I have no doubts that blogging and pinging really helps to get my pages indexed FAST. And yes, it can be as fast as 2 days. Just take a look at my indexed pages over the past few days. Don’t take my word for it, download the PDFs if you don’t believe the numbers!

Indexed Pages - 14 May 2005

Altavista - 11 (but I can see only 7 on the page)
Google - 2
MSN - 0
Yahoo - 7

PDF - 14 May 2005

Indexed Pages - 16 May 2005

Altavista - 8
Google - 2
MSN - 0
Yahoo - 8

PDF - 16 May 2005

Indexed Pages - 17 May 2005

Altavista - 29 (up from 8 yesterday)
Google - 2 (same)
MSN - 0 (same)
Yahoo - 8 (up from 8 yesterday)

PDF - 17 May 2005

Indexed Pages - 18 May 2005

Altavista - 52 (up from 29 yesterday)
Google - 6 (up from 2 yesterday)
MSN - 0 (same)
Yahoo - 30 (up from 8 yesterday)

PDF - 18 May 2005

Indexed Pages - 19 May 2005

Altavista - 52 (same)
Google - 7 (up from 6 yesterday)
MSN - 0 (same)
Yahoo - 30 (same)

PDF - 19 May 2005

I am pleased with the number of indexed pages for altavista and yahoo. Google seems to be a bit slow in picking up my pages. MSN search engine doesn’t seem to be indexing anything at all! I hope this changes prety soon.

I highly recommend the Instant Blog & Ping software and use it with your own WordPress PHP blogging script. Just take a look at my WordPress blog Vincent’s Blog & Ping Experiments and you’ll see over 200 entries to my blog. That’s all automated using the Instant Blog & Ping software.

My next move would be to add more articles and blog and ping them to see what happens to the number of indexed pages and traffic. It would be interesting to see how my indexed pages will rank in the search engines.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

I just installed Word Press blog on my VincentRich.com web space. I called it Vincent’s Blog & Ping Experiments. Damn! I should’ve used it before trying to use Blogger for my blog and ping experiments.

I have used it for less than 1 hour and I believe it has the following advantages over Blogger run blogs:

1. I can blog and ping as much as I want without getting myself banned from a 3rd party service. (Please don’t overload your web host though! You might get your site suspended!)
2. I can specify which blog ping servers I want to ping. I was reading the word press documentation and they recommend this link to add over 52 places to ping your blog! Check out Elliot’s post on the 56 RPC and RPC2 services to ping. The default ping service is ping-o-matic but I personally don’t mind adding more!

And the bad…

1. I gotta install it myself on my PHP/mySQL web host. Easy for me but might be daunting for someone who doesn’t know how to do it.
2. There is only 1 blog per installation. So if you are used to creating 1 blog per site at Blogger.com, you will either have to live with a bunch of messy posts or create a different category for each site you want to blog and ping. I create 1 category for each site I wish to blog and ping for and set the default category to the site’s blog category before I run my Instant Blog & Ping software.

Just take a look at the difference between the blogger and wordpress blogs….

1. WordPress - Vincent’s Blog & Ping Experiments
2. Blogger - OasisFanatic.Blogspot.com
3. Blogger - InternetMarketingGuy.Blogspot.com

I got my pages up in a fraction of the time at blog 1 because I set the posting speed to 3 pages every 5 minutes. I see 100% of my posts at the WordPress blog while the blogger blogs have missing posts!

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | 3 Comments »

Here’s my current report on my blogging and pinging for InternetMarketingGuy.com.

Current Indexed Pages

Altavista - 29 (up from 8 yesterday)
Google - 2 (same)
MSN - 0 (Same)
Yahoo - 8 (up from 8 yesterday)

Please download the indexed pages as of 17 May 2005 before the indexed pages change tomorrow.

Ok… I am convinced that the blog and ping technique works! But I have to be honest with your about the Instant Blog & Ping software because its not blogging 100% of the pages I submitted to it. I submitted a post to Phil Wiley’s affiliate forum and someone had a similar experience too.

Just take a look at my 2 blogs:

1. OasisFanatic.Blogspot.com
2. InternetMarketingGuy.Blogspot.com

Blog 1 should have at least 347 blog posts. Blog 2 should have 52 blog posts. I have lost count on how many missing pages on blog 1. Blog 2 has 22 missing blog posts.

My guess is Blogger has discovered we are abusing their blogs by using autmation software to blog our “junk” posts just to get them spidered and indexed. When I use the Instant Blog & Ping software to blog, I do not see any new records in my blogger account area! This is strange…. On the 1st day of my experiment with the Instant Blog & Ping software, it was fine.

I am afraid Blogger might come out with a anti automation check by prompting users to enter a special “code” for each post. Sometimes you will see a weird jumbled up graphic at a registration form and its only readable by humans beings. No way to automate that kind of login. If they do that, I believe it will be the end of blog and pinging for Blogger.

I am moving on to Word Press blogs at the moment. Its a PHP script you have to install on your own server. It is supposed to be compatible with the Instant Blog & Ping software. Since its on my own server, I can blog and ping as much and as often as I want!

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

I just started my blog and ping process for Oasis Fanatic. I created a blog at OasisFanatic.Blogspot.com and you’ll see some of the oasis lyrics of my site posted there.

There seems to be some problem with blogger. Some of my blogs did not get posted! I am sorting this out with the Instant Blog & Ping software author. But it seems like its a problem with Blogger instead! The software is doing its job right but blogger seems to be deleting some of my posts! I saw my posts at InternetMarketingGuy.Blogspot.com and after an hour or so, some of my new posts disappeared.

I took some screenshots of the Instant Blog & Ping software for this site…

I created a text file of the URLs I want to blog and ping and loaded them into the Instant Blog & Ping software. In the 2nd screen you will see 347 URLs in the list. I wonder how long that would take with my current speed of 3 pages per 20 minutes? I am running 2 blog and ping processes at the same time.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

I recently updated my site OasisFanatic.com with search engine friendly links. One of my main reasons for doing that is to get more of my pages indexed by the search engines because most of my pages are "dynamic" PHP pages.

Here’s what I mean by "dynamic":

All my files require a "paremeter" in the URL to let the database know which record to display on the PHP page. Some people describe these database driven pages as "created on the fly".

My Old URLs looked like this:
http://www.oasisfanatic.com/discography/track_view.php?album_track_id=1040

Notice the question mark "?" followed by the text "album_track_id=" and a unique number? That is how the PHP page tells the database to display the correct information with the number "1040".

After implementing some search engine friendly upgrades with Apache web server’s "mod_rewrite" module….

My New URLs look like this:
http://www.oasisfanatic.com/discography/oasis/song/0/1040/keep-the-dream-alive.html

Now my URLs end with *.html and I have every Oasis song title as the file name. The 2 URLs above refer to the same page! These URLs look very much like the Amazon.com style URLs. Obviously the new URLs will help me get more indexed pages into the search engines than the old URL.

I would like to get into Google with a lot more than my current 253 indexed pages. Google doesn’t seem to like URLs with "?xxxx=1234" at the end. Its not that they can’t index it but not as much as some other search engines. I will show you what I mean with my indexed pages.

Current Indexed Pages

Altavista - 23100
Google - 253
MSN - 212
Yahoo - 22900

As you can see, Google and MSN only have 200 odd indexed pages. Why in the world is there a 20000 page difference between them and Altavista and Yahoo? If you look at the indexed pages, Altavista and Yahoo seem to be able to index my old URLs with no problem at all. Google and MSN don’t really like them so much I guess! I can imagine a flood of traffic if I manage to get 20000+ indexed pages in both Google and MSN.

Please download the indexed pages as of 16 May 2005* before I start blogging and pinging my pages.

Current Traffic

I receive an average of 3000 unique visitors to Oasis Fanatic per day. Boy if all my affiliate site receive this much free targeted search engine traffic, I will be rich by now. I have never paid and money to promote this web site. Its all free traffic from the search engines and link exchanges.

Please download my AWStats generated web site traffic log as of 14 May 2005* before I start blogging and pinging my pages.

Blogging and Pinging Will Start At Any Moment Now….

I will first have to compile a list of URLs I want the search engines to index. I have too many pages and I just want to focus on the songs, lyrics and tabs URLs of my site.

* I am almost 12 hours + ahead of the US time therefore when I posted this it was already 16th in Singapore and it was 15th in the US.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Here’s my current report on my blogging and pinging for InternetMarketingGuy.com.

Current Indexed Pages

Altavista - 8
Google - 2
MSN - 0
Yahoo - 8

Please download the indexed pages as of 16 May 2005 before the indexed pages change tomorrow.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

I started the Instant Blog & Ping software to blog 3 pages every 25 minutes to my InternetMarketingGuy.BlogSpot.com blog. You’ll see some the titles of my articles and link to the article at the blog.

The Instant Blog & Ping software is now minimized in my windows PC and its running all by itself. I have 40+ pages to blog and ping and I estimate it will take 5 hours + to complete all the pages.

I took some screenshots of the Instant Blog & Ping software for you to see how it all works:

I used this free thumbnail generating software called EasyThumb to create the above thumbnails. No need to spend money on similar software when this one can do it for free!

Account Settings - Screen 1

This is where I entered my blogger account details. Once you do that, the software will be able to blog and ping for you without having to login to Blogger.com to do it manually like what I am doing now to create this post.

Page Settings - Screen 2 & 3

I set an interval of 3 pages every 25 minutes. Some people recommend 3 pages every 15 minutes but I do not wish to get banned for blogging too much. I am still not sure what the blogging limit is but I don’t want to push it too far!

An interesting point to note is that I selected “Random Text” for each blog post content. I initially thought it would generate some “spam” content to fill up the space but I was pleasantly surprised when it “grabbed” some content from the article content to make it look real.

You will also see how to ping the weblog servers at the “Posting Settings”. Simply use your blog URL and put it at the end of the ping URLs like the picture above and bookmark them to your favourites. Launch your bookmark links whenever you blog.

Crawling For Your Pages - Screen 4

I entered the URL of my articles and the software was smart enough to find all the linked pages to the articles.

Blog and Ping Start - Screen 5

I deleted some of the pages that are already indexed and left those new files in the list before I hit the “Start” button. Once the process is started, the software will blog and ping 3 pages every 25 minutes. You will see the date and time of each blog and ping attempt.

Blog and Ping Window - Screen 6

You can actually blog and ping more than 1 site at a time. See how I minimized the project window of my current site? The number of sites you can blog and ping is dependent on how good your PC is.

Now I have to go for lunch and let’s see what happens tomorrow! If my pages get indexed and attract lots of free traffic then this Instant Blog & Ping software would be a steal at $47 because I will use it for all my current and future sites.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | 6 Comments »

Before I start my blog and ping process, I will first state how I will test my blog and ping software and measure the results.

Current Indexed Pages

Altavista - 11 (but I can see only 7 on the page)
Google - 2
MSN - 0
Yahoo - 7

Please download the indexed pages as of 14 May 2005* before I start blogging and pinging my pages.

Current Traffic

I have 47 unique visitors to InternetMarketingGuy.com in May 2005 from the 1st day of the month to the 13th. I believe most traffic came from this blog so you can’t take 47 visitors as search engine traffic.

I also have 2 spiders visit me on the 13th. They are the search engine spiders from Google and Yahoo.

Please download my AWStats generated web site traffic log as of 14 May 2005* before I start blogging and pinging my pages.

Blogging and Pinging Will Start At Any Moment Now….

I will be using the Instant Blog & Ping software to automate the process because I now have over 40+ pages generated from my Article Automator software. That makes a total of 50+ pages on my site now. There is no way I am going to sit here on a Saturday morning and blog and ping these pages for the rest of the day. I shall leave my computer on while I go out for the day and return after 8 PM at night.

* I am almost 12 hours + ahead of the US time therefore when I posted this it was already 14th in Singapore and it was 13th in the US.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

If you’ve been reading my past previous series on blogging and pinging, you will know that I have a crappy affiliate site at InternetMarketingGuy.com. I don’t really care if anyone ever visits that site because I am using it as a training ground to hone my affiliate site building skills.

The purpose of this new test is to find out:

1. Will my Article Automator generated articles be indexed by the search engines?
2. Will my Instant Blog & Ping software help me blog and ping all my new articles for me automatically without a hitch?
3. How much traffic will I get from these articles?

It would be interesting to find out if it all works out. What I hope will happen is that my articles get indexed and I get over 100 visitors to my site per day without paying anything for the traffic. Its all free search engine traffic.

What I want visitors to do when they reach my site…

1. Click on my affiliate links
2. Join my opt-in list (when I install it)
3. Click on my Google AdSense ads

I am still figuring out a way to structure my affiliate sites in such a way that the entry page is short page dedicated to invite the visitor to give me his email address. Then I shall introduce the affiliate product on the thank you page of the opt-in process. After he has signed up to my list, I will then introduce him/her to the rest of my site.

I also need to think of a way for “back door” visitors to sign up to my list because they did not reach my web site through the opt-in page. These “back door” visitors as I call them will most likely come from the article pages.

I am impressed that the Article Automator generated articles look very good in my web site layout unlike those ugly Traffic Equalizer type of pages with not much real readable content for human beings.

I will record my traffic stats before I blog and ping the article pages tomorrow.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

I just read a blog post by Anik Singal. He mentioned in his blog:

Alright, today we’re going to talk about building an opt-in list. If you’re an affiliate and you are NOT already building an opt-in list, you’re killing your business.

What you’re building is a SHORT-TERM business that goes bankrupt the day you stop advertising.

I have been thinking a lot about my PPC campaigns and I must admit there isn’t much "leverage" to my money making efforts. Once my PPC ads are down or if they are not ranked high enough, I will have no business. If Google decides to change the rules for affiliates to make it harder for us, that only means a harder life for me.

Building an opt-in list is something I MUST do in order to get ahead and stay ahead. I just installed a new newsletter script to handle all my current lists and future list at 1 domain. Previously I thought of installing the WebInsta mailing list script on each domain. But after doing that for 2 domains, I realised its not scalable at all. Its takes too much effort to install it because it isn’t for people with no PHP experience. I had to tweak the code a little to make it work the way I want. Furthermore it doesn’t have autoresponders.

Here are some of the skills I need to acquire to take my affiliate business to the next level:

1. Drive targeted traffic to my web sites without paying a dime.
2. Write articles or autoresponders that sell or hire someone to do it.
3. Build opt-in lists for each mini affiliate site I build and collect their email addresses BEFORE sending them to the merchant site.
4. Use autoresponders to follow up with my subscribers of my mini sites lists and pre-sell them on the affiliate products.

Maybe I should start doing this by converting my landing pages to collect my visitor’s email address and send them to my affiliate program merchant site AFTER they sign up. Now I am sending my visitors directly to the merchant site. I can’t contact them to sell them anything else.

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing | No Comments »