The BLOG AND PING TUTORIAL Table of Contents Introduction.....................................................................................................................6 Just What Is Blogging and Pinging???........................................................................6 Why Is Blogging and Pinging The Newest Marketing Tool?........................................7 What Do The Spiders See?.........................................................................................9 Simple Steps Lead to Big Results..............................................................................11 Chapter 1: Creating Your Blog......................................................................................13 Step1: Go To Blogger.com........................................................................................13 Step 2: Create an Account.........................................................................................14 Step 3: Naming Your Blog.........................................................................................15 Step 4: Choosing a Template....................................................................................18 Step 5: Creating a Test Post......................................................................................19 Chapter 2 (cid:150) Making Your Blog Settings Count..............................................................22 Why Settings Matter..................................................................................................22 Step 1: The Settings Tab...........................................................................................22 Step 2: Settings (cid:150) Publishing Tab..............................................................................24 Step 3: Settings (cid:150) Formatting Tab.............................................................................26 Step 4: Settings (cid:150) Comments Tab.............................................................................27 Step 5: Settings (cid:150) Archiving Tab................................................................................28 Step 6: Settings (cid:150) Site Feed Tab...............................................................................29 Step 7: Republish......................................................................................................30 Chapter 3: Creating a Yahoo Account...........................................................................31 Why A Yahoo Account Is Needed..............................................................................31 Step 1: Create Your Yahoo ID and Password ...........................................................32 Step 2: Security, Customization, Verification, and Terms of Service.........................34 Chapter 4 (cid:150) Yahoo and Your Blog RSS Feed...............................................................36 What Is An RSS Feed?..............................................................................................36 Why Use the Yahoo RSS Feed?...............................................................................36 Subscribing to Your Blog...........................................................................................37 Chapter 5 (cid:150) Blog This!...................................................................................................43 What is BlogThis!?.....................................................................................................43 Installing BlogThis!.....................................................................................................44 Using BlogThis!..........................................................................................................45 Chapter 6: Pinging Yahoo.............................................................................................49 Pinging (cid:150) The Next Step............................................................................................49 Step 1: Changing the Code.......................................................................................49 Step 2: Creating a Yahoo Ping..................................................................................52 Chapter 7: Pinging Other Search Engines....................................................................54 Creating a Technorati Ping........................................................................................54 Using Ping-O-Matic....................................................................................................60 How Do You Know If It Is Working?...........................................................................62 Chapter 8: Using Business Blogs Instead of Websites..................................................65 Blogs Vs. Websites For Small Business....................................................................65 Your Business Blog(cid:146)s Name and URL Matter............................................................66 Finding the Right Key Words..................................................................................66 Choosing a Title.....................................................................................................74 Creating a URL That Works...................................................................................75 Your Business Blog(cid:146)s Content...................................................................................79 Pinging Your Business Blog......................................................................................85 Chapter 9: Tips and Tricks............................................................................................86 Tips For Blog and Ping Blogs....................................................................................86 Tips and Trick for Business Blogs..............................................................................87 Changes to Your Business Blog Template................................................................88 Change Editor........................................................................................................88 Adding Links...........................................................................................................90 Change About Me..................................................................................................92 Changes to Your Business Blog Settings..................................................................93 Conclusion....................................................................................................................95 Appendix 1 - Blogging Submission Sites.......................................................................96 Appendix 2 (cid:150) Weblog Providers....................................................................................99 Appendix 3 (cid:150) Photo Blog Software..............................................................................104 Introduction Just What Is Blogging and Pinging??? There is a new duo in town called Blogging and Pinging. It is not a new comedy team or even a singing group, but a new way to attract visitors to your website and make more money. Blogging and Pinging is a marketing tool that can make anyone a viable website owner. Let(cid:146)s start with a definition of a blog. Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. Ok, so what about pinging? Originally, a ping was a program that bounced a request off of another computer/server over a network or the Internet to see if the remote computer was responding. That same program is now used as a method of informing others that your blog exists and also let(cid:146)s them know when a new post has been made. When you put the two together (cid:150) blogging and pinging (cid:150) you get a technique that is extremely effective at getting ANY web site, no matter how big or small, indexed by the major search engines. 6 Why Is Blogging and Pinging The Newest Marketing Tool? Most of you are now saying, (cid:147)Yea, so?? I can get my site indexed now. What(cid:146)s the big deal?(cid:148) The big deal is that blogging and pinging gets your site indexed almost immediately AND it is FREE!!! If you have any experience trying to get a site indexed and listed in the major search engines, then you know that it is frustrating and very difficult to get done in a reasonable amount of time. After working hard to get your site together, collecting and writing content, worrying about keywords and keyword densities, you are not even close to finished. Now comes the even harder part! Now you have to submit, by hand, your site to all the major search engines. And finally, you get to wait. That(cid:146)s right, you have to wait for the spiders to come index your site. This could take weeks or this could take months. There are some methods that will help bring along the spiders a bit faster, but these take lots of time and effort and money. And still, you can(cid:146)t be sure that the spiders will come fast enough. Blogging and pinging solves this problem. You can guarantee that spiders will come to your site and that you will get listed in all the major search engines with minimal effort and no money (cid:150) in about 48 hours!!! 7 How does it work? The largest search engine, Google, owns Blogger.com. This is the site we will use to help you create your blogs. Google sends their search engine spiders through Blogger.com to find new content. When you blog the content on your site (cid:150) an extremely easy process described in Chapter 5 (cid:150) the URL of the page you are blogging is automatically attached. That way, when Google(cid:146)s spiders come along, they (cid:147)see(cid:148) the URL. If that URL isn(cid:146)t listed in the Google database, the spiders (cid:147)run right over(cid:148) to the URL and check it out! Imagine that the URL found on the blog is YOUR site! Rather than wait for weeks, months, or even up to a year, you can get YOUR site listed immediately! Google themselves will tell you that they would rather (cid:147)discover(cid:148) new URL(cid:146)s by finding links than get them via submission. So, why not blog and ping and give them what they want!! Another good piece of news is that once Google has your site, other search engines that use Google(cid:146)s feed will put you on their site, too. And it all happens at lightening speed! Another technique you will learn here in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 is how to get Yahoo to send their news spiders your way. Just like Google, Yahoo is looking for fresh content. And once they pick up your site, so will others. 8 Finally, Chapter 7 will show you how to ping other services like Technorati and blo.gs. So why would you want to be on these sites? One word: traffic. Services like Technorati spider your links in real time. If you show up on someone(cid:146)s Technorati link list for their site they(cid:146)re likely to visit your site to see what you said, increasing your exposure. What Do The Spiders See? We(cid:146)ve talked a lot about spiders and pinging, but just what do spiders see when they come to your site? Unlike (cid:147)human(cid:148) visitors, spiders are looking for links. In fact, they are not looking at your site at all (cid:150) they are just scanning through your HTML code! Let(cid:146)s take a quick look at what a spider sees when it goes to your blog. Here is a blog about Commodity Investing. As a human visitor, you would see the following: 9 However, the spider is looking below the surface and scanning to find HTML links. When the spider crawls your content, it will see the following: 10