How to Set Up and Configure WordPress

Promoting Your WordPress Blog - Notifying The Web That It's There

OK - having got your content flowing through you need to start promoting your blog - no one is going to find it unless you do that.

"Build it and they'll come" is a fallacy!

There are two aspects to promoting your blog:


On this page we'll deal with letting the web know it's there.

Create and Submit a Sitemap

One of the plugins I referred to earlier is the Google Sitemaps plugin. This is a very important one to have installed and working, so make sure it’s all set up.

In addition – you need to submit your site to Google so it can be crawled and indexed. Here’s how to do that:

Go to Google and sign up for Webmaster’s Tools. If you already have a Google account this is just a question of adding Webmaster’s Tools. If you don’t, then get an account and add it. It's free.

Once you’ve added webmaster’s tools go to the main page and put your blog url into the ‘Add a new site’ box. Click the ‘add site’ button.

Google will ask you to verify that you’re the owner of the site by giving you some code to put into an HTML file. Upload the HTML file, following Google’s instructions, and then click the ‘verify my site’ button.

Once you’ve verified your site Google will keep track of it and report any problems to you, so you should check Webmaster’s Tools about once a week.

There’s an enormous amount of excellent information for webmasters in Webmaster’s Tools – I strongly recommend you take the time to explore it!



Here's a video which gives an introduction:



Next, you need to submit your sitemap. Click your site in the Webmaster’s Tools dashboard screen, then go to the Sitemaps tab (1 below). In the box in the main pane, complete the url of your sitemap (2 below) and click ‘submit sitemap’.


You’ll get a response telling you that the status is ‘pending’. That’s fine – it’ll take them up to 48 hours or more to crawl it. Maybe longer if your domain is brand new.

The advantage of the Google sitemap plugin is that it automatically lets Google know whenever there are any changes to your blog. So once you’ve submitted your sitemap it takes care of everything from then on.

Updating Your Ping List

Next you need to ping places like Technorati and other update services to let them know your blog is up. Wordpress will also automatically ping these sites whenever you put up a new post.

In your Settings>Writing screen scroll down till you see ‘Update Services’:


Note: this section will not be displaid if your privacy settings are set to block search engines. To see this section change your privacy settings to make your blog visible

Once you have that screen add all these urls to the Update Services window:

http://flog.jkwiens.com/ping/41f7b71220d10fd8f8a148aea0179a32/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Be sure to 'Save Changes' when you're done. All those sites will now be pinged every time you publish a new post.

Summary

Setting up your sitemap, submitting it to Google, and setting up your ping list are three very important steps to making sure as many places as possible know about your blog, and are automatically notified whenever it’s updated.

So be sure to complete these steps!

The good thing is that once these are set up they’re all automatic, so you don’t have to worry about them again.

Next we'll look at optimising your RSS feed.