When I first came across the 'blog and ping' technique a few
months ago, I have to say I was a bit unsure of how useful it
would be. After all, the very words 'blog' and 'ping' sound more
like something my 5 yr old son would get up to in his school
playground! Not a serious business marketing concept, surely?
Of course, I've since seen the light and have started using the
practice - but not to the same degree as I read some others have.
100's of pages here getting indexed... and thousands of pages
there visited by the search engine robots.

About the same time I started to read about the fascination with
such programs as Directory Generator, Traffic Equaliser and other
mass-producing template software. Now, I have huge respect for
the likes of Armand Morin who produced DG and other top marketers
like John Reese who extol the benefits of TE, but like so many of
these new web techniques, I have my reservations.
Here's my take...

Google, Yahoo, MSN et al aren't blind.Nor are they philanthropic!
People search online for information. Period. Yes some then get
their wallets out and make a purchase but the initial activity is
to seek out information to solve the surfers’ problems, desires
and curiosities. 'Information is king' is still true.

So if what people get when they click on the links in these
search engines is a mass produced site with just a whole load
more listings with the occasional rss-feed that's appeared on
more sites than Anna Kournikova, surely surfers (searchers) are
going to get hacked off and look for the information elsewhere.
Which will eventually mean lost revenue for the SE. A page with
yet more links isn't information! And most of the rss feeds are
not unique and in some cases are not even relevant to the
original search query.
But the thing that worries me most about these 'AdSense-laden'
copycat sites is that they leave footprints - that is because
they are a template, the html code is identical in layout for all
of them.

Surely, the big SE's are going to start wising up. If you produce
5,000 webpages and blast them into the search engines using the
blog and ping method (or any other submission technique) - isn't
that akin to spamming? No one doubts that Google and the rest of
the SE's have the technology to detect if a page is made with one
of these programs. My guess is when enough of their customers
(the web-searching general public) start complaining that all
their results return are pages of identical listings and the odd
out-dated snippet (if they're lucky), these DR and TE generated
sites are going to get dropped quicker than a bandicoot on
nandrolone!

What ever happened to the 'information super-highway'?
Sadly, I think this highlights a sign of our times - something
for nothing (enter a few keywords, click & send, then wait for
the checks to arrive) - the quick buck mentality.

Again, don't get me wrong... most of these programs and
techniques are good and useful - but I think they are being used
inappropriately.
I come back to the point I made about the real reason for people
coming online in the first place - they want data, facts, advice,
knowledge. It's no coincidence that the internet was often
referred to as the 'information super-highway'!

So let's get back to giving our customers - our website visitors
- what they came for. By all means use Directory Generator or
Traffic Equaliser if you must, and - yes - I highly endorse the
'blog and ping' principal, but use them for the creation and
submission of content-rich sites people are going to come back
to again and again.
That way we will all get what we want - searchers get their
information, search engines get relevant listings, AdWords
advertisers get quality click-thru's, and webmasters get genuine
visitors who'll be more predisposed to opening their wallet!

===================================================
Article written by Rudi Ashdown and first posted at
www.whywebsiteswork.com/articles.
To learn more about the 'blog and ping' technique,
check out these blog & ping video tutorials.
===================================================

About the Author

Rudi Ashdown
Marketing consultant specialising in helping UK network marketers make the best use of the internet.
www.whywebsiteswork.com/articles

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