech savvy.

It is not unrealistic for marketers to want to know how many subscribers they have, which items in their feeds attract the most interest, or how many click-throughs are generated as a result of an RSS feed.

There are a number of 3rd party providers who focus on tracking the consumption of RSS feeds. Some solutions are rudimentary but likely sufficient for a small business testing the waters with RSS. Other RSS tracking solutions are more complex and while they can come close to being accurate, with syndication there is no solution that tracks with 100% accuracy.

Techniques Used to track RSS Consumption

Small businesses can view web logs to provide information on how many times a specific file (RSS feed) is requested. The logs and information is rudimentary but will give a basic sense of a feeds success. Many 3rd party tracking options have additional tracking information available.

Hosting

The most common method to track the number of feed accesses or individuals accessing a feed is to use a 3rd party feed host. Companies like FeedBurner essentially track feeds based on accesses. The downside to using a 3rd party like Feedburner, is that the url is a FeedBurner url and any PageRank or popularity associated with the url will benefit the feed host rather than the feed creator. Additionally, no distinction is made between unique views or syndicate feeds.

FeedBurner provides a free no frills service to host RSS feeds and they have been proactive in circumventing user concerns. Recently implementing a service that eases users concerns about migrating from FeedBurner. There is a 3 step process for users interested in migrating from FeedBurner's free service, implementing a permanent redirect, and url forwarding.

Details can be found at: http://www.burningdoorc.om/feedburner/archives/001251.html

Some publishers, who were concerned about lock-in or wanted to retain control of the domain and feed urls often resist a hosting service. The new program FeedBurner Partner Pro is not free, but allows for users to point to their own domain, retaining complete control of their feeds without sacrificing statistical tracking.

The downside to using a service like FeedBurner is that some filtering applications used on corporate proxy servers block feeds residing on FeedBurner or other free hosts.

Redirects

Companies like SyndicateIQ have more complex tracking solutions that generate unique urls for each subscriber. The tracking benefits to such a customized solution is obvious. Individual user habits can be monitored and any users abusing their access and inappropriately syndicating a feeds content can have their feed turned off. The downside of course is that the success of RSS is in a large part due to the anonymity. Users don't want their personal habits tracked.

Considering the venture capital interest in these 3rd party hosting services. It is important to note that their value is in the data that they collect. As with any 3rd party service, it goes without saying that publishers should read the privacy policy carefully, be aware of who owns the rights to the collected information, and how that information might be used. It goes without saying that the value in many of the free services currently available lies in their aggregate data.

Uniquely Named Transparent Images

Uniquely named transparent 1x1 graphics can be added to the description field of an RSS feed. Users can use standard web logs to see the number of times the image is viewed and determine the number of times the feed was accessed.

Companies Specializing in Tracking and RSS Metrics

Pheedo - Pheedo creates tools that enable individuals, organizations and corporations to promote, analyze, and optimize their weblogs and content.

http://www.pheedo.com

SyndicateIQ - SyndicateIQ's position in the content distribution chain provides clients a set of analytics.

http://www.syndicateiq.com/

FeedBurner - FeedBurner offers a full range of services to help you build awareness, track circulation, and implement revenue-generating programs in your feed(s).

http://www.feedburner.com

Each individual using RSS needs to make a decision of the extent and importance of the analytics they require. Realizing that any system they employ is not going to be perfect.

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