Hello, I have a blog up and running but i am new to it and the whole "ping" thing confuses me, why would i want my content going to other sites? I dont want my post going to other sites, i want visitors coming to my blog? Can someone explain. Thanks
Backlinks/PR By pinging sites (such as technorati), you'll be getting backlinks when they list your posts on their site. Most sites only use excerpts/tasters, so you don't need to be too concerned about people reading your posts elsewhere.
There are several ways to use your feed to your advantage. First, if you have concerns about duplicate content or you have other reasons why you dont want the feed crawled or indexed by spiders, you can create a robots.txt file to exclude it. Now about the use of the feed by others. This is almost always a good thing! Your audience can add it in their RSS feed reader which reminds them when you add an entry. Other sites might use the feed, but this has potential to send their audience to your site, so its a possible source of new traffic. You can write a terms of service which excludes the feed from use on competitive sites, but that doesnt mean others will comply. Another use of your RSS feed is to display your information on other sites that you author or own, an example being a squidoo or other social networking site. I suspect other readers can share several other pros and cons of generating an RSS feed.