Today we’ll cover a very important plugin that you should get immediately if you already haven’t installed it on your WordPress blog.

Ping Optimizer
In fact, if you have been using WordPress for a long time then by now your blog probably has been banned from ping services and you don’t even know it.

Read below to learn how some major flaws in WordPress’s pinging system can get your blog banned and make it lose precious traffic.
Answer these questions:

• Why are blogs more powerful than ordinary websites?
• Why do search engine easily index blogs while other websites struggle to get indexed?
• Why do blogs attract more traffic than ordinary websites?

The answer is the blog’s ability to PING. Its not just a geeky term. Its a lot more powerful tool and process than you have imagined. “Whenever a blog pings, many background processes happen which get your blog quickly indexed by search engines as well as bringing traffic from many other sources.”
There are many blog directories and ping services which accept pings. When you add a new post in your blog, it sends a ping to all these websites saying, “Hey, I’ve just added a new post in my blog”.

And that’s when magical things happen:

• Some of those websites add your blog in their directory giving you a one way link.
• Some of those websites list your blog in their recently updated blog list.
• Search engines quickly come to your blog, index it and start sending traffic.
• Blog search engines like Google Blog Search, Yahoo Search Blog, etc… also crawl and index your blog which in turn send additional traffic.
• People visiting those blog directories see your blog there and come to your blog.
• Blogrolling scripts like blogrolling.com and WordPress check update services to see if you’ve updated and then they reflect that 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 (http://technorati.com) spider your links to tell who is linking to you and who you’re linking to, almost in real time. If you show up on someone’s Technorati link list for their site (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 the most recently updated blogs and many people browse these to find something new when they’re bored.

Isn’t this pinging service a dream come true for the webmasters?
You have seen numerous advantages of using ping but this same ping can work against you if you don’t use it properly.  Unfortunately, because of a serious flaw in WordPress’s pinging system you are already using ping in the wrong way, without even realizing it.  If you are using WordPress the way it is provided then it’s very possible that by now your blog has been banned from many ping services because of ping spamming.

Horrible isn’t it? But it’s true.

Go here for our full list of recommended WordPress plugins and read more about and download the Ping Optimizer plugin.
Source: MaxBlogPress.com

To your success
Tom & André

2 Responses to “Top WordPress Plugins: Ping Optimizer”