To ping or not to ping: your blog

Here is some technical stuff related to this blog that I hope will help others in promoting their blogs.  I am not an expert, but I uses practices learned from research on the web. 

At the beginning of this new year I revamped my website so I could get my comments working again.  I had to redo my blog design this time using blogger's built in template designer.  Using the old website layout I attempted to tweak the new layout to look like what I originally created in Artisteer.  My results I think turned out well.

I also tweaked my html to hide the blogger toolbar, create custom width, dictate the look of the menu for the blog pages and added SEO tweaks to promote this blogger built blog better.  In addition I added a comment management system to the blog from IntenseDebate and static pages that are accessible through the horizontal menu on the website.

I added the website to Feedburner and have listed nztrip2011.com on a few blogging  directories.  My Feedburner rss is used as my rss feed when I am asked on any site for the website's rss feed. 

So, what I wanted to discuss is my method of posting.  I will let you know of the steps I use to create a post.

1. Finding a topic to discuss that will be of value to our viewers.
2. Write a good article that your readers will find entertaining and useful then locate photos to place within the article.  Supply your own photos if you can, don't steal words or photos without permission and credit. 
3. Reread the article 2 times to check grammar and spelling mistakes.  (Blogger uses an US dictionary so spelling isn't aways agreed to by the blogger editor for us Canadians)
4. Add labels that are associated with the article and repeating relevant word phrases found in the article is best.
5. Make a title that could be relevant to someone's search term.  I like using titles of about 5-6 words
6. Preview the article and publish your article if it is ready.
7. View the article and make changes if absolutely necessary. You want to avoid this step with the proofing you spent time doing prior to publishing.
8. Ping your blog to let aggregators know you have made changes to your blog.  I use Ping-O-Matic!, it is easy and maintains my blog information, so all I have to do is hit

All in all I think my new method of posting is getting better results and this fuels me to make more articles for my blog as well.  Hopefully this was of some use to some of you and if you have any suggestions of comments, please let me know.  Cheers!