Want Higher Search Rankings? Generate More Pings.
Want Higher Search Rankings? Generate More Pings!
- I'd like to know what search engine value there is, if any, in "pinging" my site. Comments in blogs and elsewhere suggest that pinging in some way alerts Google and Bing to revisit the site for an update. However, that's not explicitly claimed anywhere that I can see. Is there any value to having the site (or specific URLs) pinged after an update/revision to the site? Is there any connection between pinging and the frequency of re-visits from the search engines? Does this influence rankings?
Answer: It's not conjecture, it's FACT! Pinging is an explicit call to Bing and Google to fetch new content. If you have been following our coverage of the "Freshness Update" with Google, then you know how much emphasis we've been putting on this in 2012. The more you are able to generate pings and encourage repeat visits, the more and deeper you can generate crawls of your site content, and the more value that content is given algorithmically (if it's high-quality mind you).
That's why we have been so big on pushing blogs as the main content generation vehicle for sites over the last couple of years. Regular Web pages do not have the inherent ability to ping search engines when they have been added to or updated with new content.
Blogs however, have that inherent, basic function. Every time you add a blog post, every time a new comment is generated on that blog post, or a trackback is generated, a new ping is sent out requesting that Google and Bing come and fetch that content. It's delicious junk food for search engine spiders.
As a refresher, check-out our resources on the Google Freshness Update and WHY having a blog is so important in a post-Panda/Penguin world: