At last count there were more than 100 pinging services available along several WordPress plugins.

Pinging, for the uninitiated, is the act of notifying a wide variety of web directories, search engines and RSS feed aggregators of a new or updated post on your blog. The more directories and search engines that are notified of your post, the more likely you are to attract visitors whilst receiving back links.

The question is, should you ping your blog? The previous paragraph makes it clear there are definite advantages to pinging, there are also definite disadvantages as well. Blog and website services that offer to ping your blog do so by linking as many directories and search engines as possible. Not all services are the same. Service A may have 40 directories, search engines and RSS aggregators on their books while service B has 50. Therein lies a problem.

Many bloggers look at ping services and compare their ping recipients. Ping service A has 40; ping service B has 50; the duplication may be only 10 so the blogger decides to use both services to ping their latest blog. What they have done is pinged 10 of those services twice. Thats ok occasionally, do it to often and you may get banned for spamming.

Using plugins can be a good idea. With plugins you can enter in the services that you wish to ping. This avoids the duplicate ping that may occur by using more than one blog and website service. When using a plugin there is one catch. Some plugins do not check for previous pings, so a simple act like publishing – with an automatic ping, followed by a quick edit for a spelling or layout change, may result in a second ping the moment you save again.

Use a good plugin and it will identify the previous ping and not ping a second time. My advice, where possible, use a plugin if it is available and only use a blog and website service to ping your blog after making a major change to the posts content – in those situations, you want the updated post out there.

We have written many articles dedicated to blog design including a previous post on keeping it simple. With the release of WordPress 2.5 I thought it was timely to look at the basic features of your blog design when it comes to user friendliness.

For whatever reason you publish a blog, the design should focus on the reader and what they need to successfully navigate through your blog. Rather than tell you how to do something, which I will do in a later post, I am going to ask you to review your blog using the following questions:

1. Overall Blog Design: Is your design easy on the eyes – some blogs are either far to soft or far to harsh – where would classify yours?
2. Navigation: Does you blog have clearly labeled navigation links particularly Home; Previous Posts through either Categories, Archives or Most Popular; and dedicated pages such as About?
3. Font Size and Color: Is the font size easy to read and are the colors of the text and links appropriate both in respect of readability and overall color scheme?
4. Subscription: If you are offering subscription feeds – are the icons clearly visible, the appropriate size and above the fold?
5. Comments: are the comments easy to access with clearly defined icons or text links?

If your blog design does not address these five basic design features then you may find that your readers are frustrated, uncomfortable reading your content and unlikely to return again. Your blog should be a friendly easy to access and easy to use site that not only welcomes the visitors, it encourages them to return again and again.

Get your blog design right and you can spend more time working on the content. Design offers friendship – content earns respect – interaction delivers loyalty. Get your blog design right and you have made the first step towards developing a loyal reader base.

Trying to get that killer article? Looking for a post that’s going to get to the front page of Digg? I am probably not going to be a lot of help today. However there is one major point when it comes your blog content that really does need addressing – is there a major point to your post?

I am sure you have seen a great title on a post and decided to check it out. Whilst reading you get that feeling of disappointment slowly creep through you as you wonder – where is this post going?

When determining your blog content a great starting place is to find a main point. From there you can derive a clever title, an opening paragraph that introduces the main point, and an article that addresses that point. It can be fairly obvious when reading a post when the author has not had a clear point to make and has started writing in a random fashion.

If you are trying to gain a reputation for providing reliable content then the last thing you want is to send a message that you are a rambler. I am sure there are some blogs where rambling random thoughts are not only appropriate but valid. These sites are often read for pleasure and humor and are generally not taken seriously.

In brief – what’s the point of having a great title if the blog content doesn’t have a point to make.

Probably not busted but this WordPress tip reveal 6 of the main myths and debunks them totally.

WordPress is really for amateurs: Really, does that make me an amateur. One of the good things about WordPress is that it is great for everyone – amateur to professional. You can virtually use it ‘out of the box’ or customize it as much as your skills allow. There are many professionals who use WordPress as their preferred blogging tool.

You can build a complete site with WordPress: No. WordPress is a blogging and CMS (content management system). There are themes and plugins that enable you do a lot with the software. In practical terms, WordPress is to heavy on CPU usage to be a viable web page. Dedicated web pages are leaner, meaner and much quicker.

WordPress can handle as many plugins as you want: No. There is a point where even WordPress cannot cope. Your server will most likely suspend you before that happens. WordPress uses a lot of CPU time and each additional plugin simply puts more stress on that CPU time. When it comes to plugins, leaner is meaner. The more plugins you have, the slower it all becomes.

WordPress is easily hacked: Only if you allow it. WordPress is as safe as most sites. If you keep your version up to date and pay attention to any notices from WordPress regarding security, you will be fairly safe.

It is hard to find help for WordPress: There is probably more documentation on WordPress than any other blogging software. WordPress.org has pages and pages of help. A simple Google search will find millions of article on just about any WordPress issue.

WordPress is limited to just 10 text boxes in the sidebar: There are several fixes to this issue. The reality is that you can have as many text boxes in your sidebars as you want. The reality. Just like plugins, the more text boxes you have the slower it all becomes.

WordPress is free: I just knew I would come across one myth that I couldn’t debunk. Yes, WordPress is free and so are many of the themes and plugins.

WordPress is a robust and very popular blog software platform that is used by millions every day. There are thousands, if not millions of WordPress tips, it just takes a little sifting to find the right ones – or you could just come back here occasionally.

Too many bloggers ignore the real power of social bookmarking when it comes to SEO and SERP benefits. There are distinct benefits from social media marketing particularly social bookmarking.

Sites that are bookmarked are often spidered much more frequently than a humble blog. That frequency can be hourly compared daily. To have a post ranked within an hour or two of posting can be important, particularly if you are trying to break a story and beat others to the punch.

The most effective social bookmarking sites for SEO purposes are StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us and technorati. Don’t however limit yourself to these sites as other dedicated sites such as Sphinn are often just as quick.

When it comes to social bookmarking, content is king. The aim of any social bookmarking strategy is to get other users to ‘vote’ on your post using the sites voting pattern. For SU its a thumbs up and for Digg, well its a dig of course. These votes are a mark of popularity, the more popular the post is, the faster it will be ‘seen’ by the search engines. With a post that is also optimized well in the use and placement of keywords the position within the search engine results can be maintained for an extended period of time.

Over time your post may well lose the top spot, in may in fact disappear of the front page altogether. That is fine. You have had your hit. While the topic was hot your post was as the top of the results. Once the topic goes off the boil the number of searches will reduce. Time to move on to the next ‘hot’ topic.
If you wear badges on your posts, eg, number of Diggs, Sphinns etc, it can become viral with people voting on Sphinn to outdo the Digg count. One social bookmarking site is rarely enough to get to number one. You need to work the rounds and get a boost from a number of sites. Likewise, you will not get voted on for every post. Pick your posts, pick your moments, then get the boost while its there to be picked.