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Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

Me, Murphy And 31DBBB!

I can’t believe it is Tuesday and nearly at the end of the month. I must admit I am starting to feel like I am getting on top of my workload. I probably have taken on more than I should but it makes life interesting. Although, all being well and if Murphy hadn’t stepped in, things would have not backed up. I had it all planned……

While I am behind in the 31DBBB, that’s the 31 Days to Building A Better Blog, I’m finding it excellent. Instead of just posting whatever, I now have some structure to follow. The blog that I am using, not this one, is one that I had waiting to build, not sure just what I was going to do with it or how I was going to use it so 31DBBB is just the thing.

The tasks for the first and second days, by the time I had finished those, the structure for the blog was right in front of me, mind you, it took me a little while for the ‘light bulb’ to flash on. Main thing is, that it did.

Some of the tasks have been challenging and have taken me out of my comfort zone, that’s a good thing…..afterwards that is. I’ve still a little way to catch up but now that that fellow Murphy has gone, then catch up is on the menu.

If you didn’t get onto this at the start of April then don’t fret, you can still do it. Sign up here and you will get an email each day with your tasks and the link to read the task in detail.

If you blog about anything or want to blog about something then now is your chance to start out right, I highly recommend it.

I said to someone earlier today, free is not always ‘free’ often times it gets very expensive. 31DBBB is the exact opposite, this free is so much value it’s priceless.

So do the Nike thing and Just Do It!

Cheers and take care

Carmel

Posted in Tutorials

Ping Without Being Pinged!

Ping services allow you to automatically notify blog directories and search engines that your blog has been updated. The bigger your ping list the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources, so check out the list below and include it on your blog (WordPress users can modify their ping list on the Control Panel, then Options, then Writing).

There is a list of Ping Services here. Just click right here to copy the list

If you have a WordPress blog, you can add this list to the backend of your WordPress site.

On your dashboard, click on Settings and then Writing, scroll down and you will see the section to add this list. There will probably be Pingomatic.com there already, just copy this list and paste into that section, Pingomatic is included in the list, and don’t forget to hit the Update button. Then each time you post to your blog, these sites will be notified.

I’m not sure how well this works anymore, blog and ping seems to have been pushed aside by other things like RSS etc, but you never know and getting traffic is not just reserved to the latest thing. RSS has been around for quite some time but is very much in vogue right now and Ping has taken a back seat. There are very successful marketers who still swear by the pinging technique.

So, to save yourself getting accused of spamming, this could easily happen if you go back and edit your post a couple of times very soon after publishing, there is a plugin called MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer:

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer is included in My WordPress Plugins or your can download it here. The download link is at the bottom of the page.

After you install MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer…..

» When you create a new post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that it has been updated. This encourages search engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly.

» When you edit an existing post, it won’t send any unnecessary ping to ping services and saves your blog from getting banned by such services.

» When you post a future post by editing the time stamp, it will ping only when your post appears in future. It won’t unnecessarily ping many times when you schedule posts as WordPress does by default.

So there you go, blog and ping to your heart’s content without having to go to the ping sites, even if it gets you only a few extra visitors, it didn’t take time from your busy schedule.

Cheers
Catch you later
Carmel

Posted in Wordpress