Ping is a fun word to say, it’s even fun to do; but more serious questions should be answered. Most notably what is pinging, how do you do it, and when should you do it?
What is Pinging
For our purposes, pinging a specific URL tells search engines that they should check out that destination. You should do it when for example you update your website or blog with new content. You might ping both the main URL as well as the destination of the new page which you have just added or if you’ve made changes to an existing page.
This tells the search engines that there is new or different content which they should check out. You’ll get indexed in the search engines more quickly if you take the initiative and contact them via ping, and this can result in faster traffic to that page than if you didn’t.
Additionally you can sometimes see extra traffic from pinging because there are sites out there which list the latest blogs to be updated up to the minute, and people freely browse these sites on and off and when seeing your blog listed may decide to check it out. That traffic might be completely untargeted in relation to what you’re content is about, but it’s traffic nonetheless.
As for how to ping, there are a number of ways and services to do this, and this short video will provide more information: