Apr 19 2010

Web 2.0 Expo NY 09: Gina Trapani, “Making Sense of Google Wave”


Gina Trapani (The Complete Guide to Google Wave), “Making Sense of Google Wave”


Mar 15 2010

Making a Career in SEO — An Industrial Revolution

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the successful methods of advertising today. Anyone can learn, practice, and gain experience from optimizing technique. As Internet today, is the most convenient and cost effective means of communication, online advertising, especially through SEO means can work wonders for those vying to remain the cynosure in the business world.

Traditional Vs. Online Advertising – Which is the Best?

Earlier, traditional advertising was the only way to promote a product. It was costly, time consuming, and laborious. However, an expert in online advertising, such as SEO, Pay-per-Click (PPC), etc. would be able to quash all these factors through apt SEO methods – making it the viable, affordable, and quick way to promote a company or product.

A career in conventional advertising is stereotyped and requires full attention from those who pursue this option. On the other hand, an SEO expert does not have to invest in large amount –either money or time. The return would however, be unexpectedly high.

So, while you are making a career choice in advertising, why not choose a medium which appeals to the global market and is measurable as well? SEO can be the best medium to satisfy incumbent professionals who want to make it big in the market.

SEO marketing also allows professionals to communicate with the customers to understand their needs. While an ad in a billboard would be a passive way to reach out to the mass, the same is not true for SEO marketing. Through SEO, an expert would be able to charter a customized product or service for a customer.

SEO – What’s the USP?

The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of SEO means of advertising is that a website can be right at the top of important search engines without spending money. An SEO expert would be able to attract target audience in large numbers without having to invest in passive promotional means.

SEO has opened a new vista to professionals from all walks of life. For instance, a techie, graphic designer, content developer, sales executive, team leader, etc. can make their mark in SEO field. It is also highly lucrative and satisfying.

Why Choose SEO?

A graphic designer would perhaps be content with web designing. However, designing the page or writing interesting content is not the only way to be successful. An intelligent thought in providing correct keywords and phrases, or clever animation can help the website attain top ranking in search engines.

Once the website gets a high rank, traffic would flow and potential customers would be generated. For this reason, many companies look for professionals with SEO knowledge when hiring people.

SEO – A Revolution Today

It is really incredible to find out how many jobs have been created with the introduction of SEO and other online advertising modes. Not only direct SEO marketing helps people earn money, commissions and referrals have also made their way in this market.

There is complete freedom as there is no client to report. There is flexibility in time and effort. In other words, as you deal with customers directly, there can be innumerable ways to express benefits and USP of a product. Nothing would be wrong.

SEO – Rise of Affiliate Marketing

Today, SEO has given rise to different forms of marketing. Affiliate Marketing is one such way. Here, marketers who are experts in a field can earn huge commissions even when he is holidaying or sleeping. An expert can work on this own, create a beautiful website with apt content, and earn huge amount of money.

Earning is unlimited. In fact, the projects can be developed one after the other and each would generate “passive cash”.

The Success Mantra

The SEO success lies in sincere effort from a professional who truly knows his subject. With rankings changing rapidly and everyone trying for that key spot, SEO skills need to be pursued at all times. It is also important that you don’t fall prey to link spamming, Black Hat SEO, and other illegal ways to promote a website.

A website blacklisted by a search engine loses its prestige it had earned all this while within minutes. Learn the correct, legal, and efficient ways of SEO skills and master them intuitively through constant practice.

Learning Hub

You can get this reward from us at our center in Rajendra Nagar, Sahibabad. If you are worried about the distance, just think about the future that is in store for you. Work hard now to reap the harvest at the end of the training session.

You would realize your dream – a dream to be right at the top with the right knowledge. You would also realize your fiscal aspirations and rake moolah in millions.

So, decide now – the ray of wisdom or darkness of ignorance. The choice is yours.

Demanding, growing, and lucrative, SEO is a useful and rewarding career to those who knows that correct methods to follow the skill. Take the plunge and get trained as an SEO-savvy professional from us.

Please feel to contact us:

 

Website Optimization India

F3, Plot No – 74, Ist Floor (Behind Ganga Banquet Hall)

Radhe Shyam Park

Rajendra Nagar, Sahibabad

UP – 201005

 

M: (91) 995-389-4654, 997-148-9782

URL – http://www.websiteoptimizationindia.com/seo-ppc-training.html

 


Mar 12 2010

Seo Software Decision Making Process Made Simple – Make Your Search Engine Optimization And Search Engine Marketing Fast And Easy

Search engine optimization has become the most important element of ranking high in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Altavista, Dogpile etc. There are several websites on the internet which boast about SEO techniques & tips and guarantee top placement in days. How do you trust in and invest your hard earned money with a company who does not have a background in search engine optimization believing their claims?

We are in the business of providing Search Engine Optimization and SEM (including Blog Marketing and setting up continuity program and affiliate marketing programs for our clients.  We only use and recommend software that works for us and provides real value to our team – if it doesn’t make our job easier and better then we won’t recommend it to our customers and friends.  You can check out our current review of Apex Pacific’s new XGen SEO software at XGen SEO

The question is “are you ready to play a gamble with your site?” Honestly the answer would be a big NO.
No one would like to waste their money. So, what is the way out? How about doing your own search engine optimization? It is a very long drawn and tedious process if you do it manually. So, how to go about it?

Are there any software available to do the SEO?

Yes! there are several SEO software packages available in the market. How do you know which SEO software is reliable and will meet your search engine optimization needs and most importantly, whether they would live up to their claims? Trust someone who uses the software everyday in their business, not just someone recommending you buy something to get a commission.

SEO software is the answer to implement the major SEO techniques. What are they? SEO is primarily divided into two parts.

• On page optimization
• Off page optimization

On page optimization

On page optimization involves:

• Title Tags
• Meta Tags like meta keywords (lost its importance now due to keywords abuse) & meta description.
• Alt-Image tags
• H1, H2 tags
• High keyword density
• Quality content
• Ease of navigation
• Internal Linking and more…..

Off page optimization

Off page optimization is really not optimization at all, but SEM.  Link building is a huge part of that effort, but keep in mind that search engines only provide about 20% of the traffic online.  Where does the remainder come from?  Affiliate marketing and Media Buys!!!  If you have a product or service to sell online, you MUST have Dealers just like a distributor in the brick and mortar world does.

Off Page Search Engine Optimization can include:

• Link Building to improve Link popularity
• Reciprocal Linking – Two way links
• Non-reciprocal linking – In-bound links
• Use of keyword rich anchor text in linking text
• Improving Google page rank
• PPC advertisements
• Directory submissions

But take care, these efforts alon will not accomplish your goal.  You need to strongly consider the following:

• Video Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Blog Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Media Buys
• Affiliate Marketing

It is a well known fact that off page optimization has more value than on page optimization. It does not mean that on page optimization has no value and requires no optimization. On page optimization has its value and should not be ignored.

So, what to expect from a SEO software selling website?

• Not a one time seller without any future upgrades
• A website with good technical support
• A website with a proven track record
• A website with a forum with quality user feedback
• Most importantly these website’s SEO software should have good product reviews.

We see many SEO software companies doing their own product reviews and it looks more like self propaganda than an honest product review. We need websites who test and verify the claims made by the SEO software companies and publish their honest feedback; our honest attempt to start this can be found at XGen SEO. This would help the newbie website owners to make an educated decision after reading the detailed unbiased analysis published on a third party website.

There are very few websites that do this and should be encouraged to test and verify more of these SEO softwares and help the website owners to learn and implement the off page optimization techniques. This would save time and money of the online entrepreneurs to improve their link popularity and increase their search engine rankings. Higher search engine rankings bring more traffic to the websites and hence more sales. It is a known fact that we can drive visitors to websites but converting them into buyers totally relies on how effective is the content and ease of website’s navigation.

We should develop effective content in the form of relevant articles linking to your website. Writing an effective article is a skill which needs to be developed by reading other articles and other e-books focusing on writing best articles. Now we should know the list of quality article directories to submit to in the right category. This would be another tedious and time consuming process and this demands SEO software whose sole aim is article submission to various article directories.


Mar 5 2010

Hyperlink Making Technique – The Basics Of A Link Building Strategy

Hyperlink creating is an important component when it arrives to S.E.O. A link constructing method gets you site visitors for your internet site and considerably improves your search engine rankings. If you coulp get a hyperlink from a different site to your website, this signals on the almighty research engines that you have got one thing well worth looking at. And So, they position you up in the direction of the front with the line, so to speak. The greater the amount of backlinks you build, the closer you get on the first web page of search results effects when a person does a lookup for an applicable term. And after you’re on that 1st page, you will begin to get more visitors. One on the better strategies to build inbound hyperlinks is to make sure that your website gives priceless information for your viewers or priceless reference pages that apply for your business… or both. When you’ve got proven that you will have good quality content material, other website owners can connection for a internet site with no you even having to go out and ask them to complete so. Bear in mind the very best top quality links are these which have been connected by a key phrase or key phrase phrase, not links that go from one more site straight to your domain name.

So, for instance, if someone hyperlinks from his website www.ABC.com for your website www.DEF.com, this is important.

But not as much if similar individual links the text ‘red apples’ from a piece in his website in your document on red apples in your webiste. You may opt to accomplish some outbound linking (you linking to different site) your self in order to supply extra worth to your viewers and to inspire other people to website back to you. This component also contributes in your hyperlink making technique and is viewed on effectively by lookup engines. Don’t go overboard however. Only 1 or a couple of hyperlinks for every web page is going to be fine.

You may also try website making providers although it is important to do your analysis primary with these. If you select the wrong service, it can get you penalized with the search engines.

It is not difficult to determine why individuals do opt for|choose these types of services — connection creating may be a prolonged, dull procedure and hiring somebody else to accomplish the grunt operate might be really worth the needed fee.

But it is not worth it if your website ends up proceeding backwards rather than forwards in search results ranking. Though heading out and looking for links is somewhat frowned on, it makes sence. And it is a win-win circumstance when you occur throughout asite that supplies one thing of value in your target market. It is important to bear in mind that it is not just the quantity but the good quality of your links that may get you in which you want to become. In addition, the greatest method to ensure that you’re going to get links to your internet site should be to make high quality articles. These are the fundamentals when it comes to implementing your backlink building method.

Additional Resources:
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affiliate millionaire bonus


Mar 5 2010

Making the Task of SEO Easy

Search engine optimization SEO, is very dynamic. What one expert thinks is important may become less important the next day. There are many methods and tactics that are quite baffling. Examination and study of the traits of those sites that are ranked the highest, may enlighten you to strategies and ideas that you may not have realized before. When you build websites, there are 2 things that need to be done. Focus on the On & Off page optimization. With on page optimization, it deals with the layout and configuration of your website with respect to keywords, tags and meta tags, alt text, links, and general text.

Off page optimization is the most important because without correct off page SEO techniques and or lack there of, you would have serious difficulty sending visitors to your site. What off page SEO entails is getting other sites with similar subjects and related content to link to your site. The more quality links that you have pointing to your site, the more popular your site becomes. Search engine algorithms take into account the amount of inbound traffic that you have coming to your site.

These days, the idea of the link exchange has changed. There are folks out there that charge money to give a link to you from a high PR sites. If you feel that purchasing links is essential that’s fine, however I personally prefer to exchange links with similar sites for free. Another way of getting sites to link to you is going to online forums related to the subject matter of the site that your are promoting. Participating in related discussions, informing the public and gaining credibility and respect among the community in your niche goes a long way. Participating in forums if done correctly can effectively establish you as an authority figure in a given niche. When you post in these forums, you set up a signature with a link pointing preferably to a site you are looking to bring inbound links to that relates to the subject matter. Your posts and your links will stay up for a good while and bring you quality, targeted traffic that you would otherwise have to pay for. Another method of off page SEO is posting original articles about subjects related to your niche with a link pointing to your site. The beautiful thing about posting articles is, that people making sites may use your article in their site for content with that same link pointing to your site. This can multiply your efforts without any direct effort on your part other than just posting the article in the first place. If 50 other webmasters come across your article and decide to use it, that is 50 inbound links that you can get.

Now keep in mind that, you have to write excellent CONTENT for your specific site. With a one way link, meaning there will be no reciprocal links. Work this out and submit your articles to around fifty free article directories or websites; this should lead to a good PR in say a couple of months. Articles work big time and in ways that are always not apparent immediately. Article creation can be considered a long term investment of your time into your business.

Generating traffic is probably one of the BIGGEST frustration that most affiliate marketers have to deal with. I often equate it to trying to rotate a large flywheel that weighs a ton with your own muscle and trying to build speed & momentum. Often marketers get lost in the process. But it doesn’t have to be difficult, frustrating or confusing – the days of yanking your hair out trying to figure out how to get the RIGHT PEOPLE to come to your website or see your products are over. Brad Callen has developed this wonderful software breakthrough called SEO Elite version 4.0. SEO Elite is a tool used to bring organic Search Engine traffic to your page increasing sales and signups. Essentially It can automate the off page optimization and multiply your efforts many time over. The traffic that this software brings to you is 100% Free, 100% targeted, and runs on Auto Pilot. More targeted visitor gets you more sales.

SEO Elite allows you to find your way to top 10 search engine listings for your site. You can instantly find hundreds of high quality, high page rank websites in your niche. You can search and find supper affiliates that are more than willing to promote products for you. You can have visibility in terms of who is linking to you. You can do backlink searches on the major search engines for backlink status. There is so much to SEO Elite in terms of functionality and automation for the task of SEO that it is well worth considering. For more information about SEO Elite, visit seoelite.azmega.com.


Jan 31 2010

Social Bookmarking: Making the Web Work for You


This review of the bookmarking tool diigo shows how social bookmarking can help you read, organize, and share things you read on the web. I’ll show you how to sign up and start using it, then give you a tour of some of the social features. This video is available for anyone to use under this Creative Commons License: creativecommons.org To find more information about the photos I’ve used, please visit: socialnetworkinstruction.googlepages.com


Jan 29 2010

Making an RSS Feed

What Is RSS?

How does RSS syndication work? Say you publish a new web page about a particular topic. You want others interested in that topic to know about it. By listing the page as an “item” in your RSS file, you can have the page appear in front of those who read information using RSS readers or “news aggregators” (explained more in my sidebar article, RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content). RSS also allows people to easily add links to your content within their own web pages. Bloggers are a huge core audience that especially does this.

What does RSS stand for? There’s a can of worms. RSS as introduced by Netscape in 1999 then later abandoned in 2001 stood for “Rich Site Summary.” Another version of RSS pioneered by UserLand Software stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” In yet another version, RSS stands for “RDF Site Summary.”

History buffs might be interested that there’s been some rivalry over who invented RSS. This is why we have both different names and indeed different “flavors” or versions of RSS. Mark Pilgrim’s written an excellent article, What Is RSS, that charts the different versions with recommendations on which to use. I’ll also revisit the version choice you’ll need to make. But first, let’s look more closely at some basics of what goes into any RSS file.

How Easy Is RSS?

I’ve been exploring RSS because it was time that Search Engine Watch offered its own stories in this manner. I’ve read several tutorials about making a feed, and they generally suggest that it is easy. They often offer code that you can “cut-and-paste” and link over to specifications that I actually don’t find that clear.

For example, the RSS 2.0 specification has an “cloud” element that’s optional but which a lay person might still wonder if they should use it. Meanwhile, heaven help the person who stumbles into the RSS 1.0 specification and its complicated RDF syntax.

Sure, making an RSS file IS easy for many. If you understand HTML, you’ll probably understand enough to do a cut-and-paste from someone else’s RSS file to make your own file. Don’t know HTML? Start a blog, because several blogging tools automatically generates RSS files.

As for those non-technical people using WYSIWYG page building tools or personal home page building systems, have faith. Even you can build an RSS file from scratch, as long as you dispense with some of the extra features you probably don’t need. We’ll go through how to do this below. Later, I’ll also mention some tools that will even do some or all of the work for you.

The RSS File

At the heart of an RSS file are “items.” No matter what version of RSS you settle on, your file will have to include at least one item. Items are generally web pages that you’d like others to link to. For example, let’s say you just created a web page reviewing a new cell phone that’s being released. Information about that page would form an item.

To enter your item into the RSS file, you’ll need three bits of information:

* Title

* Description

* Link

The title and description of your item need not match exactly the HTML title tag of the web page that the item refers to, nor the meta description tag, assuming you use these (don’t know what they are? See my How To Use HTML Tags article). You can write any title and description that you think will describe the page. However, using your page’s title and meta description tag certainly makes it easy to copy and paste to build your RSS feed.

In the case of our example page, let’s say this is the information we settle on to define it as an item:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Now we have to surround that information with XML tags. These are similar to HTML tags, with the exception that unlike with HTML, there’s no set definition of XML tags. Anyone can make up a particular XML tag. Whether it is useful depends on the program that reads the resulting XML file. In the case of RSS feeds, they have their own unique set of XML tags that are defined. Use these correctly, and then anything that reads RSS will understand your information.

Did that make your head spin? If so, don’t reread — just carry on to see how simple it is. First, open a text editor like Notepad. We’re going to build our RSS file using it.

For your title, you need to start it with the tag, then follow this with the text of the title, then end with the tag. It looks like this:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

For your description, you do the same, starting out with the opening tag, then following with the actual description, then “closing” with the tag. Now you have this:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

Next, we add the link information, beginning with , following with the actual hyperlink, then closing with . That gives us this:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Now there’s one more thing we need to do. We actually have to define all this information as forming a particular “item,” which we do using a special item tag.

You place the opening item tag, at the top or start of all the information we’ve listed. You then place the closing item tag, , at the bottom or “end” of the item information. The finished product looks like this:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Congratulations! You’ve now made your first item. There’s a bit more to do to finish our RSS file. First, what if we have other items we want to syndicate? Then we simply add more item elements, just as we did above. You can have up to 15 items. New items tend to be inserted at the top, with old items removed from the bottom, to make room for new stuff.

With our example, let’s see how things look if we add two more items:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!

I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html

Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small

OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon’s MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html

Having defined items we want to distribute, we now have to define our site as a “channel.” You’ll use the same tags as with the items: title, description and link. However, this time the information will be about your entire site, rather than a particular page. That means our channel information would look like this:

All Gadgets Reviewed

If it’s a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what’s not!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com

Now, how does something reading our RSS file know that the information above is for our “channel” when it looks just like item information? Simple. As long as we don’t surround this information with an opening and closing tags, it won’t be seen as item information but rather as channel information. That gives us this:

All Gadgets Reviewed

If it’s a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what’s not!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!

I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html

Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small

OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon’s MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html

There are a few last things we need to do. First, we need to add a tag at the very top of the file saying that this is written according to the XML 1.0 specifications. Right under this, we also have to say what RSS version we are using.

So far, everything we’ve done is compatible with UserLand’s popular RSS 0.91 version. However, it also matches UserLand’s latest RSS 2.0 version, as well, so we’ll define the file as meeting that specification. This will allow us to add other neat features in the future, if we want.

Finally, after the RSS tag, we need to add an opening “channel” tag. That gives us this at the top of the file:

At the bottom of the file, after all the items we want to syndicate, we have to insert a closing channel and RSS tag, in that order. Those look like this:

This means our complete file looks like this:

All Gadgets Reviewed

If it’s a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what’s not!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!

I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html

Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small

OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon’s MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html

Mind Blowing Options

Everything shown above is the bare basics you need to create a file and start syndicating content from your web site. However, there are additional things you could do.

For example, rather than your entire web site being a “channel,” you could actually have different content from within the web site be defined into separate channels. That’s something I’m not going to explore in this article, but some of the resources below will guide you through this, when you feel more comfortable.

As hinted at, RSS 2.0 allows you to insert all types of additional information into your feed. It can make your head spin to look at these and decide what to use. The easy answer is, don’t bother with anything you don’t know. Not every aggregator supports all the options offered. As long as you provide the minimum information suggested above, you should be fine.

Did I Choose The Right RSS Version?

Earlier, I’d mentioned there are different versions of RSS. Even though we entered the bare minimum of information, it turned out that we were able to have a file that was easily considered to be RSS 2.0, the latest version promoted by UserLand and which is widely used.

Indeed, the Syndic8 site reports that the most popular format of RSS by far is RSS 0.91 — and though we’ve used RSS 2.0, our file as shown is entirely compatible with RSS 0.91. In short, we’re in safe company.

What about that RSS 1.0 version that I said was complicated. Well, it is complicated. However, some people might want to make use of some of the special capabilities that it offers. If you are interested in it, then check out the official specification.

Saving The File

Now that we’re done adding to the file, we need to save it. But what name shall we give it? I’ve looked and not seen any guidance on this. I imagine that’s because as long as the file is valid (more below), it probably doesn’t matter what it’s called.

To make my own decision for Search Engine Watch, I decided to imitate what I saw out at UserLand, which promotes the RSS 2.0 standard that we used. UserLand’s example feeds all ended .xml, so let’s do the same. As for the first part, that really can be whatever you like. For our example, let’s say we just call it feed.xml.

Now that our file is saved, we can place it anywhere we want on our web server. Let’s say we put it in the root or home directory. Then the address to our RSS file would be:

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/feed.xml

Validating The File

Now our RSS file is done, but did we do it right? To find out, we need to validate it. Use the aptly named Feed Validator service. Simply enter the address to your RSS file, and you’ll be told if everything is OK — or if there’s something wrong you need to fix.

How about a quick preview of how your new feed actually looks? Then pay a visit to Wytheville Community College News Center. Again, enter your feed URL, and you’ll see the clickable headlines and story descriptions nicely assembled inside a box.

The service will also generate a JavaScript code that you can post on your site. Anyone copying the JavaScript can automatically have your feed syndicated into their pages — pretty neat!

Get Syndicated!

Now that your file is validated, you want the world to know about it! To make this happen, visit the RSS directories and search engines listed in the RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content article. They generally offer submission pages, where you can inform them of your feed.

You also want to make sure people who come to your web site see that you provide a feed. It’s very common to post a link to the feed somewhere on the home page of a web site. If you have a dedicated news page, you may want to put it there, as well.

You can link to your feed with an ordinary HTML link. However, many sites use a small orange XML icon to link to the feed. I’ve also seen some sites use blue RSS icon. I could find no standard about using these. So, to be safe, I did all three with Search Engine Watch. Look on the home page, and you’ll see how it’s done (and help yourself to the icons, if you need them).

Finally, it’s good to “ping” one of the major services that track when web logs and RSS content changes. By doing this, you ensure that other sites that monitor these know to check back at your site for more content.

Weblogs.com is one of these major sites. Enter your site’s name and the URL of your feed into the manual Ping-Site Form, and it will know you’ve updated your feed. The Specs page explains how to set up automatic notification.

blo.gs is another major change monitoring site. It is supposed to receive any changes that come from Weblogs.com, so you shouldn’t need to notify it separately. However, if you want to be on the safe side, it’s easily done. Use the ping form, which also explains how to set up automatic pinging, as well.

Tutorials & Resources

RSS Headline Creator allows you to skip coding and manually choose the number of headlines you’d like to include in your file, up to the 15 maximum allowed. Then a form with boxes that you fill out will be made. Enter the right information, then push the “Make The Code” button. Your RSS file’s code will be generated, for you to copy and paste into a text editor and save.

How To Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated is a Dec. 2002 tutorial by Kalena Jordan and Dan Thies from which I drew inspiration to get my own feed going.

Syndic8′s How To Section lists a variety of tutorials that discuss how to build RSS files.

Content Syndication with RSS is a book by Ben Hammersley that was just released in March 2003. I haven’t read it, but everything I’ve heard is that it should be excellent.

RSS Resources Directory from UserLand categorizes helpful information related to RSS, in different categories.

Postscript: Search Types: Blogs & Feeds and SEO: Feeds are sections of the Search Topics area available to Search Engine Watch members with lots of information on the topic of feeds since this article was originally written.

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