How Blogs And RSS Boost Your Search Engine Visibility

By Priya Shah

Marketers have found that blogs are excellent tools for communicating with their audience. Anyone who has something to sell or an idea to promote can benefit from using blogs.

Search engine marketers especially favour blogs because they have a number of features that make them the darling of search engines.

1. Fresh, Updated, Relevant Content

When you write a good blog about a theme that you’re passionate about and post to it frequently, you’re creating fresh, keyword-rich, content that search engines love.

2. Natural, One-Way Links

Search engines view links to your site as a recommendation of your site content. More links pointing to your site or blog boosts your visibility and search engine rankings.

Google gives more weight to natural, one-way incoming links, and blogs make it easy to get two types of one-way links to your site.

· Similarly Themed Blogs

A well-written, authoritative blog, with unique content, is likely to get linked to from a number of other bloggers writing on similar topics. These are natural links that are viewed highly and given more weight by search engines like Google.

· RSS Feed Syndication

Blogs and the RSS feeds built into them, help you build valuable, one-way links to your site by syndicating your content online.

3. Get Indexed Within Hours

When you post to a blog it “pings” a number of services that list blogs. This notifies the service that your blog has been updated.

Search engines like Google give more weight to blogs that are updated regularly. It is possible to get your pages indexed in Google and other search engines within hours of writing your first blog post.

Compared to the time it takes to index a website (days, even weeks), you can see why blogs are better search engine optimisation tools than static websites.

Indirect SEO Benefits of Blogs

Besides the SEO benefits, a well-written, authoritative blog can also create publicity and branding for you, which promotes even more people to read and link to your blog.

Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine optimization firm, SEO & More Request the detailed version of this whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here. This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

Newsletters VS RSS Feeds

By Doug Champigny

Effective direct-to-desktop publishing requires a major shift in how you look at the purpose of your newsletter

It is my contention that some publishers, and most especially email publishers, are marketers first and publishers second. That means they see making sales as the primary purpose of publishing an ezine or newsletter. We all hope that our publications will achieve that goal, but it should not be the primary purpose of your publication. Instead, your publication should focus on providing content of the highest quality that establishes your credibility. You do that by showing your readers that you know your stuff, that you are, dare I use the word, an expert - a real expert - in your field.

This means you need to do as much writing of your own as possible. Yes, I realize that writing articles is hard work and time-consuming. That is why we publishers use third-party articles. but don't just run any article that you receive. Use some discrimination. Use only articles that complement your own content, that are appropriate to the focus of your own newsletter. And, whatever you do, do not just publish the article as is. Write a short introduction that gives your readers your own thoughts on the article. Remember, you want to establish your reputation, your credibility, not someone else's.

The received wisdom is that newsletters should be used to promote your own products and services. If you look at the vast majority of email newsletters, that is exactly what the publishers seem to think is the purpose of their newsletter. In most, including a lot of the most-well known, newsletters, you can hardly find the content among all the advertising. these publishers seem to feel the need to shove their advertising in your face. However, let's look at what should serve as a model for all online publishers: your local newspaper. Most newspapers do not cram every page of their publications with so many ads that you cannot find the articles. Most of the good ones tend to have a separate section for advertising. And what ads do appear in the content sections are presented in such a way that they do not interfere with the presentation of the news. How long do you think your local paper would keep its subscribers if they overloaded the news pages with ads? It's time we online publishers changed the way we think. We need to get away from the newsletter-as-vehicle-for-advertising model and switch to a newsletter-as-vehicle-for-quality-content model. Effective direct-to-desktop publishing requires a major shift in how you look at the design of your newsletter.

Email publishers tend to publish discrete issues of their newsletters on a regular schedule. The most common schedule is once a week. Each issue contains all the information that publisher wants to communicate to his or her subscribers for that week. There are a couple of drawbacks to that format, beyond the basic problem that this publisher is using email as her delivery system.
The first drawback is the length. With a couple of articles and a half dozen or so classified ads, along with the regular information like the welcome, the disclaimers required with email, the unsubscribe information, etc., that makes for a fairly long message. Most Internet users just don't read messages of that length.

Yes, you could send out more frequent shorter messages, but that only compounds the problems associated with email delivery exponentially. The more often you email your subscribers, the more likely you are of getting shut down because of a spam complaint.
By using a weblog type of format, you do not do discrete issues. Rather you post an article or your advertising or an editorial on any given day. Let's say on Monday, you post an article about RSS publishing, then on Tuesday you publish an editorial about the upcoming election, on Wednesday, you publish a couple of classifieds, on Thursday you publish an article on holiday advertising and on Friday you publish a few more ads. Let's say this is the same content you would have published in a discrete issue, except for the disclaimers and the mast head - the stuff at the top that identifies your newsletter, You do not need to publish the mast head because it is always there on your blog. You do not need to include all the email disclaimers because you are not using email. Things like advertising disclaimers and welcome messages can be integrated into the overall design of your weblog as a sidebar, so they are always there. Anyone going to your blog page will see them every time they visit.

Yes, even though you are using RSS as your delivery system for your newsletter, your newsletter will have an HTML page as well that your readers will visit whenever they read an entire item in your newsletter.

You see, the RSS feed will only carry the title as a link and the first paragraph or two of your item, say the article about RSS publishing. Each item will be listed separately in the same format. The RSS feed will hold up to fifteen items, the last fifteen items you posted. Any good RSS publishing system will set all this up for you and do all the necessary coding changes. Usually you post your item in HTML and the publishing system converts it to XML for you. Doing it all manually is not effective or efficient, so I suggest you not do that! The idea is to use RSS to make your life easier not harder. More on these systems later on.
With the better publishing systems you do not even have to know a lot of HTML because they will allow you to post your item as text and it will format the line breaks for you. As long as you put a double hard break at the end of each paragraph of text, your article will look fine. You can add bold or italics or underlines as needed. But, the better your HTML skills, the more creative you can be in how your posts will look.

Also, if you have the necessary expertise and tools, you can add graphics, Flash, audio, video, or anything else you want to jazz up your pages. Do NOT add executables (EXE) files to your posts. That creates all kinds of problems for your readers and is forbidden by most, if not all, publishing systems. Also, if you add multimedia to your newsletter, I strongly recommend you do in a way so that your reader can choose to view it or not. Not only is that the courteous thing to do, but it also will prevent you from locking up your reader's computer. Although most people have fairly sophisticated computers these days, there are still people who might not be able to or do not want to view these kinds of files. Remember, your reader is in control here, not you.
Doing daily posts, which I consider the ideal schedule, may seem like a lot more work, but, in reality and once you get the hang of it, it really is less time consuming than doing one big issue a week. Also, a lot of email publishers have gone back to doing text-based newsletters to avoid some of the filtering of email that is going on. HTML email is often blocked or the HTML is disabled unless you specifically ask to see it.

Text newsletters are dull and boring. The Internet is a visual medium first and foremost. Yes, it is for the transmission of content, but that content has to be visually appealing to your readers. There is nothing appealing about a long text message that uses rows of unimaginative characters like #,@, * or others to try to add some zest to all that text. If you want to keep your readers, yes, provide them with lots of great content, but also present that content in a way that captures their imaginations.
Finally, there is a very strong marketing reason for using a blog type of format. I will only touch on it briefly here and explain it in detail in my next blog on marketing with RSS.

You want new subscribers for your newsletter, right? That means you need to get new people to see your newsletter, right? That means getting traffic to your newsletter page, right? One of the best ways to do that is to get the search engines like Google to spider your newsletter every time you add a new item to your weblog. What would you say if I told you there was a marketing tool that could do that? It's called pinging weblogs.com... more about it in my next blog!

How does one become an Internet marketing guru? In the case of Doug Champigny, it took almost 30 years... Starting as a reporter/photographer in the early 70's, he soon realized the real money was in advertising - and made the switch as quickly as possible! After stints as advertising manager of various print publications, Champigny jumped to the Advertising Agency arena, founding two retail agencies over the years... Fascinated by the mass-communication potential of the fledgeling Internet, Champigny took a 2 year sabbatical in the 80's, returning to college to study computer programming full time, joining the online 'geek' community in 1982. How the 'Net has changed since then!

Returning to the advertising industry, Champigny founded The Cyber Surfer in 1993 as a retail advertising 'boutique', creating print, radio and TV campaigns for local and national accounts while monitoring the growth of the World Wide Web. By 1996 the decision was made to switch the agency's focus from traditional media to the Web, and Champigny's never looked back!

RSS For Dummies

By Scott Hendison

What are RSS newsfeeds?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or for Really Simple Syndication. Both mean the same thing, so don't let it confuse you. An RSS is something a website (or a blog) offers to readers provide a "news feed" of their information. It's available for everyone to add to their own "news reader" for free and gets displayed on your desktop or in your web browser.

It works almost like a stock ticker, delivering exactly the information that you have anonymously "subscribed" to, eliminating the need to go out and check your favorite outlets for new information, because they're already delivered to your computer.

Who needs RSS?

Well, everyone need it. It's so much more efficient than going to get it, or getting endless email newsletters. Having the paper delivered to your home makes more sense than driving to the store every day, doesn't it? In the same vein, let's say that you want only the latest news about only certain subjects, and routinely go out and check several websites to see what's new. Using RSS, those individual websites will deliver that news right to your desktop, suitable for reading, clicking, printing, or ignoring.

How can you use RSS?

There seems to be no single definitive answer, because there are so many ways to use it. I'll tell you about the easiest way to get RSS feeds that I know of, but by no means is that the only way. That is; on your homepage of your web browser.

First, you need an RSS newsreader, (a.k.a. "aggregator"). The good news though is that you may already have one. Since millions of people have Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail or Google accounts, I'll walk you through adding a news feed to your MSN home page. Go to http://www.my.msn.com and sign in. If you don't already have a hotmail account, go ahead and create one. If you'd prefer, you can go to http://my.yahoo.com and do the same) It only takes a minute go get a new account.

After signing in to My MSN, you'll see quite an array of news, weather, sports, ads, stock quotes, local information etc. Think of this as your canvas, and you're free to arrange or remove the information how you see fit. Each of these sections you see can me easily moved or deleted. To move them, just click and drag from the top right of each subject area. To remove them, click the minus (-) sign in the top left of the subject area. Feel free to delete them all, since you can always add them back later.

Now go to top left of the screen, right above the "Welcome" area you'll see "Add content" below your name. When you go there, you get four choices (Tabs) for adding content. The default tab that comes up is "Search". and from here you have four options and each is clearly defined. If you know the exact web address (URL) for a company's newsfeed, you can enter it right here. The other three tabs might be worth exploring too, since they let you browse by company names and subjects. Then you just click a box for all you want.

After signing in to My Yahoo, you'll notice that there are already several news feeds from Reuters listed there, with "Top stories", "world News", "Politics" and "Business". Above those stories, you'll see a big yellow box in the center explaining how you can "Add Content". Click the link to "add content" and you'll come up with a search box allowing you to "find content" about a given subject. Type in a search phrase, and you'll be presented with search results that all have an "Add" button next to them. Hit the "Add" button by the ones you want, and then hit the "Finished" button at the top right, and you're done. You just added that RSS news feed to your My Yahoo page. Scroll down at the My Yahoo main page, and you'll see those news headlines you added at the bottom of your list. To rearrange the order of your news feeds, just hit the small "edit" button at the top right of each news section. To remove a news feed, just hit the X like you would to close any window.

Customizing your own news feeds

Now suppose you don't need to "find" a news feed on a subject, because you already know you want to add a particular one. Well that's easy too. Al you have to do is identify what the "RSS feed URL" is for the information you want to add. Most blogs or news organizations show you these now on their websites.

Look for a small orange box on the website that says XML or the words "RSS Feed" or "News feed" and click on it. In the case of large organizations, like CNN for example, you'll be taken to a page with a nice set of instructions, and a whole list of RSS news feed URL's that you can manually copy and paste into your news reader.

Sometimes though, you'll be taken to a page that looks like gibberish code. Don't let that scare you like it did me the first time I saw it! When that happens, you are actually looking right at the feed itself, and all you have to do is copy and paste what's in the address bar of your web browser, right into your news reader. That's called "knowing the specific URL of the feed" on MSN, and ""Add RSS by URL" in Yahoo.

In My Yahoo, to manually add a news feed, go to the "add content" area, and choose the link to the right of the Find button that says "Add RSS by URL". Once you paste your URL in that window and hit "add" the news headlines should show up there. If they don't, then you may have copied the URL wrong, or added a space at the end. Then just hit the "Add to My Yahoo" button and you're done! In MSN, you'll paste the URL of the news feed right into the search box, then check the box when it shows the result.

Delivering exactly what you want and only when you want is how the internet is supposed to work. Things are only getting better.

In researching this article, I notice that My Yahoo seems to be having problems adding certain manual URL's. Oh well. Nothings perfect.

Scott Hendison is an internet and technology consultant, based in Portland Oregon, but working with companies in five countries. He specializes in search engine placement and E-commerce POS solutions. For over 100 other articles he's written please visit his website at http://www.pdxtc.com.

RSS Feed, Fresh Content & Better Ranking Results in More Traffic

By Yousaf Fayyaz

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. By definition, RSS is a light weight XML format designed for sharing content like news headlines, Blog entries and other webpage content. RSS is simply a popular and easy method of sharing content on the web.

It doesn’t matter what topic your website have built around, you can find valuable content available via RSS. Running and maintaining a website with fresh content is a full time job, it will require time and effort. I am not saying that you stop writing for your website I am telling you to take benefit from the modern technologies that are available.

As the competition is fierce and people use many tactics to increase their page rank which in result increase search engine position RSS feeds helps you achieve good rankings as more fresh content is available on your site.

A website with fresh content is crawled more frequently by search engines spiders.

A simple formula: Fresh Content = Increase Search Engine Rankings = Increase Visitors = Increase Revenue

The formula above is simple and easy. If you have a website already running and you need fresh content for your website RSS feed is the prefect solution for you just a small piece of code and you have the site ready with fresh content.

RSS Feeds cannot be simply plug-in into any website you need a RSS Feed Reader to read the XML and display it in HTML format. It means that if don’t have a RSS Feed Reader you cant use RSS Feeds on your site yes it is true, but I will provide a simple solution that does not need RSS Feed Reader, just plug in play code for your site. You don’t need a RSS Feed Reader to install on your site. Blogger Team is the site that provides you RSS Feed Code with out the need of any RSS Reader the code is parsed on their server and output on your website. The RSS Feed updates on hourly basis which means you visitors get fresh content each time they visit your site.

Just Copy and paste the code into your existing webpage.

And get last 10 Entries of blogs hosted on Blogger Team’s Blog Network.

So 24/7 fresh content for your webpage and better search engine recognition. Your visitors will enjoy the RSS Feed services. So don’t waste times, get the code and experience the benefit of fresh content without doing any thing.

yousaf FAYYAZ is the member of BloggerTeam.com http://www.bloggerteam.com

RSS - The Intelligent Marketing Medium

By Brendon Turner

Are you new to RSS? If so here is a introduction to what RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is and how your website will benefit from offering an RSS feed to your visitor's.

RSS is a smooth channel of communication between publishers and visitor's. Since RSS has grown in recent popularity, more website owners are beginning to experiment with and use RSS feeds to deliver content in new and exciting ways. Usually RSS feeds contain news headlines and small content summaries. The summaries have just enough information to allow the visitor to decide whether he or she would be interested in reading the entire contents without overwhelming the visitor with excessive details. If the visitor is interested they can click on the headline in the RSS feed and access the website which has additional details.

RSS readers are software programs that run either client side or server side and their purpose is to aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy for visitor's to quickly and efficiently scan information contained within each feed. Feeds are usually themed, which allows visitor's to subscribe to feeds that are of interest to them.

In a time when spam filters are blocking much of the content visitor's have asked for, the biggest benefit to using RSS is that RSS gives publishers and readers the chance to connect, and for good ideas to be shared, without the clutter of unsolicited email messages. There is no opt-in or opt-out requirement. This means visitor's don't need to give out their email address and ultimately rules out any fear of receiving unsolicited email to the visitor's inbox. For the website owner using RSS to deliver their content nullifies any lingering doubts about whether their content is actually getting through to the visitor, which is an issue to consider when using traditional newsletter marketing.

What Kind of Information Can be Delivered in RSS Feeds?

Blog Feed
Many blogs are catalogued in an RSS feed, with each blog entry summarized as a feed item. This makes it easy for visitor's to scan blog posts for items of interest.

Article Feed
Articles are often placed into feeds to alert readers when new articles and content are available. The feed entry is typically an article summary or introduction. Readers can then ascertain if the article is of interest and read further.

Forum Feed
Many forums now have add-ons that allow participants to receive forum posts via RSS. The RSS feeds often will show the latest discussion topics; if users are interested they simply click to enter the forum to participate in the discussion. As the topic is updated they will see new entries in the RSS feed.

Schedule Feed
Schools, clubs and organizations will often use feeds to communicate meeting times, places and events that might be occurring. The RSS feeds are often used to publicize events, notify the community of schedule changes or meeting agendas.

Discounts / Specials Feed
Retail and online stores have begun using RSS feeds to deliver their latest specials and discounted offers. Some online retailers have taken this a step further, allowing users to create their own feeds based on keywords or phrases.

News Monitoring
Companies or individuals interested in receiving headline news based on a specific brand or keyword can use RSS feeds to monitor news sources.

Now that you know what RSS is and how it can be useful, let's cut to the chase and figure out how to cash in with RSS. By now you should be asking yourself this question: "Why should I implement RSS into my website and if I did, how would RSS increase my web traffic and profits?"

Here's a hint: Microsoft is integrating RSS support in the next version of its Internet Explorer and is making RSS an integral part of its long-awaited Longhorn operating system.

This is a tremendous opportunity for website owners who position themselves early on in the game (i.e. right now) by implementing RSS into their own websites. Once Windows Longhorn is released in late 2006 users will be able to find, subscribe to and read RSS feeds all the while having very little knowledge of how RSS works. Microsoft is helping to make RSS very user friendly.

Even major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN are already supporting, spidering and/or showing RSS feeds.

A very good resource which you should visit if you're at all interested in setting up a successful RSS feed would be MarketingStudies.net which is operated by Rok Hrastnik. Specifically if you want to learn how to setup a RSS feed visit this page.

Learn how to do your own online marketing and save money with this free, easy-to-understand web marketing newsletter. Don't waste hours searching for your next, great Internet marketing strategy. Subscribe to The Profit Gazette Weekly Newsletter.

How to Add RSS to Your Website - Simply

By Colin Maddocks

I am primarily a web-based travel agent, making my living from selling travel arrangements from leads generated from my specialist travel websites. Over a period of time I have built many websites and when creating the last few sites I have added an RSS news feed to generate up-to-date news about that particular travel niche.

In doing so I have added another valuable resource for my potential clients and site visitors but at the same time I have added a source of continually changing content that helps my sites with regard to their search engine optimisation.

However, initially I found the great mass of articles, ebooks and software really confusing. All I wanted to know was how to be able to set up an RSS feed and then add it to my site.

After many, many hours of researching RSS feeds and buying quite a few, reasonably expensive RSS feed creation programs, I finally came across this solution, which for me, is easy to use, straightforward to set up and, more importantly, is free.

To set up, say, a “Cruise News” feed, I would find a suitable feed from sources such as www.icerocket.com, www.2rss.com or visit Yahoo’s news feeds at http://news.yahoo.com/rss .

For example, to create a feed in Yahoo I would enter my subject in the “search” box, which would result in a new page of news, relevant to cruises and cruising. I would then click on the orange RSS feed icon that will be shown on the page and the copy the resulting feed URL, (e.g., http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=cruise&ei=UTF-8) that would appear in the IE address bar.

Next I would visit “FeedJ2s”, at http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/index.php?s=build and enter that Cruise News feed URL. Then, by pressing the “Generate Feed” button I would be able to generate the relevant “Cruise News” RSS code that I could then enter in the relevant place on my new website.

Now I am not suggesting that this is the best way you could create a useable RSS feed for your website. There are plenty of other ways and other programs out there and you can visit my dedicated website http://www.rss-feeds-4u.com) which will tell you all about RSS feeds and products.

However, if you don’t’ want to spend a lot of time or any money on setting up RSS feeds for your website, this must be the easiest way by far.

Colin Maddocks is a web-based travel agent and marketer who operates several successful websites including http://www.rss-feeds-4u.com . You are free to use and distribute this article with the proviso that you add the above author details and web address.

The Best Marketing Tool For Your RSS Feed and It's Free

By Mike Makler

Do a search on Blogs on Yahoo and you get 236 Million Results.A Yahoo Search on RSS yields 558 Million Results. A Yahoo search on RSS Feed enclosed in Double quotes Yields over 96 Million results. How do you get other People to display your RSS Feed when you are going up against such intense competition?

What if you could go Viral with your blog. Viral marketing is word of mouth marketing. When I was about 8 Years old my dad said to me what would you rather have $100,000 a Day for 30 Days or 1 Penny Today, 2 Penny's tomorrow and each day double the amount of pennies for 30 days. I replied $100,000 a day of course. Wow did I make a huge mistake $100,000 a Day for 30 days would equal 3 Million Dollars. If you Double a penny a Day for 30 Days you would receive over 10 Million Dollars.

That is the power of Viral marketing. Viral Marketing is how services like Hotmail got started. Every time someone sent an E-mail from their Hotmail account the recipient saw the message get your free Hotmail account. I challenge you to find anyone who has not heard of Hotmail. I challenge you to find 10 people who have not had a Hotmail account at one time or another.

It had to happen sooner or later. A brand new free service that allows you to go Viral with your RSS Feed. Now you can use the same tools Hotmail used to promote your RSS Feed (Blog). How Powerful is that.

About The Author:
Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001 When he Built an Organization of over 100,000 Members

Blogs Go Viral
http://ewguru.com/viralblogs

How to find the Best Home Based Business
http://ewguru.com/comp20

More Articles by Mike:
http://ewguru.com/tips

Copyright © 2005-2006 Mike Makler the Coolest Guy in the Universe

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Explained in Plain English

By Cory Threlfall

RSS(Real Simple Syndication) is the talk around the net these days because of its many benefits.

I'm sure you've received several emails(like I have) telling you to jump on the "RSS" band wagon and that it's the answer to all your Internet and Email marketing woe's because of its syndication capabilities.

With RSS Directories and Search Engines coming into the mix as well these days for RSS feeds you really have to decide whether or not you really want it get in on the "RSS" craze.

Now, before I get to far ahead of myself here I want to make sure you know exactly what RSS "IS" and WHY it's becoming such an essential tool for Your online business and other businesses around the world.

I've received a lot of feedback from people just starting out online and/or other webmasters who are not quite sure asking... "what is "RSS" in Plain English and do I need it for my online business?".

I wrote an article earlier this year stating the "10 MOST Powerful Reasons WHY You Should Be Using RSS", but I guess I clearly didn't explain what "RSS" IS which left the readers kind of stumped.

If you wish to read that article as well I've provided the link below.

http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_15.html

With that said, lets 'Now' define what RSS(Real Simple Syndication) "IS" in plain english for those of you who are NEW to it and for those of you who are still a little bit confused about it and its uses.

RSS is by definition -- an acronym for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", and the .XML extension is the format used for distributing YOUR news headlines via the Web, which is known as "Syndication".

"Syndication" is where the TRUE power of RSS is unleashed, getting your message or information across the web in an INSTANT to websites, your subscribers and/or readers.

Now, to put this in plain english, "RSS" is simply a technology that distributes YOUR information(whatever it might be -- ex. Articles, Special Offers, Product Reviews, Resource Announcements) by syndicating it across the net.

It's that simple.

It doesn't have to get any more complex then that.

The more websites, subscribers and/or readers that opt-in to your RSS feeds, the more FREE targeted TRAFFIC you'll receive from their websites.

How can you take advantage of this NEW technology... Starting Today?

Set up a BLOG!

Blog's are great because they are "RSS" ready.

If you don't know what a "BLOG" is here's a link to another earlier article I wrote that explains BLOGS in full detail since the nature of this article is to make sure you understand what "RSS" IS.

Here's the link:
http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_12.html

You can set-up a Free BLOG account through Blogger.com -- http://www.blogger.com -- and begin posting to it within minutes.

All you have to supply is the 'Content'.

Well, there you have it, "RSS(Real Simple Syndication)-- EXPLAINED In Plain English".

I truly hope this article cleared up any confusion you might of had about "RSS" and will help you take that next step to deciding whether or not "RSS" is for You and your business.

My final thoughts are, don't be afraid to do a little research, you'll be amazed at what you might find if you spend a little looking for it on the net.

Want to get MORE 'Insider' marketing Secrets on How-To drive HUGE amounts of Laser Targeted Traffic to your website? Then you need to subscribe to Cory Threlfall's ezine called... The Internet Wonders eZine at -- internet marketing

RSS Feeds 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Distributing and Promoting Your Site's XML Feed

By Sonia Winters

So you've decided to beef up your website by adding an XML feed. This is a great idea; whether you maintain a personal blog or operate an independent news site, adding an XML feed is a surefire way to keep your RSS-friendly readers in the know. Not only will they appreciate the access to constantly updated content, they'll love no longer having to check the site daily for new information -- now it comes straight to them! What's more, maintaining an XML feed makes it highly possible for you to attract readers who otherwise may have never stumbled onto your site. Everyone wins.

But how, exactly, do you find (and eventually keep) those readers?

1. Use the Community. No matter the subject area of your website, the vastness of the Internet is bound to have some sort of burgeoning community for it. Readers and writers of RSS feeds love to communicate, so get in there and communicate with them! Find like-minded sites featuring like-minded feeds and trade links; if the site-owners appreciate your content, they'll almost always share the information with others. These virtual hubs of knowledge are well worth getting to know -- word of mouth, after all, is a powerful thing.

2. Keep Up the Updates. Though this seems to go without saying, frequently updating the content of your site is vital to the life of your XML feed. The purpose here is two-fold. First of all, fresh and well-written content is the best way to keep readers coming back for more; after all, an XML feed thrives on constant updates and readers expect that sort of timeliness. But secondly, and perhaps most importantly, frequently updating your content keeps your site's name near the top of the directories' list of newly updated feeds. By attempting to stay near the front page, readers will come to know you as a common player, thus increasing their interest in what you have to say. Just make sure you aren't updating simply for the sake of updating; RSS-users are capable of seeing right through that tactic and will sometimes abandon a feed for being too obnoxious in its promotional efforts.

3. Remember the Reader. It's important to make your XML feed as accessible and user-friendly as possible. Say, for instance, that a reader stumbles onto your site and enjoys the content but knows nothing about RSS, how it works and how they can use it. Well, why not help them out? Create a separate page on your site that explains the function and purpose of RSS and clues readers in to some of the best aggregators; often, they'll take heed, check out the format and subscribe to your feed. And they might even share the information with some of their friends!

4. Feature the Feed. It's also important to make your XML feed's presence very apparent on your site. Make sure to place the orange XML or RSS button in a place that readers will immediately see it; they can't subscribe, after all, if they don't know it's there. And get acquainted with the capabilities of different web browsers. Some, such as Firefox, will automatically detect a site's XML feed and ask users if they'd like to subscribe, a feature called Auto-Discovery All you have to do is enable it within your feed using the browser's enabling code and your XML feed will be automatically promoted for you. And after all the work you've done to boost up your visibility, isn't it worth just another second's effort to have some of the promotion accomplished for you?

5. Know the Directories. One of the easiest and most efficient ways to get your XML feed noticed above the World Wide Web's white noise is to submit it to as many RSS directories as possible. These sites function for the sole purpose of listing new and newly updated feeds. Diligent readers will frequently browse for content, thirsty for the freshest information the Internet has to offer, and maintaining your presence on these directories is essential to alerting readers of your presence. Granted, this is sometimes easier said than done; hundred, if not thousands, of RSS directories exist and hundreds, if not thousands, of XML feeds fight for a presence on them. But by knowing the best directories to submit to (see the links below for just a few) and keeping abreast of any new directories that pop up, your XML feed won't go unnoticed.

Sonia Winters writes for Andy Hagans Link Building ( http://www.andyhagans.com ), an SEO firm offering link building services.

Using RSS Feeds To Create a Viral Website In 30 Minutes a Day Guaranteed!

By Mike Makler

Ever wish you could create a web site that generates buzz. You know the kind people talk about at the water cooler or E-Mail to a friend. Now You can create a Viral Web Site in 30 Minutes a day or Less.

Creating a viral Web Site is simple but not easy. If you are willing to commit 30 Minutes then within a reasonable amount of time you can and will have a viral websites.

A Blog or RSS Feed is the best and simplest web site to create for a Viral Websites. Anyone can use an online or offline blog reader to place your blog content on their websites. Many Blogs have an E-Mail this post feature so people can E-Mail Your Blog to a friend. You can easily post to your blog so it is not time consuming.

A Viral Web Site is something people enjoy or find helpful and want to share with their friends. A Tip of The Day style web site fit's this Criteria. You can also use a Quote of the Day, Joke of the Day or New Word of the Day style,

If you like fishing then a Fishing Tip of the Day. If you like cooking then a cooking tip of the Day or recipe of the day. If you like travel then travel tip of the day. Your Tips Should be Brief. Certainly no more then 200 Words but as few as 50 can be ok.

SEO Tip of The Day
http://ewguru.com/seotip

About The Author:
Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001 When he Built an Organization of over 100,000 Members

Get Mike's Newsletter:
http://ewguru.com/newsletter

Weekly Tios and Tricks
http://ewguru.com/tips

Copyright © 2005-2006 Mike Makler the Coolest Guy in the Universe

Problems Adding RSS Feeds To My Yahoo – Feedburner Solution

By Halstatt Pires

In the last few weeks, adding feeds to My Yahoo has been next to impossible. Here’s a solution that worked for me with a feedburner feed.

Why Won’t It Add My Feed

If you have a blog, adding it to My Yahoo via a feed is a fairly standard option. To do this, you simply accessed your My Yahoo page, clicked “add content”, click “add RSS by url” and then entered your feed. At least it used to be that way.

For the last few weeks, the add content provision for My Yahoo has developed a glitch. Following the above steps simply no longer works. Instead, My Yahoo will show you a preview of your feed, but refuses to actually add it to the My Yahoo page. Why is it My Yahoo will show you a preview, but not add the feed? This realization is followed by an combination of the following: banging head on the desk…rebooting computer…throwing computer…

Feedburner Solution for My Yahoo

Last night, I was able to add http://feeds.feedburner.com/BtrTaxRelief to My Yahoo through feedburner.com. Here’s how I did it.

First, log into and pull up a My Yahoo page. Next, pull up feedburner.com in a second window. Log in to your account. In the resulting page, you should see a clickable title for your feed. To the immediate left of the title is an “xml” link in light grey. Click it to open a new window.

In the resulting window, you will see a light blue box followed by your feed. In the blue box near the bottom, you should see a “My Yahoo” button. Click it.

At this point, your My Yahoo add content page should appear with a preview of how the page will look in My Yahoo. This will be the same preview you were shown when trying to add the feed the traditional way. Go ahead and click the “add content” button on the top right of the page. You should see a page showing the preview and a message that it has been added.

Once you’ve done this, it takes up to 10 minutes for the feeds to appear on My Yahoo. I can’t promise this will work for everyone, but I was able to add three feeds last night.

Good Luck!

Halstatt Pires is a search engine optimization specialist with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company providing internet marketing services in San Diego, California.

What NOT to Do with RSS

By Richard Keir

Everybody is hot on using RSS to increase their traffic, promote their sites and do their marketing. Why?

Well, it's newish - at least within the internet marketing segment. Not as new as it was a year or so ago, of course. Getting significant results is a little harder as the competition increases.

With the profusion of blogs and spam blog-pinging to attract the search engine spiders to index static pages, the utility of this approach has been seriously impaired by unscrupulous overkill.

Pinging every 3 minutes is - even to an idiot - absurd - or at least it should be. Why not just scream, "I AM AN AUTOMATED SEARCH ENGINE SPAM PROGRAM." Lovely footprint, very hard for even a seriously brain-damaged bot to identify.

Still there are a lot of sites with RSS feeds that are real feeds being produced as pages change and new content is added. So, yes, RSS feeds still work. Maybe not as fast and maybe they are less powerful than they were, but RSS remains a valid and increasingly necessary part of site promotion.

Techniques do get abused and the early rapid response tends to decline as a result. If people were a little clearer about what they're doing and why and how it all works, the frenzied search for new approaches could, perhaps, be a little less daunting. And if the quick buck artists were less successful at misleading people into doing things that are bad for everybody in the long run, then . . . but that's how it is, was, and apparently will be forever more.

One thing about a real feed - it's for more than getting bots to index your pages. If that's all you want then you can stop reading here.

For the remaining readers (if any), consider the single most critical element of any marketing or website promotion effort. You can have the most magnificent site, the greatest ever-changing content, beautiful and valid feeds in all formats -- and very little in the way of traffic. Unlike the search engines who have all those lovely spiders we are so hot to gain the attention of - most blog/RSS search engines and directories do not send out bots in search of RSS feeds.

Nope. You have got to submit to them. I know. I've done the smart thing - submit to a bunch - and the incredibly unspeakably stupid thing - letting the submissions slide because, frankly, it's a horrible boring tedious and extremely boring (did, I mention how boring it is?) job. That's not a very pretty admission, but there you are. I have a limited ability to tolerate severe boredom - even when I know I'm hurting myself.

And if you don't do the submissions, you won't get the traffic you could have. And that means fewer conversions, sales, opt-ins or whatever it is your site is about.

Ah, but there are answers to this problem. RSS submission services exist and so do RSS submission tools. In fact here's a new (still in beta) service that allows you to submit to 17 blog/RSS search engines - with more promised - for free. It's called FeedShot and you can find it at http://www.feedshot.com/

Now with FeedShot you need to enter each feed individually. However, with a tool like RSS Submitter you can enter from 3 (in the free evaluation version) feeds to an unlimited number in the SEO version. RSS Submitter then submits automatically to over 70 blog and RSS search directories and can also be used to do additional manual submissions with auto-form filling.

This tool is the purest gold for the serious RSS feed marketer. It works, it's easy to use and it saves you incredible amounts of time - and eliminates that nasty boring tedious repetitive work. Check it out and download a free evaluation copy through http://www.MarketingWithRSS.com/rss-submitter/

Just to be clear here you should realize that you can create and use RSS feeds without ever using any of the ping sites. RSS feed updates are noted by RSS readers/aggregators which check feeds for new content either on demand or on a schedule. RSS/blog search directories also check on a regular basis. Users find your feed through these directories. Again, if you want visitors, then no matter how you do it, you've got to submit.

Obviously, if your feed is produced by a blog, you'll want to notify ping sites when your content is updated. But you still need to submit the feeds. And you can also submit your blog URL to a whole host of pure blog directories, but that's a different subject.

The people who use RSS readers/aggregators in addition to or in place of a browser are the real target group for RSS marketing. When you consider how and what you want to market with RSS, keep in mind that this group tends to still be made up of relatively affluent, early adopters with some technical sophistication, a taste for new technology, a low boredom threshold and a keen appreciation of the value of their time. And don't forget to submit.

Copyright 2005 Richard Keir

Richard writes, teaches, trains and consults on business and professional presentations, eCommerce related matters, RSS and more. For more information on RSS Marketing - http://www.MarketingWithRSS.com/blog and on eCommerce sites and eCommerce site building - http://www.building-ecommerce-websites.com

How To Make Your Site RSS User-Friendly

By Titus Hoskins

Despite all the hype and fuss surrounding RSS recently, for the majority of mainstream Internet users, RSS still remains a mysterious orange button sitting on your web site. They are totally unaware of this new method of syndicating information on the web.

This is not necessarily bad news!

For many Internet users are enjoying the benefits of RSS while remaining totally clueless as to its function or how it works. Programs like 'MyYahoo' and the RSS empowered Firefox Browser are letting surfers access RSS and enjoy its major benefits without having any or no knowledge of it.

In the very near future when Microsoft introduces its new RSS powered Longhorn Browser and operating system - this situation will hopefully continue. Internet users should be able to enjoy all the benefits of RSS without having to know what it is!

Users don't have to know 'DOS' or even 'HTML' to enjoy the full benefits of the Internet and their computers. RSS should fall into this same category. It would quickly bring RSS into the mainstream without having to overcome a long learning curve.

However, until RSS is blended seamlessly into web sites and browsers, there remains one major problem with RSS. Most browsers can't access the RSS feed directly. When many surfers click that little orange button on your site, they get a jumbled code or worst, their browser freezes. Many will depart your site scratching their heads or saying a few choice words in the direction of your site. Not a pleasant situation for anyone.

At the heart of the problem, an RSS Feed must be accessed by aggregators or an RSS feed (news) reader like Newsgator or an RSS empowered browser like Firefox which has a 'Live Bookmark' feature that basically updates your bookmarks or feeds with RSS. A direct link to an RSS feed just won't work with most browsers.

Webmasters must fix this problem. You must fix this problem. You must make your site RSS User-Friendly. You should realize by now,every web site visitor counts. Besides, its just good net etiquette.

Here are some simple solutions to help alleviate this problem and make your site more RSS-Friendly:

1. Don't just place the orange RSS button on your site. Always include a link 'What is This?' beside it. Have this link leading to a page explaining what RSS is and how your visitors can access and use it. This has a two-fold benefit; visitors who are familiar with RSS will know how to use the button, visitors who are in the dark can get a quick education in RSS 101! Here's an example I have on my site.'What Is RSS?'.

You are welcome to use this page on your site if you're pressed for time. Just copy it and upload it to your site or link directly to it.It will do in a pinch!

2. As mentioned before some browsers can Automatically discover or Access your RSS feed. The Firefox Browser is a prime example. To facilitate or aid in this AutoDiscovery process place a simple code in the HEAD section of your webpage's HTML code:

(link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.bizwaremagic.com/blog/atom.xml" /)

Just don't forget to replace the ( and ) characters with in your web page code. Also, place in your OWN feed!

3. Of course, many webmasters use many RSS buttons on their site to guide their visitors in the right direction. For example, placing a 'MyYahoo' button will make it easier for visitors using that program to access your RSS feeds. Bloglines and MyMSN buttons are other examples. Some webmasters even design their OWN RSS button for their sites. Just remember to place your 'What is This?'link beside it.

4. However, if your visitor is not using an aggregator or RSS equipped browser, they will still get the jumbled code that will be puzzling to them. One way around this problem is to use a free service from Feedburner.com and have your RSS Feed transformed or presented so that if can be read in your visitor's browser. Instead of linking your orange button directly to your RSS feed, use the Free link from Feedburner in its place. Your web site visitors will then be able to read your feeds but they will also still be able to subscribe to your RSS feed.

More information on what this looks like here:http://feeds.feedburner.com/BurnThisRSS2

5. Perhaps, using the same system above, an easier and friendlier solution to use is a Headline Animator from Feedburner. This will display your RSS feed headlines on your site in a very User-Friendly way. Anyone wanting to subscribe to your feed can do so by clicking this Headline Animator. It will also provide your visitors with information and headlines about your feed's content. Plus, it will give them a real sampling of your feed. It will immediately make your website more RSS-Friendly.

RSS is the wave of the future. It will play an ever increasing role in how information is exchanged on the web. Make sure your site is RSS User-Friendly so that you can take full advantage this new technology. Make sure your site is a pleasant RSS experience for all your visitors, it will not only put your site in a more favorable light, but it will also make your site more competitive in a very competitive world.

So for your visitor's benefit and your own, make your site RSS-Friendly right now. Don't delay. Just do it. Your visitors will thank you in more ways than one.

To add RSS to your Site within minutes - download this
simple RSS Report and Guide.

Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of http://www.bizwaremagic.com.
This article may be freely distributed if this resource
box stays attached.

Publishing E-zines Via RSS

By Rok Hrastnik

It's clear that RSS and e-mail in fact need to be used together, as opposed to either one replacing the other.

While RSS might not be used by as many people as e-mail, you can be sure that those that do use it and subscribe to your feeds will get your content without fail. In addition, many already prefer to receive information via RSS instead of e-mail, making RSS an absolute must as a supplement to e-mail delivery.

Let’s now take a detailed look at exactly how RSS and e-mail can work together.

1. ANNOUNCING YOUR E-ZINE VIA RSS

What’s the use of an excellent e-mail e-zine if it’s blocked by spam filters or lost in the recipient’s mailbox? No matter how high quality content you prepare, if it’s not received it can’t be read and then acted upon to drive sales your way.

Namely, you need to stop thinking of your e-zine in terms of e-mail delivery, but rather consider it as a vehicle to present relevant and related content in a specific context of an individual e-zine issue, which can then be delivered to your recipients in multiple ways.

Just consider newspapers, which are delivered in print format, on the Web, via e-mail and RSS as well, all this to assure optimum delivery according to end-user preferences.

While most e-zine publishers will never consider presenting their e-zine in print format and delivering it via traditional delivery services, you need to explore all available means of online delivery. After e-mail, RSS is the first that comes to mind.

Using RSS to announce your e-zine via RSS is the simplest and least expensive way to get started with RSS and it will help you make sure that your valuable content in fact does get delivered, at least to the audience using RSS.

A) THE PROCESS: E-MAIL E-ZINES

What is the process behind traditional e-zine publishing?

--> The publisher provides an e-mail e-zine subscription box, in which visitors enter their e-mail addresses, thus giving consent to the publisher to receive his communications and at the same time building his subscriber database.

--> The e-mail address is saved in the publisher’s subscriber database.

--> The publisher prepares an e-zine issue, usually creating an HTML document with either full-text e-zine issue articles and news or summaries of articles with links to full-text articles on his website.

--> The HTML document is packaged as an e-mail message by the publishers’ e-mail publishing solution and then sent to his subscriber database using e-mail as the delivery channel.

--> E-mail messages “travel through the internet” and are either stopped on the way by various spam filters and other “barricades” and are then either deleted automatically or delivered to the subscribers’ e-mail accounts.

--> Subscribers download these e-mail messages when they log-on to their e-mail account and can then manipulate them, either deleting them, moving them to another folder or reading them.

How can we now transfer this process to publishing your e-zine via RSS as well?

B) THE PROCESS: RSS CONTENT DELIVERY

We first need to understand how RSS content delivery works.

--> The publisher creates an RSS feed, basically just a simple XML file structured in a specific way, and provides a link to that XML file on his website and through other sites, search engines and directories. The file needs to first be created and then uploaded to the server, before a link to it can be provided. Fortunately, there are many tools available that will do this for you easily.

--> The visitor to the website subscribes to this RSS feed, by easily importing the link to the RSS feed in to his RSS Reader/Aggregator, instead of giving the publisher his e-mail address. In terms of subscriptions, the process is reversed. Instead of the visitor giving his e-mail address to the publisher, the publisher rather provides the visitor with a single URL, which then the visitor “puts” in his aggregator.

--> The publisher now prepares a new story or article to include in the RSS feed. Usually, he first publishes this new story on his website and then simply prepares a summary and puts it in to the RSS feed/file. In this case, the summary in the feed simply notifies the reader of new full-text content being made available and pulls him to click-through to the full-text article on the website. Alternatively, the publisher could also provide full-text content of the story in the feed.

--> As soon as the publisher updates the RSS feed with the new story, the subscriber can retrieve it and read its content. The feed content is immediately available to the subscriber, without having to face any spam filters on the way.

All of this might sound complicated, but it really is not. Let’s now take a look at the process from the e-zine publishing point of view.

C) THE PROCESS: RSS E-ZINE DELIVERY

--> The publisher creates an RSS feed intended to specifically notify subscribers of new e-zine issues and promotes it on the website. The feed should be promoted directly below the e-mail subscription box, serving simply as an alternative to e-mail delivery. Visitors have the choice of subscribing either via e-mail or RSS.

--> The publisher now takes the HTML document he already prepared for the e-mail version of the e-zine, and puts it online like any other webpage. What you basically need to do is practically take the same presentation and format that you already prepared for the e-mail e-zine and place it online for anyone to see.

--> The publisher then creates a new story or content item in the RSS feed, which is basically just a short summary of the e-zine and links it to the webpage he prepared earlier.

--> Once subscribers retrieve the feed, they see a new content item with the e-zine title and its description. After clicking on the title they are taken to the web version of the same e-zine that was also delivered via e-mail.

D) THE TECHNOLOGY

As you can see this is a simple process and it only takes about 5 minutes more to do than just doing an e-mail version, and it will ensure that your content is now accessible to all those that prefer RSS to e-mail, it will generate additional exposure for your content by being included in RSS search engines and directories and it will generate more search engine visibility for you.

The best part is that the technology to publish an RSS feed in such a way is widely available and there are quite a few tools to choose from.

If simple e-zine delivery via RSS is your starting goal, a desktop solution should work very nicely. Just try out http://www.feedforall.com, which is the market leader in this category, or the less advanced but free http://www.usablelabs.com/productFeedSpring.html.

Keep in mind that only using RSS for e-zine announcements is the simplest way to go and that there is much much more you can do with RSS.

In the next article of the series we’ll take a look at how you can measure the readership of your RSS e-zine version and then take on other ways RSS and e-mail can work together.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Learn how to take full marketing advantage of RSS and get all the expertise, knowledge and how-to information for implementing RSS in your marketing mix, from direct marketing, PR, e-commerce, internal communications and online publishing to SEO, traffic generation and customer relationship management. Click here now: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/book/

Using RSS Feeds to Set Off a Traffic Explosion

By Michael Turner

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is the perfect answer to your needs for sharing and distributing content. The way this works is webmasters can share bits of code with one another that give them access to the others forums, newsletters, blogs, information, news, and the like. When this information is shared, it can create a massive increase in traffic. Read the following suggestions regarding RSS feeds and increasing traffic for your website to decide if this is the right marketing tool for you.

Tip #1 Large Sites with Advertising

For these types of sites, like Forbes, Disney, and the like, RSS feeds do in fact increase traffic. This is really a great way to boost traffic for these types of sites so if you are the webmaster of a similar site then trying RSS feeds as a way to increase traffic is a good idea.

Tip #2 Affiliates and Small Sellers

If you are an individual depending on affiliate programs to generate cash for your website, or if you sell your own products, then RSS feeds are a great tool to use to generate more income. You can use RSS to provide interesting news links which will keep your pages fresh and attract additional search engine traffic. If you are a small business and need more traffic and visitors, try using RSS feeds to display fresh, on topic news and see if it boosts your targeted traffic.

Tip #3 Evaluate RSS

RSS allows you to publish your content on other people's websites, so consider creating a feed that contains details about the products you offer and submit it to the major RSS feed directories. Give your feed some time to be picked up by various resources, and you should experience a traffic surge simply by adding RSS to your bag of internet marketing tactics..

RSS feeds set off a traffic explosion for some websites and for others it simply serves to redirect traffic. In order to make the best decision about RSS feeds you need to have all of the information and test whether or not RSS is working well for your site. Give RSS a try and test it, if for some reason it works against you, simply stop using it. With RSS, don’t expect your traffic to quadruple overnight... but you should see results in no time at all!

Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

RSS Feeds, What They Are and How to Use Them

By Jennifer Shatos

What does RSS stand for?

RSS “Really Simple Syndication” was created in the 1999 to allow information to be published and subscribed to. RSS basically takes bits of up-to-date information from websites and provides it in concise simple text based format. RSS is commonly used for updated content, blogs, events, and news headlines.

How do I know if a site has it?

They usually have an Orange XML or RSS button on their site. If in firefox, often there is a little orange button in the lower right hand corner.

The difference between search engines and RSS feeds

If you go to any search engine and want to search a topic that had up-to-date information that was released minutes ago, what do you think the likely-hood that you would find it? Pretty low…unless it happens to be breaking news. RSS feeds give you up-to-date information on topics that you are highly interested in for free. Depending on the site google may take days to months to update.

The Advantages of RSS feeds

• An efficient way to scan web content. Scan the headlines in seconds and read only what is of interest to you.

• Updates multiple times a day keeping you up to date on your favorite topics

• Regain control of your online experience. No pop-ups or spam!

• Now you don’t have to share your personal information to “sign-up”

• Find a site you like? Don’t hide it in your stack of bookmarks to “check back later”. If it has a RSS feed, use it now! See new information that is posted daily.

Visit our website for help monitoring RSS feeds, more information about them, and for those who want to REALLY understand RSS feeds, get the ebook!

Unleash the power of RSS feeds at http://www.whatisarssfeed.com

Jennifer Shatos has a background in Visual Communication Specializing in Design. She has a passion for helping small to large businesses develop marketing & business ideas that will streamline productivity, increase business, and personalize services.

The 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan

By Rok Hrastnik

If you’re wondering how to get started with RSS marketing, here’s a basic 7-step plan that should provide some needed guidance. Use these steps as your personal RSS marketing checklist to get your started and help you see whether you’re on the right track.

1. START USING RSS AS AN END-USER

The first step to getting started with RSS marketing/publishing is getting your own RSS aggregator, subscribing to other RSS feeds and just seeing and understanding how it all works.

There’s a variety of RSS aggregators to choose from. Just a small sample:

a) Web-based RSS aggregators (websites): http://my.yahoo.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.bloglines.com

b) Desktop RSS aggregators (software): http://www.awasu.com, http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/, http://www.stevenwood.org/stories/2003/06/08/voxLite.htm

c) Integrated RSS aggregators (integrate with IE or Microsoft Outlook): http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (browser with integrated RSS features), http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.attensa.com/index.php?ys=1

2. PLAN YOUR RSS FEEDS

Planning your RSS feeds might be the most important thing you do about RSS. You most certainly need an RSS feed for your e-zine, your news section, your articles etc.

But how you will package these, what others you might want to offer and other important issues, are much more complex than we can cover in this space. A precise overview of all of the opportunities is available in the “Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS” e-book at http://rss.marketingstudies.net?src=sa13

You might also want to do follow-up (autoresponder) RSS feeds, feeds for your affiliates, feeds for your employees or business partners, feeds for the media, and so on.

3. CREATE A LIST OF RSS MARKETING/PUBLISHING REQUIREMENTS

Then create a list of requirements for the RSS marketing/publishing solution you will be getting to publish your feeds. The list should answer the basic questions, such as:

a) Do you want to integrate RSS publishing with your existing content management system?

b) What RSS metrics you’ll want to watch? For example, are you satisfied with just a rough idea of how many people are reading your RSS feed, or are you interested in more precise subscriber counts, clicks and even individual content item popularity?

c) Do you need feed personalization, such as personalizing your RSS content with the receipient’s name and other details?

d) Do you want to provide your subscribers with the ability to precisely select the content they want to receive in your RSS feed (customization), such as by content topic, keywords, authors and so on?

e) Do you want the RSS feeds to be hosted on your own server?

f) Do you need the ability to target promotional messages or other content to your individual RSS feed subscribers, for example based on their previous clicks and reading habits, or even their subscription data?

g) What’s your budget?

h) Etc.

More information on all the different possibilities provided by RSS is available in the free Business Case for RSS report at http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/case/index.html?src=sa13

4. CHOOSE AN RSS PUBLISHING TOOL AND CREATE YOUR FIRST FEED

After you’ve prepared a list of requirements you can start searching for the appropriate tool. These come in a few general categories:

a) Desktop feed generation tools

Desktop software you can use to inexpensively, quickly and easily generate RSS feeds, but doesn’t allow for more advanced features such as content targeting. The market leader in this category is http://www.feedforall.com.

b) Hosted online RSS publishing solutions

If you don’t want to be bothered with a desktop tool and having to constantly upload your RSS feeds to your server, you could try a basic hosted online RSS publishing solution, such as http://www.myrsscreator.com. Using their simple service you don’t even need your own website to publish via RSS. Another good choice, especially if you’re in PR, is http://www.press-feed.com/

c) Advanced RSS marketing solutions

These will cover more advanced RSS marketing capabilities, such as metrics, scheduled autoresponder messages, database building capabilities and similar. The strongest contenders in this market are http://www.simplefeed.com, http://www.nooked.com, http://myst-technology.com and some other strong players as well. Solutions aimed especially at smaller companies include http://www.rssautopublisher.com and http://www.market-soft.com/bypass/

d) Other options

There are many other options as well, one for example being using your existing content management system to publish RSS feeds, or using a blog publishing solution such as http://www.movabletype.com

5. PROMOTE YOUR RSS FEEDS THROUGH YOUR OWN CHANNELS

a) Create an RSS presentation page, on which you explain: what RSS is; how the visitor will benefit from using RSS; where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one yourself!); how they can subscribe to your RSS feeds; and why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds.

Then, on this same page, include the links to all of your RSS feeds. In addition to the standard orange RSS button, also include direct links for subscriptions via MyYahoo! (get it here http://my.yahoo.com/s/button.html) and other relevant services, such as Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com).

b) Now promote this RSS presentation page as much as you can using all of your available channels.

c) Promote your RSS feeds directly below your e-zine subscription box, and always “above the fold”. Promote your RSS presentation page (telling your visitors that’s where they can subscribe to your feeds) on the most prominent locations of your site.

d) If you’re publishing more than one RSS feed, but rather a couple of focused topic feeds, promote each of them next to their topics on the site.

e) Promote your RSS feeds in all of your e-mail messages and e-zine issues.

f) As for the content, don’t just say “Subscribe to receive news from my site”, but rather prepare compelling copy to specifically show your visitors why they need to subscribe to your content in the first place and why they should subscribe specifically to your RSS feeds.

e) Enable Auto-discovery

Just include the following piece of HTML code in the head section of your webpages and you’ll be all set: link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="ENTER_RSS_URL"

6. PROMOTE YOUR RSS FEEDS THROUGH EXTERNAL CHANNELS

a) Submit your feeds to the appropriate search engines and directories. A good list can be found here: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

b) Ping the RSS aggregation sites each time you update your online content, letting them know that new content is available to be indexed. You can use this free service: http://pingomatic.com

7. OTHER KEY RSS ACTIVITIES

a) Measure and optimize your feeds

b) Syndicate your feed content to other web media

c) Display third-party RSS feeds on your site

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Immediately find out how you can power your online business with RSS and instantly increase your internet success. Request the free 28-page Business Case for RSS report, with easy-to-follow instructions, examples and advice on how to get the most out of RSS in the shortest possible time. Get the free download here: http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/case/index.html?src=sa13

RSS - How to Promote and Profit From Your Feed

By Brendon Turner

Let me ask you three questions to get you thinking. Does your website offer an RSS feed? Are you promoting your feed effectively? Are you seeing an increase in profits as a result of offering a feed to your visitors?

I'm going to outline several actionable steps you can take to promote your RSS feed both internally on your own website and externally on other websites. Then I'm going to show you a couple of effective programs to generate more profits using your RSS feed. Read what I have to say carefully, and then act on the information. I guarantee you can take it to the bank! I'm not just reiterating what others have said before. I actually acted and performed on my own websites everything I'm about to tell you and the results are awesome.

Promoting your RSS feed effectively requires a two prong approach. Start with examining your own website. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your feed first. Then focus on external promotion second.

The average visitor won't understand what RSS is about, why it would benefit them to use it or how it even works. So there's no point in slapping up the little RSS Syndication logo on your website, linking it to your feed file and hoping people will subscribe. The simple fact is that they won't. You need to spend some time building a page on your website that briefly explains to your visitors what RSS is about and then show them how to use your feed.

Let me show you a solid example. Point your browser to this URL: http://www.profitgazette.com/syndicate.php On this page of my website I tell my visitors the various ways they can receive my content. Along with subscribing to the newsletter, a visitor is also able to subscribe to the RSS feed. I don't want to overwhelm them so I keep it brief and educate them with four points. "What is RSS? How can I use RSS? How do I get a News Reader? Can I use these feeds on my website?" See also in the top of the left column of that page (and every page on my website) how I give the visitor a quick teaser, mention a benefit to them and give them a link to my "RSS education" page? That's how I get my visitors to discover what RSS is all about. Then if you look in the center near the top of the page you'll see the little orange RSS image which doesn't just link only to my RSS feed file, I actually use a small snippet of JavaScript to make it easy for my visitors to automatically subscribe themselves to my feed with whichever news aggregator they happen to be using. Just mouse over the RSS button on that page to see what I'm talking about. You can download a copy of that JavaScript for free at http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/

What's next? External feed promotion. There are lots of websites that accept RSS feed submissions. I'm not going to drop a large list of sites into this article but I have put together a large list of them here: http://www.profitgazette.com/rss-submission-list.php Visit that page when you're ready to submit your RSS feed. I personally submitted my feed to each of those sites and took a brand new website which I own from zero traffic to consistently maintaining an average of 80 unique visitors per day in two weeks from the date of submissions. So that really is a powerful submission list.

Now that you've educated your visitors on how to use your RSS feeds and are well into promoting your feed externally, what about optimizing your feed for the major search engines? Yes I said optimize. Did you know that you can optimize your feed to effectively garner traffic from MSN and Yahoo? Here's how. Do some proper keyword research using WordTracker just like you would when performing a regular SEO campaign. Identify your top 3 key phrases and use them when you write the title and description of your feed inside your RSS file. The search engines will pick up on this and in conjunction with the items inside your RSS file they will rank you accordingly, providing you with an additional stream of traffic you never had before. To alert MSN and Yahoo to the presence of your RSS feed just visit http://my.msn.com and http://my.yahoo.com and add your feed to each page. That's all there is too it.

By now you'll probably be asking yourself "How can I make some bucks with my RSS feed?" There are a number of things you can do and programs you can participate in to generate a constant stream of revenue from your feed. Obviously if your website is product/sales oriented you could drop in an advertisement about your products at the end of each item in your feed. You could also apply for the Beta RSS program which Google Adsense is offering to select partners but there is no guarantee of being accepted. Although I have noticed that Google recently updated their Adsense terms of service agreement to include RSS and feed terminology. Perhaps this may mean that the program will come out of Beta soon. See this URL for more information: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=957 Another search engine which offers publishers the option to earn revenue on ads placed in their RSS feed is Kanoodle. More information about Kanoodle's venture into RSS is here: http://www.kanoodle.com/about/press_releases/02-28-05.cool

There is so much more to promoting your RSS feed and generating profit from it than what I could possibly hope to cover in an article and it really wouldn't be fair of me to reveal all of the secrets when somebody has already put a lot of hard work and research toward putting them into a paid publication. If you really want to learn all of the top internet marketing strategies for RSS you should purchase a copy of Rok Hrastnik's new eBook, "Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS". I read Rok's book from cover to cover and implemented almost all of what I discovered through him into my websites. The difference is not just noticeable results but a completely amazing increase in exposure and profit margin.

Learn how to do your own online marketing and save money with this free, easy-to-understand web marketing newsletter. Don't waste hours searching for your next, great Internet marketing strategy. Subscribe to The Profit Gazette Weekly Newsletter today.

RSS Support in New Microsoft Windows Vista

By Ken Savage

Microsoft Corp. says that the next version of its Windows operating system will have built-in support for RSS, an increasingly popular way to get news and other information channeled straight to a computer.

RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, hasn’t broken into widespread use yet, but the world’s largest software maker believes it will become a mainstay.

“We really believe that RSS is key to how people will be using the Internet in the future,” said Megan Kidd, a Windows product manager.

In the long-delayed Windows upgrade, code-named Vista and expected to be released late next year, an RSS icon will appear in the Internet Explorer Web browser to make it easy for people to find, much like Apple Computer Inc. has done with its Safari browser.

Vista will store all data downloaded to a computer via RSS in a single place. It will maintain a central list of all of a computer user’s RSS subscriptions, from Web log entries to photos pulled from an online family picture gallery.

It will include a feature called simple list extensions that will let Web sites use RSS to publish lists of content that users can subscribe to, like a weekly run-down of chart-topping songs or an online gift registry.

Microsoft will make the list extensions technology available for free through a “creative commons” license, which lets the company retain some intellectual property rights while encouraging broader use of the technology.

Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research, said Microsoft’s foray into RSS is reminiscent of its rush to capture its share of the burgeoning Web browser market in the mid-1990s.

“With the World Wide Web, we had this vast informational system that came along where Windows was not required,” Wilcox said. “That posed a potentially serious threat to Microsoft’s Windows franchise. They responded by making Internet Explorer part of the operating system.”

Microsoft may argue that its RSS push is about improving technology for developers, content providers and consumers, Wilcox said, but “it’s also, I believe, responding to a potential competitive threat.”

Having RSS built into Vista could pose a serious threat to companies that sell RSS readers that siphon data from the Internet. But Kidd contends that Microsoft isn’t out to put anyone out of business.

Ken Savage is a Webmaster employee who writes about what is going on in the Tech industry usually days before it breaks to the rest of the world. He can be found at http://www.kensavage.com

Top 6 Reasons for Having a RSS Feed - Come and Explore the Possibilities!

By Jeffrey Abbott

Getting traffic to your website can be hard. No one just randomly types in "makelotsofmoneyonlinequicklyandfromhome.com" and with this market slowly being filled in, it is hard to get a good rank on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and all the other major search engines. Although paying for advertising is effective and gets targeted results, RSS feeds are the way to go for free, cheap, and somewhat easy advertising.

First off, if you don't want to write articles yourself, no problem. The web is a great resource for finding articles written by respected authors who are willing to give you their article for free (as long as you include their signature at the bottom of the article). It is very easy to take these articles, publish them on your website, and then make a RSS out of them. But enough of the rambling, the top six reasons for having an RSS feed on your site:

6. Reputation - A good RSS feed will increase your reputation as a honest and willing to help business, not just a business that wants to take your money, and nothing else. A feed with quality articles shows that you want to help the reader learn more about a topic instead of just give the reader a sales pitch. Making your business prospects knowledgeable in the area that you are focused will hopefully show how your product/service is superior in it's design.

5. Advertising - A RSS feed can be used to advertise your website for no money at all. If you submit it to RSS directories, the name of your website will appear at the top of your feed every time! Not only does it appear, it also functions as a link (but we'll get into that later).

4. Increase in traffic - Designing your RSS feed to only include part of your article forces the reader to click on a link back to your site. One could only assume that if they enjoyed the article your wrote, or published, then they would enjoy browsing the site where it came from.

3. Links back to your site - Not many people think of RSS feeds as a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) potential, but they include dozens of links in every feed! Publishing your feed on RSS directories puts in place the opportunity to create links with the specific keywords that you desire, and hopefully we all know how the more links you have with keywords in them, the higher ranked you will be on search engine searches.

2. Exposure - Are you a new website? Has anyone ever heard of you before? Well RSS feeds definitely get your name out there on the market. Quality articles associated with your name boosts your exposure and reputation as a quality website who is worth doing business with.

1. Targeted traffic - People look at your feed as a representation of your site. If you have a feed that relates to dog bones, obviously if they are interested in buying dog bones, your site will come in mind.

Jeffrey Abbott is a respected author and editor of eMoneyReport.com

Visit the site at http://www.emoneyreport.com and read reviews on programs that help you to make money from your own home. eMoneyReport offers a simple and easy format to find articles relating to all types of online business and website promotion.

RSS Directory Submission: The Key to Blog Promotion

By Josiah Mackenzie

According to Technorati, there are over 15 million blogs as of July 2005. And during July, an average of 80,000 new blogs were created each day. If you own a blog, how are you going to promote it in order to stay ahead of the competition?

Fortunately, there is a simple, yet very effective method: RSS directory submission. Submitting your RSS newsfeed to specialized news directories benefits your site in several ways.

RSS directory submission increases your readership. When a person is looking for newsfeeds to add to their RSS reader, it is highly likely they will visit an RSS directory to find newsfeeds on their subject of interest. I recently visited a directory looking for personal business blogs. I subscribed to several, and now read them via RSS on a regular basis. Someone else may have an excellent business blog, but since they weren’t listed in the directory, I was unable to discover their site.

RSS directory submission enables your content to be duplicated and linked to from other sites. One of the key benefits of syndicating content through RSS is that it increases your reach. You can publish an article, then have excerpts of that article placed on hundreds of other websites – with links back to the original on your site. Many webmasters want to have fresh content for their visitors, and embedding an RSS newsfeed is the easiest way to do that. You’ll want to make sure that you are listed in RSS directories when a webmaster visits looking for website content – or your competitors may get the free promotion!

RSS directory submission provides immediate link popularity. RSS directories are similar to other web directories – you get a free, one-way link back to your site when you are listed. Think about this. Most RSS directories carry a pagerank (PR) of 5 or higher. When you multiply that over 50 RSS directories, that is a lot of links back to your site – meaning increased search engine rank and more visitors.

There are several ways you can submit your RSS newsfeed to directories. The first, obviously, is by hand. You can get a list of the directories (http://www.rss-software.net/rss-directories.php), then go to each website and add your feed manually. Since there are many RSS directories, this can take quite a while. To save the webmaster time, two ways of automated directory submission exist.

The first one is RSS Submit (http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html), a program that automates the directory submission process. All you have to do is open the software, enter the URL for your feed, and RSS Submit will instantly send the feed information to approximately 40 directories. You can also manually submit your site to another 25 directories using RSS Submit’s auto-fill function.

The second method is appropriately named: RSS Directory Submission Service (http://www.rssdirectorysubmission.com). This service is similar to RSS Submit – you give them your feed URL, and they submit it to over 50 directories. The difference between the two is price: while RSS Submit costs $44.95 for a personal, non-commercial license. RSS Directory Submission Service charges $8.95 per feed submission. And since sites usually only have one feed, the RSS Directory Submission Service is more economical for most RSS publishers.

Regardless of the RSS directory submission method you choose, make sure to do it! You will find the effort small compared to the benefits you receive.

Josiah Mackenzie is a entrepreneur who shares business tips and advice through his website: http://www.josiahmackenzie.com.

His latest project is an RSS/Blog Directory: http://www.rss-blog-directory.com

Top 7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use RSS

By Mustafa Khundmiri

In today’s online world of high-speed websites and giant portals, every established Internet business boasts of delivering content via RSS.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), a simple XML based technology allows anyone to easily share content on the web. It’s a brand new way of reaching out to your users and subscribers without the fear of getting flamed or being slammed of illegal mailing.

RSS has almost become like an important accessory for content oriented websites. No wonder it has become one of the fastest growing publishing standards on the web.

Since publishers can easily make their content syndicated through RSS and thus drive more targeted traffic to their website or blog.

Here are the top 7 reasons why your business should use RSS:

1. Improve Search Engine Ranking - Search engines are desperately looking for content that is fresh and is updated on a regular basis. Since RSS allows you to update your content from time to time, the search engine spiders visit your site more frequently. Resulting in better ranking and more traffic from the major search engines, as well as RSS specific search engines and directories like Feedster and Syndic8.

2. Automate Delivery of Your Content - Delivering your content manually involves many hassles and other automation methods are out dated. Whereas RSS makes your content delivery automated. You don't need to send a message like email, each time you provide an update. This makes your business almost hands free and puts the distribution of your publication on autopilot. As a result, your subscribers get freshly updated content of their choice at regular intervals. They get an ongoing, automated delivery of information from you without any chance of it getting blocked.

3. Easily Generate New Targeted Subscribers - A lot of web users are switching to RSS feeds to receive content they like. You can establish a direct connection with your subscribers as soon as they add your feed. RSS can bring you new targeted subscribers to your website with little effort. Since most of the people today are reluctant to give out their email address (thanks to heavy spamming), RSS can act as a real savior for your businesses. What's more, your messages will never get blacklisted or filtered and will always be delivered promptly, unless and until your subscribers choose to end the relationship. Not only can RSS build a strong relationship with existing subscribers but will also help in attracting new potent subscribers who are interested in what you offer.

4. Drive Quality Traffic From Other Websites - Syndication is the process sharing content. Therefore, RSS allows you to easily publish your content on other websites. By publishing your content on different sites you'll reap profits for a long time. You can very well reach new audiences of different interests, giving your website the ability to gain new visitors from the different corners of the web. With that, your sales also dramatically increase because of the additional targeted traffic you receive due to the extra exposure. Finally, you can achieve a higher ratio of profits and also gain recognition as an expert in your field. Since giving your business a professional recognition is important and that is exactly what happens when you start sharing your content with other similar websites.

5. Broaden Your Marketing Horizon -When you're marketing on the Internet it's important to keep yourself updated and in the process broaden your marketing horizons. With RSS, you can explore new marketing realms. Your resellers or affiliates can promote your products very easily using RSS. Giving them complete freedom of marketing without much effort. You can also provide them with RSS feeds of articles written by you customized with their affiliate links and let them distribute them. And coming to the higher end of it, you can distribute RSS product feeds and digital catalogues just like Amazon started doing not so long ago. There's much more which you can come up with when you combine marketing with RSS. You'll actually have a chance to do something new in the over-crowded Internet marketing field.

6. Widen Your Content Distribution - It's very important to widen the distribution of your content if you want to reach a larger number of people. And it's not so easy to experiment with your content when you're using email. RSS provides the right platform for you to try out content distribution in many ways. For example, you can now categorize your content delivery because RSS will help you widen your present distribution. You don't have to worry about publishing a monthly or a weekly publication. Syndication of your content enables you to efficiently provide daily content updates to your subscribers or as often as you want. Providing useful content to your subscribers from time to time builds a deeper relationship and a better understanding.

7. Increase Brand Awareness - Building brand awareness on the Internet can be difficult when you have clones of your product popping up everywhere. In fact, the online competition is so cut throat that it's almost impossible to survive if you don't build a strong image. Syndicating your content through RSS helps you make an unshakable impression and get that most wanted response from your subscribers. Since, they are the ones who choose to receive updates from you, it gives you a good platform to showcase how different you are from your competitors. RSS is a technology which is soon catching up, pretty fast, so the "really" early bird gets the worm!

There are numerous ways by which you can make your content work through RSS. You just have to choose the one which is suitable for your business and syndicate your way to success!

Mustafa Khundmiri is the co-founder of http://www.rapidfeeds.com - A Free online service, which helps anyone, create, edit, publish, and track RSS feeds online. Sign Up for your FREE account on his site and start publishing your own RSS feeds!

3 Ways to Publish RSS

By Josiah Mackenzie

As RSS news syndication gains popularity among users, new ways for publishing RSS are emerging. In this article, I examine the three most popular methods, and help you decide which one works best for you.

1. Blogs
Weblogs, or blogs, as they are commonly called, are the primary reason RSS gained popularity. In fact, one of the earliest uses for RSS was for bloggers to monitor other blogs for updates.

Most blogging systems will produce RSS newsfeeds automatically. All you need to do is enter content, and the blogging software will build a newsfeed based on the information you enter. No extra work is needed. Just add content to your blog, and you have a newsfeed.

But there is one major disadvantage to using a blog for publishing RSS: you do not have complete control of the RSS output. Most blogging software will simply take an excerpt of your blog entry (eg, the first 15 words), and use that to create your RSS item. As you can imagine, this can lead to problems. The first 15 words of a blog entry don’t always capture the essence of that article.

2. RSS Publishing Software
Because of the inadequacy of blogs as a reliable and accurate RSS tool, new stand-alone software was developed. This software has one purpose: to provide the user with an easy way to create and publish RSS newsfeeds from their desktops. No longer do you have to write a long article in your blog to produce RSS feeds. All you have to do is enter a title for your news item, and (optionally) a couple sentences to describe that headline – and your feed is better than the blog-produced feed.

Examples of RSS publishing software for Windows include FeedforAll http://www.feedforall.com) and Newzalert Composer (http://www.castlesoftware.biz/NewzAlertComposer.htm). Mac users have their own tool in Orangebox for Macintosh (http://www.globalsyndication.com/orangebox-for-macintosh).

3. Online RSS Publishing Systems
While subscribers to feeds generated by RSS software enjoyed the simplicity and clarity of the new feeds, some publishers began to run into problems that came with the publishing software. They missed the convenience of blogging’s online publishing that allowed them to add news -- regardless of whether they were at their home computer.

News publishers wanted the accessibility of online blogging with the accuracy of RSS publishing software. The new demand lead to the emergence of online RSS publishing systems such as FeedServer RSS Hosting (http://www.globalsyndication.com/rss-hosting). This new format of RSS publishing allows webmasters to login to an online control panel and publish their news – without having to worry about restrictive software licenses. Since most online RSS publishing systems run on a subscription basis, you can make use of the free trial or subscribe for one month and evaluate if the service meets your needs.

So which system should you use to publish RSS? It depends on your needs. If most of your readers manually visit your site to get new information, a blogging system may be sufficient. However, if you plan to take advantage of the full capabilities of RSS news syndication, you would do well to use a stand-alone RSS publishing system. RSS publishing software will satisfy your needs if you plan to use one computer only. But if you’re looking for flexibility and a lower startup costs, look into the new online RSS publishing systems.

Josiah Mackenzie is an entrepreneur and small business owner. His website (http://www.josiahmackenzie.com) contains fresh tips and advice for business and internet marketing.

Josiah also manages marketing for Global Syndication (http://www.globalsyndication.com), an RSS solutions company.

Use RSS to Get Your Sites Indexed Overnight

By Scott Riedy

As you may know, Google has it's very own blogging service called Blogger.com. If you start a blog with them, you'll have your own page on the blogspot.com domain which is currently ranked number 32 of the most visited domains on the planet according to Alexa. What does this mean to you? If your pages are being linked to by a site with that high of a ranking, it will increase your sites ranking. But that's merely a side benefit of using this method. The real benefit of following this guideline is having your pages indexed nearly overnight.

You're going to end up using two services, Blogger.com and Yahoo.com. You won't have to limit it to just Yahoo, but we'll start there. When you have a blog on Blogger.com you are provided with an RSS feed of the content that you post. By adding the RSS URL to your free "My Yahoo" page, you force Yahoo and Google to talk to one another and what their talking about will be your content. You essentially make it seem to both of the search engines that there is something worth looking at and therefore they send their spiders to crawl your blog. Now when the spiders crawl your blog they'll also crawl any other link that you have posted. If you update your blog on a semi regular basis and include any new links to pages you have created or affiliate programs you've joined, those pages or links will get indexed, and often overnight.

So how do you go about accomplishing all of this? It's really not all that difficult. Start out by getting your blog setup and begin familiarizing yourself with how to post to and change the look and content of your blog. If you don't know HTML that's OK, there are plenty help files that show you exactly what to do. When you start your blog, and when you sign up for new programs try to use the same unique identifying name. For example, mine is TheBestWaytoCash. I can shorten it to BestWaytoCash or TheBestWay or just BestWay depending on how many characters the site allows you to use. Later, you can do a search for your unique name to see if your sites have been indexed.

After you have your blog set up, you'll want to add the RSS feed to an RSS reader. We'll start out with your "My Yahoo" page. If you don't have one yet, get one right away. It's free and fun to have anyway. On your "My Yahoo" page locate a link that says "Add Content" and click it. The next page will have a large "Find Content" field. Just to the right of the empty field you'll find a link in small text that says "Add RSS by URL", click there. On this page you'll see a blank field with an "Add" button next to it. Type your RSS URL in and click "Add". Try it with mine to see how it works. My RSS feed is (http://thebestwaytocash.blogspot.com/atom.xml). Leave out the (). You'll notice that the only difference between your regular URL and your RSS URL is the /atom.xml on the end. That's because /atom.xml is one of the types of RSS feeds currently being used. I'll have more on the various types of RSS feeds in future articles.

From this point on, you should try to post new content to your blog as often as you can. Readers tend to like shorter more frequent articles rather than longer less frequent ones. You will end up getting some readers if you have content worth looking at. In my next article, I'll show you how to increase your page rank and make your indexed links mover toward the top of the search engine results.

Till next time, have a great day and good luck.

Talk to you soon,
Scott Riedy
TheBestWaytoCash

This article was written by Scott Riedy. Feel free to use it on your website as long as you leave it entirely intact. Please write to the address found on http://thebestwaytocash.blogspot.com for more info.

Scott Riedy of Seattle, WA has been promoting online for nearly a year now, and has begun to form a following from his various helpful hints, tips and tricks. Do a search for "Scott Riedy" or "TheBestWaytoCash" to find more articles and advertising that you can start using right away.

RSS, Feeds, and Aggregators

By Richard Dows

When you work online all the time, immersed in bits and bytes, hands automatically resting on the keyboard, where the lingua franca is a mish-mash of acronyms and abbreviations - it is easy to forget that the average person has no clue what we talk about. It can be very daunting for the Internet neophyte with all these terms, technology and hardware. That's why I wrote this. Because I don't want people to be afraid to either ask (via comments on this thread) or to click/use buttons they don't know or use.

Way back when I started blogging (6-7 months ago!), I was a complete n00b in these blogging terms too. Now while I'm not exactly the lead programmer at RSS central I do know a thing or two, but when I really think about it I'm only just paddling at the moment so maybe I can help others get into the paddling pool too!

RSS

Really Simple Syndication, let's break it down into the real basics. It is essentially a broken down look at the web page/site, stripping all the presentation and layout, and removing all the neat graphics and cool toys that generally clutter webpages. What's left is an RSS file (in XML format).

Surprisingly out of 1,000 blog readers (who are themselves a small elite minority among Internet users) 66% have not even heard of RSS and 23% said they understood but did not use it. Where do you stand?

Feeds

This is just a another way of writing what RSS can do. Feeds are a blog's (or site's) method of syndicating content, arranged concisely in an XML format and, as mentioned above, stripped of any extraneous presentation. The "feed" comes from aggregators requesting that RSS file to display as content for their subscribers (feeding their need for your well-written articles!).

Aggregators

It's a straightforward description for what it is: it aggregates RSS feeds from whatever source you tell it. These are also sometimes called "newsreaders" although this term is falling out of favor.

There are two types: software and web-based. Software has a following - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_aggregators#Desktop_news_aggregators, but web-based is beginning to draw more of the usage. Rapidly expanding online aggregators such as http://www.bloglines.com/, or http://my.yahoo.com/ are leading the way. With blog traffic up 31 percent since the beginning of the year, readers will need a way to sort through the blogosphere, and aggregators are that way.

The main advantage of aggregators is that they allow you to gather all your feeds in one place, and read them without having to navigate all over the place.

Adding Your Feed

You will have noticed button labeled RSS, often times they are orange rectangles (they are also labeled XML). That is the feed button - clicking it will show a lot of XML code. Note the URI, copy it. Then go to your aggregator, software or web-based, and paste that URI as the feed address and save. That will allow the aggregator to know where to fetch the feed and it will do it automatically from that point on.

What's The Advantage?

A big advantage to RSS is that you, the subscriber, is in control. Let's say you go to xyz.com and look for an article on Blogging software. You find it, but there are advertising banners, fly-ins, pop-ups, and then just as annoying you have to click three or four times to go to the "next page" with yet more of the same. With a feed (and appropriate aggregator) you get just the article (content) without all of the extra stuff.

The Future of RSS

So what is in store for us with RSS? I don't have a crystal ball but some things are plain to see. The future of RSS is bright and yet at the same time likely to be mired in specification wars, mainly due to Microsoft's insistence that they rename RSS to 'web feeds' for the upcoming IE7 release. You can read more about this hotly debated subject at http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/76104/microsoft-defends-rss-rebranding.html and at http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/009849.html

There is no doubt though that RSS is here to stay. It has become an integral part of the blogosphere, a method of aggregating large amounts of content from hundreds of blogs into one place. From a blogger's point of view RSS is essential to building and keeping an audience. Wary of clicking on subscriptions, Internet users finally have a way to grab your content (updated every day, right?) when they want it. For the blogger they now have a way to syndicate their articles, sharing them among other sites who publish those articles. Those who syndicate get content, and the blogger gets exposure.

Richard Dows is a web designer living in Florida, working on small businesses, blogs, site design, and more. You can find him working on his own blog at http://www.thex.com/rd/ or writing and participating in others like http://www.balancednewsblog.com/ and http://www.thex.com/webstandards/