blogging 102

Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Syndication, in this case, means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website or blog and the ‘really simple part’ is self explanatory.

RSS is a very useful tool. It is also a versatile one that can benefit not only to the site which produces the feed, but also other sites (that use it) and–let’s not forget them–Mr and Mrs Joe Public.

How does RSS benefit the site that has produced it?

One of the main benefits of RSS is that is a great way to publicise any updates or new content that has been added to a website or blog. Subscribers to the site’s feed are obviously interested in what is happening at the site or they would not have subscribed to the feed in the first place and once they have subscribed the information is there for them. The site is updated, the feed is updated and all interested parties, be they readers, or potential customers, are also updated. The information gets where it is needed and it is all really simple.

Usually the feed contains a link back to the originating site as well. Not the homepage either, but to the new content that the feed concerns. If the new content on the site is a book review on the latest best seller then that is where the link will lead and so it is really simple for the person reading the feed to find out all about it. Sometimes the feed will contain the full review (or other content) but often it has just a taster, which, hopefully, will wet the reader’s appetite and encourage them to visit the main site, which is probably where the webmaster wants them to be anyway.

How does RSS benefit the subscriber?

It benefits them in many ways.

1. As already mentioned, it provides them with the latest updates as soon as they come out.

2. It saves on surfing time. Because the RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user’s time by helping them to decide items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.

3. It gives the power of subscription to the user and this is where RSS has a real advantage over a more traditional mailing list. Users are given a free-hand over which websites they subscribe to in their RSS aggregators. They do not need to provide an email address or any information at all to the site where the feed has originated from. They are an anonymous reader and can unsubscribe any time that they want to do so. Many people prefer it this way because all too often, giving out an email address can be an open invitation to be spammed and nobody likes spam.

4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox. Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.

How does RSS benefit other sites?

If the site that has produced an RSS feed allows their feed to be used as content for other sites then it can be a win-win situation because if their feed is used on other sites the feed will probably generate extra traffic for the originating site. And whenever the feed changes it will provide a fresh content for any and all sites that are using it, which, in turn, will keep the search engines interested in those sites because they will have regular fresh content on their pages. If you have ever wondered how to get an automatically updated content onto your site, then RSS is probably the really simple answer.

RSS: the nuts and bolts.

On most blogs the RSS feed is produced automatically as an .xml file and so the average blogger does not have to even think about it. For bloggers it really is simple and no doubt about it. For a website though it can be a little more complicated and this is why there are not so many sites producing feeds.

If a webmaster wants to generate a feed for their site the simplest way might be to use the services of a third party, but often the webmaster will have to pay for the services or else put up with third-party advertisements added to their feed.

Another way to generate a feed is to buy software that will generate the feed for you and there are even freeware feed generators available, but not all of them work as well as they should do.

A final alternative is to write the feed yourself and that is what I do for a few of my sites. It is not easy to learn how to do it, but once you have your basic .xml file it is just a case of updating it each time you update your site. The feed can be created in notepad and then saved as .xml instead of .txt

Sadly, it would take too long for me to explain how best to do this, but if this is the route that you want to take I would suggest getting hold of feed from another site and then using it as a template. The easiest way, however will probably be to use a third party service to generate your feed. Try doing a Google search for ‘RSS feed Generators.’

Author: Steve Caldwell
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Humorous photo captions

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

Would you believe that it is possible for almost anyone to get their blog, web pages, affiliate site or other website materials into the first pages of the search engines, including the big “G” ! Not likely, you are apt to say. Well, hold on to your hat. We have information for you that can blow the lid completely off what you thought was possible or rather, not possible, on the web.

You’ve probably heard of “RSS,” which stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It’s works sort of like the local television stations and the networks, where the networks broadcast their programs and advertising through hundreds and hundreds of affiliated local station “feeds” in order to reach the mass audience all over the country (or the world.)

In the context of the web, we usually think of syndication (or Really Simple Syndication) as a way of finding bits of content made available by others on the internet, that we are permitted to post on our own websites. And conversely, it is a method whereby you can offer whatever content you put out on the wab, and make it available to others to put on their website to reach more and more eyeballs. Certainly, if some of your material – whatever kind of content – is available at 10. 100 or 1000 websites, it stands a better chance of being viewed by a larger overall audience than if it is available only on your own “local” website, blog or webpage, no matter how much you try to promote that website.

So RSS is great for getting more content on a given subject to add to your own content or other material on your website or blog – to build it up and make it more valuable for your audience. And it’s great for pushing your content out there to an ever larger audience. For these reasons, RSS started becoming a real factor on the internet between two and three years ago, and now it is really growing.

But you would be right to ask, “So how can I use RSS to help get me a higher ranking in the search engines? Well, as of this writing, not many people have learned how take advantage of RSS for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But the key use of RSS in SEO is to generate backlinks, and the best kind for the search engines: one-way backlinks. Furthermore by using RSS, we can get these backlinks from websites that score very higihly with the search engines by a metric which they refer to as “Authority.”

A technique that is pretty well known for getting backlinks and therefore better search engine rankng is to post or in some other way, get links to your materials by using the Social Bookmarking websites, Video Directories, Article Websites, Free hosts and Free Blog Hosts such as Blogger and WordPress. And if you have tried any SEO efforts, then you may have accounts with these sites.
But,. as you may have discovered, many such sites now embed something called a “no-follow” tag in your material posted on their sites, essentially making it so that the search engines do not see, and do not count links to your material found there in their ranking calculations.

However, do you know that the majority of such sites offer RSS Feeds associated with your accounts? And do you know that most of the same mateiral found on the social sites that gets picked up through RSS and published all around – including the material with your links – does not does carry any nofollow tags. That means that wherever and whenever these links appear, they do count in the search engine rankngs!

If that notion has started to get your wheel’s turning, then you are starting to get the picture. Now, if you search the web, you can find lots of material on the technical aspects of RSS. That is, how to publish via RSS and how to get material to read or republish via RSS. But you won’t find much material yet on how to use RSS yourself for improving your rankings in the search engines – for professional, artistic, political, commercial or other purposes.

Chances are, if you are reading this article, then you are interested in the commerical application of RSS to get better search engine rankings, generate more traffic, get more clicks, sales, etc. But all these techniques apply just as well to marketing for any purpose – where you are trying to get more of something in front of more audience for – whatever reason.

If you are seriously interested in using RSS to greatly increase your effectiveness on the web, then you will probably benefit exploring both available techniques and available software to help automate and these techniques and make them easier to implement. If so, it is well worth your while to learn more about your while to learn more about using RSS to improve your search engine rankings. And, in the biggest surprise of all, it’s a technique than can cost little to nothing!

Author: Alexander Gray
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Credit card currency-exchange fees

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

We often deal with clients that are planning to “revamp” their sites with Flash, with SEO having already generated tremendous gains in their sales. The thing that we most dread to hear is that they’ve hired an experienced “Flash designer” that will be taking their websites to the “next level.” Unfortunately, that “next level” is often the basement – at least in terms of SEO results.

The bottom line here is that a site built entirely in Flash still faces huge obstacles. While there have been recent moves from Google and Yahoo! to try to index the content from combined Flash/SEO sites, those moves have not yet, from my experience, translated into SEO results or success (at least when compared to html sites).

We should make a distinction here between embedded Flash and sites built entirely from Flash. For example, a site that contains Flash elements but still contains basic html elements will not overly suffer, as the Flash element (usually a movie in a box on the homepage or elsewhere) is externalized. A search engine spider will generally not try to parse through any files that have been externalized in the code – they will only index the code that is readily apparent on the source page.

However, from an SEO results perspective, there are still major issues with sites that are built entirely in Flash, and SEO is normally the first thing that suffers. First of all, the URL generally never changes no matter where people navigate on the site. As any decent SEO practitioner will tell you, every page of your site is a potential entry page for a search engine. With a site built in Flash, SEO suffers even more as you only have one potential entry page, which is the main URL. This cuts off dozens, hundreds, or thousands of potential pages that could otherwise be indexed in Google and Yahoo! (and all other engines). When your only potential entry page in the search engine listings is your home page, it is very difficult to target a wide assortment of keyphrases, potentially eliminating SEO results or rankings.

Content is another very large issue. Search engines rank pages based upon a number of criteria, but one of the most important to SEO results is the text that they can “understand” on individual pages. At present, search engines read primarily html text (although some also read text in the PDF format) – which means that if you decide that you want to use a rare and fancy font that must be displayed in graphic form (since the visitor may not have that particular font available on his or her computer while browsing), the engine will not read the text and therefore will not know what the page is about, which could harm SEO results. Naturally, this also includes any of the text included in Flash. While Yahoo! and Google have recently announced enhanced capabilities in reading content within Flash, I have not personally seen that translate into great SEO results for competitive keyphrases.

One other emerging aspect is that as search evolves, more and more people are looking for information while they are away from their computers. Many mobile devices are currently incapable of displaying Flash content, although recent moves by Adobe to make “Flash Lite” available may change this. However, it remains to be seen whether people that are seeking information on a mobile device will even want to navigate through Flash, especially if they can get the information that they seek from a fast-loading html page. In my opinion, lean html content will be at a premium when a company is trying to target a mobile audience.

Despite the difficulties, it is not the intent of this article to assert that Flash and SEO will always be incompatible – merely that it is the state of the current situation. You can find many differing opinions on mixing Flash and SEO on the internet, but the true test is to try to find a Flash site (that is to say, a site built entirely in Flash) that you admire and see if it ranks well in SEO results for 50+ competitive terms that are related to the specific business (in Google or Yahoo!). In my experience, such sites that combine Flash and SEO are nearly impossible to find. If anyone out there knows of one, please let me know.

Flash can be, and often is, used for great effect on the internet, in interactive kiosks, and in many other applications. I’m not from the “any Flash is bad” school, although I do think that many Flash practitioners tend to get a little carried away and often ignore basic usability issues. However, sites built entirely in Flash with SEO elements are still, again in my opinion, like oil and water – Flash and SEO are obviously individually useful, but they don’t mix well. Until they do, I will continue to advise my clients not to build sites entirely out of Flash – or, at the very least, to have an alternate html option for search engine and user preference purposes. At the end of the day, many clients are surprised to find out how many visitors actually prefer “old school” html.

Author: Scott Buresh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

Search engine optimisation, or as it is known in short SEO is a marketing strategy for a business within the avenue of online marketing. SEO campaigns may be offered by an individual or as part of a search engine optimisation team. They seek to improve the quality and quantity of a website’s traffic.

SEO campaigns are the key to success of advertising online but you should ensure that the company you enlist to perform your SEO campaign uses ethical and successful SEO techniques. An SEO company who is performing your SEO campaign should also offer you a consultancy service as part of your SEO campaign. Within this consultancy service you should have all of the technicalities involved with online marketing explained to you so that you can work along side the SEO company to ensure that everything is being done to successfully promote your website.

So what exactly is an SEO campaign? To have an SEO campaign performed on your website you are paying a set fee to an SEO company every month for the promotion work that is carried out. The more money you are paying every month the more work will be carried out on your site. There is no limit to the amount that you have to pay every month; basically your company will be paying as much as they can afford or for as much SEO work that they need carried out. By paying a higher fee every month your website will however have more of a chance of hitting the top spots within the search engines as you are getting more promotional work performed.

You should be aware that gaining good rankings within search engines takes a lot of time and hard work and there are no short cuts but the rewards that you can gain from an SEO campaign can be significant in terms of Internet presence as well as income. With a competitive phrase or keyword it can take 100’s of hours or more of promotion to bring results, which is something that you should bare in mind.

Depending on your website and the type of campaign that you are having performed it could take up to nine or 12 months for you to start seeing really impressive results, but there is a good side to this for the fact that these results will stick and you will remain within the top spots.

An SEO campaign is effective because Internet surfers who type in a keyword have already demonstrated their interest in your product or service. SEO campaigns involve a range of services all with the same primary goal; to ensure your website is user friendly and to help it climb up the search engine results. Some of the services that are on offer to you from an SEO campaign involves fixing technical problems that may occur during the campaign. An SEO campaign also involves writing unique and searchable content. Because SEO is an avenue of marketing, and not just advertising, it is highly recommended that companies hire experienced professionals to oversee a costly campaign.

If you are hoping to have an SEO campaign undertaken on your website then you need to enlist the help of an SEO company who are highly trained and skilled.

Author: Helen Cox
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Excise Tax

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

Sure, a lot of Internet webmasters manage websites and blogs just because they think it is fun… but most of us do it for money. The Internet is becoming the world’s biggest marketplace, and offers countless opportunities to make a living… and a very nice one, at that. But no matter how great your information or your product may be, you are not going to make much money unless your website is optimized for search engines. And how is this done? By using SEO services.

The whole point of having a website is to have traffic… some of the many people who are surfing the net, looking for just the type of thing you have on offer. And while there are other ways to get visitors to your site, the best and most cost effective way is through ranking highly in the search engine results. This is where using an SEO services company comes in.

SEO services work to increase the number of visitors you receive from the three major search engines: MS Live, Yahoo, and of course Google. The field of SEO services is constantly evolving, with changes being made all the time to the search engine algorithms that determine your site’s rankings. Due to these constant changes, going solo when it comes to your site’s SEO can be tricky. It can be pretty darned difficult to keep up.

The most effective option for most website owners is to hire someone to do SEO services for a website. SEO services companies use a large variety of marketing techniques in order to get your site good rankings in the always evolving world of search engines. Unfortunately, though, not all SEO services companies are equally effective.

Types of SEO Services

Most people who own websites are fully away of how important search engine optimization is for their sites… and many of them know a thing or two about SEO services concepts. But even though a webmaster can learn plenty about what goes into SEO services, knowing as much about SEO as an SEO professional is almost impossible. Why? Because as a website owner, they are not fully focused on the ins and outs of SEO. Even so, many amateurs attempt to sell the small amount they know of search engine optimization to unsuspecting webmasters.

The proliferation of sub par SEO services makes it doubly important to look for a truly qualified SEO professional. When looking for the best service for your website, take time to look at a particular SEO service’s track record, as well as the particular services they offer. If you shop around and take the time to work with a professional, there is no limit to what quality SEO services can do for your website’s presence on the net.

Author: Al Zan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Import duty tariff