What are WordPress Update Services and how they can benefit your blog
When I used to be a WordPress front-end developer, one of the things I always did when setting up a website/blog was expand a list of Update Services in WordPress. It’s just something I learned as part of my training and today, when I am setting up a new Wordpres site, I never forget about this easy but important step.
What are Update Services actually?
In simple words, Update Services are tools you can use to let other people know you’ve updated your blog. They help to index your new blog posts quicker which is all good news for SEO and organic traffic.
When blog posts are in the Google index quicker, they show up in search results faster so this is well worth doing especially because it’s so easy to do.
WordPress notifies popular Update Services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post. These services then process the ping and update their indices accordingly so that people browsing such sites can get to know about your most recent posts and come to your blog. This also helps search engines to learn about your new posts and encourages bots to come to your website to crawl and index your new content.
List of WordPress Update Services
By default, there is only one URL under Update Services in WordPress (Settings > Writing, see Update Services at the bottom) but you can add more of course (and you should) – all you need to do is copy a list of Update Services from official WordPress site and paste it into a designated area when logged in to your site. See a screenshot below:
Some people say that the WordPress Ping Services list is not exactly up-to-date (which seems to be the truth) and you can add even more ping services than you can find on WordPress site.
I managed to find a really comprehensive list of ping services that’s been updated for 2018. Just visit this page and copy all the services over.
Now, all this is not really difficult to do to improve SEO of your blog, is it? So just go ahead and do it, before you forget!
Petra is an experienced digital marketer, known for her attention to details and highly analytical mind. She has worked in digital marketing for over 5 years, gaining experience in SEO, PPC, email marketing and web analytics.
Previously, Petra worked as a front-end Wordpress developer where she gained technical knowledge she uses in her marketing projects today.
Petra is Google Adwords and Analytics certified and with her strong analytical skills she can help businesses uncover missed opportunities and weaknesses in their marketing campaigns.
Petra is also a founder and editor of a health blog she's been running for the past 4 years. You can find Petra on LinkedIn and Twitter.
1 COMMENT
Hey Petra, thanks for this post! I am setting up a new website and it’s handy to get some tips and tricks for the SEO setup. Cheers!
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