First, I'm a huge fan of your articles. Great information that I'm happy to pass along to readers of BloggingPro.

Second, I maybe missing something but doesn't most weblogs ping your newst posts to all of the major blog search engines? I know WordPress does using Ping-O-Matic. If the blog application does not, Ping-O-Matic allows manual pings too.

Ping-O-Matic only submits to 17 different services but they appear to be the most popular.

Maybe pinging these services is different then submitting your RSS feed?

Hi John!

Thanks for your support. I really appreciate and your linking refers and appreciable amount of traffic my way. If you need my support in anyway, let me know. Thanks for writing.

You raise a very good question. I've also considered this. One difference that can be made for submission versus pinging is that by submitting your feed to directories you are introducing your blog to that specific content community (directory). Pinging on the other hand is more specific to announcing content updates and is an activity performed after each new post to your blog.

The shared net result is that your content ends up in the directory that you submitted or pinged to.

One distinction of directories with ping interfaces is that when your blog sends update notification there may a program (user agent or spider) that comes and grabs your content updates and takes them back to their search results. Of course Technorati , Bloglinesand Blogdigger.com would be examples of directories that check your content.

I can't say if this is the same for all blog and rss directories as I see in my site stats some user agents from blog or rss directories that I've not submitted and none from directories that I have submitted to. And this is the power of live updates via pings. Your content becomes extremely discoverable and finds it way to many areas that you probably didn't think about or could have ever reached with normal web site content.

Some directories are used by people searching for content to subscribe to via RSS as well as syndicate on their web sites. These directories can also provide a valuable link directly back to your blog.

I actually posed this question of the benefits of directory submission to Bill Flitter at Pheedo not to long ago because I wanted to understand the true value of directory submissions. I wanted to know if it was really worth the effort for me to do. At first glance I saw greater value for my blogs by pinging and linking since I didn't see a large impact from directory submissions.

Bill pointed out that directory submission is one of the first steps in getting links pointing back to your blog. While I understood this I wanted to try to estimate the value of spending time doing directory submissions since I saw very little results in the way of links back to my blog.

So Bill pointed out that you may see very little traffic but all links in/out add up over time. I totally agreed but I don't like spending a lot of time trying to submit to an ever increasing list of blog and rss directories by hand.

I like RSS Submit because it removes some of the tedium out of directory submissions. Your weblog software and Ping-O-Mattic make update notifications a breeze.

Of course some there isnt a whole lot of overlap between PingOMatic and a submission tool like RSS Submit so a combination of both is a great idea in distributing your content and getting traffic back to your blog.

Directory submissions are a good first step for introducing our blog to the world and with more tools coming along to help automate the submission process this task will be easier to make a part of your content promotion activities.

Generally Ive been content to submit to a few major directories when and developing good content and colloboration with others along with content that targets your search traffic effectively.

I believe directory submissions are important part of blog and rss promotion activities but I don't focus to much on trying to submit to every possible directory. For this blog I didn't submit to any directories until I the other day when I was testing RSS Submit.

For my success motivation and positive thinking blog I actually submitted it to just a handful of directories when I started it some months ago. Again, until the other day when I used RSS Submit. The tool made it easy so I submitted. :-)

I think the value of directory submissions is hard to quantify on the whole but can be measured and has been measured specifically by more well known directories like My Yahoo! and Technorati.

With some lesser know directories I'm a bit skeptical of the value of links they can provide but I don't underestimate them as traffic sources at all.

Pinging is more immediately measurable and powerful as it is one important part of the "live" in world live web in my opinion.

Overall there are many ways to promote your content and get traffic. Directory submissions is one way that is useful for many to get greater exposure for their content.

This is rather long winded reply but I hope it helps a bit. I'd like to hear from others on the topic of the differences between submission and pinging. Again there is overlap between the two depending on the directory and both provide a benefit.

Regards,

TL

how often should you submit your RSS feed to the engines/directories etc?

everytime you publish a new article?
thanks! i love your articles! very informative!

I only submit to directories once but ping using ping-o-matic and my blog software after every new post.

`T

Hi Thomas:

I enjoyed your presentation in Detroit and would very much like to speak with you asap. As a former educator...but still a teacher at heart...I really enjoyed your ability to "teach" your material on blogging. Congrats on a job well done!

Please email me with your contact info and I will call you and/or email you. Thanks!!!

Glenn :-)
mailto:glenn@AwakenTheAuthorWithin.com

Hey Glenn,

It was great meeting you! Thanks for posting. I'll send you and email asap.

Regards,

~TL

Hi T.L.,
I'm a big fan of your site. I visit almost everyday and have you in my Yahoo reader. This site got me into blogging and I've done nothing but follow in your wake since I started.

Anyway, I submitted this article to digg.com (digg=slashdot on steroids). This is one of my favorite articles on blogging because it is so thorough.

Keep up the quality content.