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.

Author: Brendon Turner
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Benefits of electric pressure cooker

You hear so much talk about RSS these days on the Internet and in
the media. Everyone is acknowledging it’s importance in boosting
your site’s presence on the web. Not to mention how it can increase
your site’s traffic and ranking. But what exactly is RSS and how can
I actually use it on my site? Try these Five Easy Ways…

First, just what is RSS?

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Basically, RSS allows
you to directly deliver your content to all interested parties…
don’t come to us; we will deliver the information to you or your website.

It syndicates your content. It lets you send updated headlines and
brief summaries to your subscribers. In a nutshell; it’s simply
a more efficient way to get your content ‘out there’.

Many people associate RSS with Blogs or Blogging because Blogs
are usually written in XML or RSS format (code like html) so that
these headlines and postings can be easily read and accessed.

RSS has been around for awhile but it really didn’t catch
on when users had to use RSS readers or aggregators but with
the increasing popularity of MyYahoo, the Firefox Browser
and Blogging…RSS is becoming: more popular, more accessible
and more mainstream.

That’s great –you say– but just how do I put the
stuff on my site!

If you’re wondering how to actually use RSS and Benefit from
it — Try these Five Easy Ways…

1. How do I Get My OWN RSS Feed?

First, you need to get an RSS Feed for your site. There are
several ways to do this. Let’s just stick with the easiest.
You can use a site like http://www.blogger.com and start a Blog on
your site’s topic or any topic that interests you.

Creating a blog with sites like Blogger (owned by Google)
or Bloglines (recently acquired by Ask Jeeves) is quick,
fast, and painless. Within minutes you can have your own blog
up and running.

This Blog will also supply you with an RSS Feed that you can
place on your site. Get a XML or RSS orange button and place
it on your site. Link it to your RSS Feed url – this is your
atom.xml link if you’re using Blogger.

You can also use a MyYahoo button so visitors can add your
feed to their MyYahoo. Each time a subscriber opens their
MyYahoo site; your RSS Feed will be updated.

You can also add ‘MyMsn’ and ‘Bloglines’ buttons on your site.
Plus others, give your visitors every opportunity to subscribe
to your RSS Feed or Blog, and you will see a marked increase in
visitors to your site.

Of course, you can also get your own blogging software and install
it on your site. For those who want to choose this route, it might
be helpful to check out this comprehensive comparison of the different
blogging software here:
http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm

2. How Do I Place Other RSS Feeds On My Site?

Have a cool RSS Feed from your favorite site and you want to
place that Feed’s content on your own site. How is it done?

It’s a lot easier than you think!

There are several ways, but we’ll again stick with the
easiest way. If you just want to place headlines on your
site – try a free service like http://www.feedburner.com and you
will get a headline animator. This will display the RSS feed’s
headlines with links to the content.

If you want to place other content from a feed on your site
- one of the easiest ways I found is to use this free site:
[http://www.bigbold.com/rssdigest/]

This site will generate the source code (html or javascript)
that you need to place into your webpages. It’s good because
it gives your code in several options: Javascript, Php file,
and Iframe.

Keep in mind that Search Engines cannot or don’t read
javascript so if you want this daily updated content to be
indexed please be aware of this.

Just take this code and add it your webpages where you
want this content to go.

3. How do I place MSN Search Results Directly on My Site?

MSN has come out with their Beta Program using RSS in their
search. You can now place RSS search results directly onto
your website. It can enrich your site with daily updated content.

And it’s quite simple to use; just add “&format=rss” at the end of the
URL in your MSN search engine query. For example, to get an RSS Feed for
‘tsunami relief’ you would use this url: http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=tsunami+relief&format=rss

4. How do I place Yahoo Results on my site?

In Yahoo the URL would be slightly different:

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=tsunami+relief&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt

Of course, in both cases you can change ‘tsunami+relief’ with the keyword
or phrase of your choice to suit your website’s content.

Yahoo also has an RSS Search Directory here:
http://news.yahoo.com/rss

5. What are Tags? How can I use them on my site?

Tags are more or less keywords for blogs and you should
take advantage of them to bring targeted traffic to your
site or blog.

Tags have hit the radar lately because Technorati, which
indexes 4.5 million blogs, started sorting blog posts by
using tags.

They have created a folksonomy, drawing tags from
different sources, mainly Flickr.com which sorts or
groups pictures and from del.icio.us — where you
create a tag when you bookmark a page.

Or if your blogging software supports categories; this will
be recognized by Technorati as a tag.

If you want to create a ‘tag’ it’s very simple; just place
this code in your blog:

Computers
(remove asterisks in actual code)

and you will have created a tag for computers.

Conclusion

You have just discovered five easy ways to put RSS on your
website, but you have to implement this newly acquired information
in order to see any results. You don’t have to try all five — just
pick a few and put them on your site. Just take action and do it.

It’s fairly easy, and you will see the benefits of RSS
almost immediately. You will also see what all the fuss is
about!

Copyright © 2005 – Bizwaremagic.com

This article may be freely distributed if this resource

box stays attached.

Author: Titus Hoskins
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: How Electric Pressure Cookers Work

One of the biggest reasons people visit websites is to get information. If you can regularly provide fresh, quality content on your website you can expect to be rewarded by visitors and return visitors. What’s more, you will be rewarded by the search engines. I recommended that you add new and original content to your site as often as possible, ideally once a day.

Regularly adding fresh and original content:

- Keeps your site visitors coming back

- Continually adds value to your website

- Makes people more comfortable buying from your site

- Establishes yourself as an authority in your industry

- Greatly helps your site rank higher in search engines

All of the above factors translate into revenue.

We all know how hard adding original and fresh content is, especially if you’re the business owner. You have to be original, creative, organized, thoughtful and motivated, and above all, able to write. So what’s a website owner or business owner supposed to do? RSS may be the answer.

What Is RSS?

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of RSS:
RSS is a family of web feed formats specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats) and used for Web syndication. RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an “RSS feed”, “webfeed”, “RSS stream”, or “RSS channel”. These RSS feeds provide a way for users to passively receive newly released content (such as text, web pages, sound files, or other media); this might be the full content itself or just a link to it, possibly with a summary or other metadata (data describing the content).

RSS feeds are operated by many news web sites, weblogs, schools, and podcasters.

“RSS” can stand for any of the following phrases:

Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)

RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)

Want to see an example of RSS in action? Go to the Oak Web Works, LLC homepage (www.oakwebworks.com/), and look at the bottom of the right-hand column under the title ‘Latest Tech News’. This is actually two RSS feeds from other websites.

Our company homepage was very static. It didn’t change very much since the services we offer stay basically the same. Why should any visitors come back if every time they come to our site, the content is exactly the same? They don’t have much of a reason.

Interestingly, that’s the way search engine spiders were programmed to “think” as well. Spiders are programs written for search engines to regularly surf the Web and record what’s there. That recording goes into the search engine’s databases ready to be accessed by the next searcher. This process is called indexing.

For example, Google will send out a spider to your site and index a lot of it, but not always all of it. It determines how often to revisit and index your site by how often you update it. If you update it every day, then it will visit much more often than if you rarely update it. Engines also consider the homepage to be the most important page, so it’s good to update it even more often than the rest of your site.

Again, if you struggle with adding fresh content, then RSS may be the answer. We didn’t write the headlines under ‘Latest Tech News’ on our homepage. Instead, the RSS feed automatically grabbed it from another site that had created them. Once we set the feed up, we don’t have to do anything more, and our homepage has regularly updated content. Every time those headlines change, it updates its feed, which is then updated on any other websites displaying that feed, as well as ours.

RSS feeds can be more than news headlines. They can be lists of any kind. They can be press releases, articles, blog entries, product releases, or almost any other grouping of changing or growing data.

How Do I Set An RSS Feed Up?

There are a number of ways in which you can display an RSS feed on your website. You can use JavaScript or various other scripting languages. Unfortunately, RSS that uses JavaScript is not seen at all by search engines when they come and index your site, so don’t use JavaScript.

Instead, use a script that can be handled by your Web server besides JavaScript. Ask your hosting company or IT people what platform your Web server uses and what software or modules are loaded onto the machine. This will determine what scripting language you can use for your RSS.

Check if your Web server has PHP capabilities. If so, then there are hundreds of scripts written in PHP that you can use for free that properly displays RSS feeds that are recognized by search engines. There are RSS scripts written in ASP.NET, Perl and numerous other languages, so you have a wide variety to choose from.

For the Oak Web Works, LLC homepage we used an ASP script called RSStoHTML.

Which one would you choose? After you’ve determined which languages your Web server supports, conduct a search such as “PHP script for displaying RSS feeds in html” or ‘ASP and RSS’, for example. Try a few and see which ones run on your server. If one runs on your server properly, and you check this by simply seeing if it displays RSS feeds on your Web page, then use that one.

When you download the script, look at the code and find where to add an RSS feed URL. There should be a dummy one in there already, so just replace that one with the RSS feed you want to use. Here’s what a typical RSS feed URL looks like: http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/userland/Technology.xml
The URL’s often end in ‘.rss’ as well.

After we inserted the RSS feed URL into the script, we wanted to display the feed in HTML on our homepage. To do this we added the following bit of code into the spot on our homepage html code where we wanted it to display:

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Keep in mind that this is for a Windows Web server. The way in which you include it on a website powered by a UNIX Web server will be a little different. If you’re not sure, ask your hosting company.

Where can I find feeds that are relevant to my website’s content?

First you can try these:

- Syndic8 – http://www.syndic8.com/

- Feedster – [http://www.feedster.com/]

You can also do a search for your topic and RSS feeds. For example, search for “RSS feeds and pets’, or ‘football and RSS feeds’, or ’small business news feeds’. Finally, you can go to specific websites that are related to your industry and look for a small, orange, rectangular icon that say ‘RSS’ or ‘XML’. Click on that and you’ll get a feed URL to enter into your RSS feed script.

Remember, always be sure to include feeds that are relevant to your website’s content. Once you get the hang of the concept, RSS can be a lot of fun, and it definitely keeps your website fresh and updated, just what search engines like, and more importantly, what website visitors like.

Author: Jason OConnor
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty tariff

I know you see it all the time on the Net these days, but you
still don’t know what the heck it is. RSS, RSS, what in the
world is RSS and what can it do for me?

RSS which is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication has also
stood for Rich Site Summary. Regardless, it is an XML based
form of delivering content to the masses. One of the main
reasons why it has become so popular is the fact that it is
free (reminds of the reason why MySQL and PHP is so popular as
well).

It makes it a very simple way to create a site with loads of
content without a huge knowledge of web design or html. And no,
you don’t have to set up huge partnerships with big content
sites, you can just grab their information via an RSS feed and
you are up and running. Content worthy of the search engines.
RSS has been around for a few years, but it just started
getting popular in the last couple of years. There have always
been ways to deliver fresh, new content to your visitors
through the use of javascripts, but RSS is much easier which is
why it is catching on like wildfire.

Don’t expect it to go anywhere anytime soon. RSS is here to
stay. Long ago, people have realized that content was king, but
getting to everyone was always the problem. Enter RSS

Need More Information on the History of RSS?
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssVersionHistory

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN RSS FEED FOR FREE

It really isn’t that hard to create a feed manually. If you
have a basic knowledge of HTML, then this should be a breeze
for you. It seems complicated at first, but I found some great
tutorials that can help you.

How to Create an RSS Feed

[http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/view.cgi?dbs=Article&key=1059503386]

Make RSS Feeds

http://www.make-rss-feeds.com/making-an-rss-feed.htm

Now if you would rather use software or scripts to create your
own RSS feed, then you can try out these options on our RSS
Feed Creation Software Page

RSS FEED SOFTWARE FOR CREATING YOUR OWN FEEDS

Now if you would rather not create the feed manually, there are
some tools to help you create your feeds. Gotta love software
automation.

Here are some of the more popular picks

FEEDFORALL: feed creation tool that allows webmasters to
create, edit and publish RSS feeds. http://feedforall.com

LISTGARDEN RSS FEED GENERATOR PROGRAM

Creates and maintains RSS feeds

Produces both XML and optional human-readable companion HTML

Open source (FREE)

Requires no knowledge of XML or the RSS data format
http://softwaregarden.com/products/listgarden/

RSS BUILDER is an easy to use FREE service to create RSS feeds
for your web site. It provides a simple interface that lets you
add topics, links and content, and then publish the RSS (v2.0)
feed to your web server with one click!
http://rss.icerocket.com/

HOW TO DISPLAY RSS FEEDS ON YOUR SITE

Whether you have every intention of creating your own RSS
feeds, it is a great way to keep fresh content on your site, by
grabbing other RSS feeds.

But how can you display other feeds on your site? Simple….

CARP (CACHING RSS PARSER)

RSS feeds on your webpages

Free and Paid Version Available

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

FREE RSS TO JAVASCRIPT SERVICE

Converts any RSS feed into a Javascript code to paste on your
site. [http://www.rss-to-javascript.com/]

RSSlib – this library allows you to add RSS content to your
site (PHP or ASP). http://www.2rss.com/software.php

This is just a quick primer on how RSS works but it will help
you to understand just how useful it is to you and to your
content. Have fun with it.

The above article can be reprinted as long as the resource box below is included. Please do not plagiarize.

Author: Donesia Muhammad
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: US Dollar credit card

Displaying RSS

RSS offers webmasters a unique opportunity to display fresh content on websites. While publishing an RSS feed is a great way to generate site interest and increase communication, syndicating and displaying feeds from related relevant sources can also generate interest, increase traffic and improve search engine ranking.

RSS Radars

Webmasters with limited time or capacity can syndicate related content. In a nut shell, webmasters can create RSS radars by combining a mix of content from related sources by grouping similarly-themed feeds. RSS feeds are updated at different intervals, providing an ever-changing collection of related information.

RSS is a form of eXtensible Markup Language or XML. Viewing an RSS feed in a web browser generally produces code that is not easy for website visitors to decipher. As a result, webmasters use tools to display the content contained in an RSS feed.

Content contained in RSS feeds can be added to websites a number of different ways. Each method for displaying the RSS feed has pros and cons associated with it. Webmasters will need to determine which option will best meet their hosting and technology needs.

Using Javascript to Display RSS

Javascript is the easiest way to display RSS feeds on a website. There are a number of sites that will allow you to generate code that can be inserted into a website. The javascript will auto-update, showing the latest headlines as the feed is updated. Each time a visitor visits the website the javascript pulls the data from the feed. Often, the various scripts can be customized so that the look of the feed can be made to match a specific websiteeeds with hopes that the search engines will devour and spider the contents, you will be disappointed. When javascript is used to display RSS feeds, search engines do not actually “see” the contents of the feed, meaning that the search engines will not index the contents of the feed within the website.

Feedroll – Feedroll is a free service for syndicating RSS and ATOM news feeds on your website. Simply select a feed, customize the design, then copy and paste the code provided onto your page.
http://www.feedroll.com

Using PHP to Display RSS

PHP is a slightly more complex solution for displaying RSS. Like javascript, as the contents of the feed updates, the web page contents will update as the page is refreshed. The benefit of using PHP to display RSS is that the contents of the feed displayed with the webpage can be spidered and indexed by search engines. The result is a feed that always displays the most current information from the RSS feed and the web page content is considered search engine spider and robot-friendly.

rss2html.php – The rss2html.php script allows users to create web pages that will always display the most current information from the RSS feed, and because the resulting page is pure HTML, it will be in a format friendly to search engine robots. Using rss2html.php, webmasters can customize the format and look of the web page created from the feed. The RSS feed’s contents can easily be integrated into an existing website’s theme. The rss2html.php script parses the RSS file, extracts the pertinent information, formats it, and serves it up as regular HTML.
http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm

FeedRoll Pro – FeedRollPro was really designed to enable publishers to syndicate their own content on other sites. But it can be used to syndicate news feeds from other sites on your own pages. http://www.feedrollpro.com

Using ASP to Display RSS

ASP is similar to PHP. The free ASP/ASP.NET scripts can be used to convert RSS feeds into HTML and display on ASP/ASP.NET web-server.

rss2html.asp – ByteScout has implemented a guide for displaying of RSS/XML feed using free RSS2HTML.ASP script in ASP or ASP.NET environment. This script can be used free of charge on any ASP or ASP.NET web-server and generate HTML from RSS feed. This free ASP script uses MSXML to load RSS feed from URL and display it. You can use it as a standalone or call from script on HTML page to generate HTML content from RSS feed and then display on your HTML page.
http://bytescout.com/how_to_display_rss_using_asp.html

RssFeed – RssFeed is an open-source custom ASP.NET server control that displays the contents of a specified RSS feed in an ASP.NET web page.
http://www.scottonwriting.com/sowBlog/RssFeed.htm

If PHP or ASP is used to update feeds, the website will have free fresh, relevant content each time the feeds referenced are updated.

Export RSS to HTML

If you wish to dress up the feed’s appearance you can use a template exporting the feed as HTML or an HTML table. Publishers can incorporate exported tables into an HTML template using a server-side include. Each time the feed is updated, the feed will need to be exported to HTML and uploaded along with the feed. Though this only takes a few moments, exporting RSS to HTML does require webmaster intervention to update the content. The end result, though, is a complete web page with an RSS feed in it that will be search engine-friendly.

FeedForAll – FeedForAll allows users to export RSS feeds from RSS to HTML. The look of the HTML can be modified to match an existing website’s design.
http://www.feedforall.com

Using Services

There are a number of services available that host and display RSS feeds, in many cases free of charge. Because these services operate on a different domain server there is little benefit to end-users displaying their feeds in this fashion. That said, the services are generally free of charge, so you get what you pay for.

RSS2HTML.com – Select a layout, color scheme and enter the URL of the feed. A web page URL will be generated that will display the feed in the selected scheme.
http://www.rss2html.com

FeedBurner – FeedBurner provides a number of online services. Among them is a service that displays RSS feeds on a website.
http://www.feedburner.com

Using XSL to Display RSS

Although using XSL and CSS stylesheets to display XML directly is easy to understand in theory, it is rather tricky to implement in the real world and is very tough for novices to use successfully. Webmasters must be fairly familiar with CSS and XSL to have the formatting work well, and webmasters then have to address browser incompatibilities and exceptions. As a result, not a lot of resources or services yet exist to display RSS using XSL.

Using highly targeted feeds, webmasters can enhance their websites with themed content. Ultimately, providing relevant, educational or newsworthy information from reputable related sources will establish expertise in a specific area.

Author: S. Housley
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty tariff

We’ve all heard about it-it seems like all the buzz right now in the search engine marketing industry is RSS. If you’re a website owner, than there are two ways your website can benefit from using RSS on your website-you can provide an RSS feed or, for the not-so-technically-inclined folks like me, you can use an RSS feed to keep your site’s content fresh.

RSS is a way to syndicate website content. According to Wikipedia, “RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by (amongst other things) news websites and weblogs…the RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data.” Wikipedia goes on to say that “A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled web pages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on major web sites, as well as many smaller ones.”

If you’re a website owner, you can use RSS to your advantage in two ways: use someone else’s RSS feed or produce your own RSS feed. 1. Install a script on your website-whenever a web page on your website is loaded the script automatically loads data from an RSS feed. If the RSS feed you choose to use is the latest news, then the latest news will appear on your website. This is fairly easy to set up and is good for search engine optimization purposes. I’ll discuss installing an RSS feed script on your website later on in this article.

2. Provide an RSS feed of your website’s content so others can use it. By providing an RSS feed of your website’s content, you’re essentially allowing people to use the content on their website or through their feed reader. In either case, you’re also providing links back to your website, which is good for search engine optimization purposes-it will also get visitors to visit your website. Providing an RSS feed of your site’s content can be tricky to set up-or it may not be appropriate if you don’t have a lot of content on your website. I’ll discuss your options later on in this article.

If you’re a website owner, then chances are you want to keep your website’s content fresh. By updating the content on a regular basis, the search engine spiders will take notice-they’ll visit your website more often and index the new content and new web pages-which can ultimately bring more visitors to your website. For example, if your website is about real estate, you might consider including the latest real estate news on your website. Users typically search for topics that are related to items in the news, so if those topics and keywords are included on your website you can typically be found in the search engines for those terms. It’s like having your own real estate news staff on hand, 24 hours a day, adding the latest news on your website.

Installing an RSS Feed on Your Website

Installing an RSS feed on your website is not as difficult as it sounds. You simply install a script one time-and then anywhere you want the RSS feed to appear you simply pick a feed and copy and paste some code on your page. The first thing you need to do is figure out which script to use. If your website is using an Unix server and has PHP installed, the the easiest PHP script I’ve found is called CaRP. You will first want to visit the CaRP download page and download the file. CaRP has a free version that you can use on your website. They request that you link back to their website if you use it. Unzip the zip file and upload the files to your website using an FTP program. Then, run the setup file in your web browser, chmod the appropriate files, and continue with the directions given to you in the web browser. Once it’s installed, the script will give you code to copy and paste wherever your want the RSS feed to be displayed on your website. You can even change the font, size, and color of the feed by specifying those attributes before the code.

There are other RSS parser scripts available, but CaRP is the one that I’m more familiar with because its ease of use and ease of installation. To find other RSS parsers, you can search Google for “rss parser script”. CaRP is typically used if you have PHP installed on your website, and RSS parser scripts are available if you’re running a website on a Windows server. If you’re using the PHP version of CaRP then you’ll want to use PHP pages on your website-or you will need to parse your html pages as PHP pages.

Finding an RSS Feed

Once you’ve installed the parser script, you’ll want to find the appropriate RSS feed to use on your website. Keep in mind that a lot of RSS feeds are provided for “non-commercial use only”, so if your website is a for-profit website you’ll need to check the terms of using the RSS feed before you use it.

The best way to find an RSS feed is to search for it. Following my real estate example above, searching for “rss real estate” (without the quotes) finds several feeds. Topix.net provides a real estate rss feed. By copying that URL and pasting it into the CaRP code provided by CaRP, you can add that code to any web page on your website and the latest Real Estate News from Topix will automatically appear. Another way to find a feed is to look for a blog on your site’s topic. Most blog software includes an RSS feed, so searching Google for “keyword blog rss” might also help you find a feed you can use.

Adding an RSS feed on your web page won’t get you high rankings in the search engines. A while back I tested this theory a while back by making three nearly identical web pages-one static page, one with RSS feed content on it, and another with a live RSS feed on it. It turned out that after all three pages were indexed and ranked, the page with the live RSS feed actually ranks third-the static page without the RSS content on it always ranks the best. Search Google for “silly burlywood revenue” and you’ll see what I mean.

Although adding an RSS feed won’t get your page top rankings in Google, there are other benefits. For example, updating your web page’s content on a regular basis gets the page crawled more often-and more active crawling can contribute to other benefits, such as ranking for terms that appear in the feed on your site as well as causing new web pages on your site to get indexed faster than they were before.

Providing an RSS Feed of Your Content

Depending on your website’s content, providing an RSS feed of your content might be appropriate. If your website provides news or contains a blog, then publishing an RSS feed might work well. Most blog software automatically publishes an RSS feed of your blog, so you might want to find its URL and start promoting it. If you sell a lot of products on your website, you might consider making an RSS feed available-perhaps one that includes your top selling products along with their prices. Other websites might be interested in publishing that data for their users, and you would receive more visitors and links back to your website, something that will help your site’s search engine rankings.

Publishing an RSS feed is a little more complicated, perhaps to lengthy a discussion for this article. However, there are many good tutorials out there, including Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch article about it, as well as the RSS tutorial at mnot.net.

Whether you use RSS to publish your own feed or you use someone else’s feed on your website, both provide great benefits to website owners-and definitely will continue in the future to be used more and more.

Author: Bill Hartzer
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: How Electric Pressure Cookers Work

This is the final installment in the RSS Mania – Understanding RSS Series. In this article we will discover just how to get your RSS Feed up on the web, and what is possible and what is not with an RSS feed.

1. Naming your RSS file – Your file name does not have to be rss.xml You are welcome to name it to whatever your little heart desires, though the .xml extension is kind of important for your editors to know just what file the software is dealing with.
2. Now that you have the file – what do you do with it? Okay first thing is first. Take the file and place it in your Web directory where everyone can get to it. Lets say we named the file “ballchain.xml” and we move it (ftp) to our web directory under the address of [http://www.janisjoplin.com/rss/ballchain.xml]. Now we know and the rest of the world will know where that file is. Don’t put it in a secured or password directory UNLESS you are only granting secure, password access to it to specific people.
3. Now before you do anything else, BEFORE you release this great RSS feed to the world you MUST make sure it is valid. Of course you have been careful. Of course you never make typos. Of course you got it down pat. Still go and VALIDATE. How do you do this? Well nothing can be simpler. There are many validating engines out there. One very good one, which will of course drive you crazy over every small mistake, but it is good is at: http://www.feedvalidator.org. When you have an error it will lead you to the pages that explain your error. You should get into the habit of validating your feed EVERY TIME you change the RSS file.
4. Okay NOW we can finally go get our little orange “XML” or “RSS” button. That is easy. If you want to just go to a sight with the button already, and since it is public domain just copy the image with your browser. Move it over to your Web, and put in on your page where you will offer RSS to the world. Then add an href command to the button, so that when a user drags it into their aggregator the correct file will be grabbed. The code will look something like this:
   <br /> [http://www.janisjoplin.com/rss/ballchain.xml]
   You also have the option of going to a site where you can create your own button.
   One such internet site is: http://www.lucazappa.com/brilliantMaker/buttonImage.php
   There you can make a standard size RSS button with your own logo on it.
5. Now you have the file and logo and the hyperlink to your RSS feed on your main page. Now you have to go out and Submit your feed address to the RSS Feed Directories. There is also software that will do this for you as well. Instead of listing the many RSS feed directories here, just Google or Yahoo for “RSS Feed Directories” and submit your RSS URL to them. Remember the URL to your feed is NOT your home page. It is rather “http://www.janisjoplin.com/rss/ballchain.xml”.
6. Think you are done? Hah! Now you want the major search engines to know about your feed right?
   • Yahoo – http://publisher.yahoo.com/promote.php is where you begin. In the end you will have your very own Yahoo RSS Feed button for your feed, which Yahoo will give you the code to add to your web page as well.
   • Google – [http://www.google.com/intl/zh-cn/webmasters/addfeed.html] and again in the end you will have an RSS Google button to add to your feed.
   • MSN is a bit tricker. For some reason they keep the information on registering your feed with them a universal secret. [http://rss.msn.com/publisher.armx] will tell you how to do it.
   • Once you get more sophisticated you will see the Newsgator button and a bunch of others. Since Newsgator is one of the major players in the market you should check them out at http://www.newsgator.com
7. UPDATE Your Feed – Now you created your xml file, uploaded that and the image to the web, submitted your feed, gotten a whole host of RSS feed buttons, from Google, Yahoo, MSN and NewsGator. Now all you have to do is make sure that you update your content on a fairly continuing schedule and that your RSS feed is constantly available.
8. Will you know how many people access your feed? This is a tricky and difficult question with no real solution as of yet. So the answer is no, you will not. Unless you are a real techie and want to spend time in mining your server logs or putting invisible images into your feed (like they do in email to see if it was opened and in RSS that is not foolproof) forget it. You can of course mine your server logs looking for hits on the ballchain.xml file but that is time consuming and an incredible amount of work. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT PUTTING Javascript IN THERE OR SOME OTHER SCRIPT SO A HIT COUNTER CAN COUNT IT. It will destroy the well formed XML and will not be aggregated or read as it will no longer be an RSS feed document.
9. RSS IN your Web Site – If you go to some sites on the web, not only will they offer you their own orange button but you will see an RSS feed in fed into their web pages. And when you see that you say “Hey I want this in my web site too!” Well you can do that as well. But before I tell you where to go on the net to get it (its for free too) I want to explain two possibilities here.
   The reason why many sites (including my own) put an RSS feed on their web page, is because it creates and adds content to the web site. After all the whole issue of content is what makes places like http://www.ezinearticles.com rock! If you are interested in content ONLY for your viewers than you don’t have to worry about the following. However, if you are interested in content for search engines as well be aware of the following two possibilities.
   • Many places will offer you a Javascript code to put in your web page. This is great, but be aware that search engines are “blind” to Javascript. What is placed within that code is simply not taken into account. Therefore, all the content being picked up by your link to the New York Times RSS Feed and put on your web site will not be indexed.
   • Some places offer you PHP code as well. This requires that your web server supports PHP, which if you are not a techie you will have to check. And then you will have to usually make sure that your page is named say home.PHP and not home.html After that you can insert the PHP code into your page (as short as the Javascript code). BUT the GREAT thing is that search engines DO SEE the content that is in that PHP code, and that content will be indexed along with your web site. And search engines LOVE CONTENT.

   For either possibility you can check out one such place. http://www.rssfeedreader.com/
   There are others and once again a search will reveal a world of possibilities. Rssfreereader.com does have some really good options though both for Javascript and for PHP.

10. RSS Aggregator – There are zillions of those. If you use FireFox you can find some great RSS aggregators as Browser extensions. If you want a Desktop Aggregator just do a search for them. And then of course there are Windows aggregators that work within your browser (not as extensions). I don’t feel right in suggesting one product over another, so I will not give a list here. They are readily available in any search on the web. Some are free, others you pay for. It is your decision.
11. Well we have come to the end of our RSS Mania – Understanding RSS Series. Some things like CSS files and formatting your RSS for HTML are not in the purview of this series and are a lot more technical. However, I hoped you learned about RSS and why this mania is sweeping the web.

This Article was Part Thirteen and the final installment of the RSS Mania – Understanding RSS Series. All parts of this series are available at Ezine Articles (www.ezinearticles.com)

1. RSS Mania Addiction – An Introduction to RSS and the Terminology
2. Outline of How to Create an RSS Feed
3. The Template File
4. The Basic Elements of the Channel Element
5. How The RSS Feed Works & Some Programming Constructs
6. RSS Channel Sub-Elements Specifically Image & How To Use It
7. Understanding RSS – The Elements Within the “Item” Element
8. Understanding RSS – Podcasting, VideoCasting & The Magic of the Enclosure Sub-Element
9. Understanding RSS – Rounding Out The Multi-Media – The CDATA Command
10. Understanding RSS – A Basic Template File to Create Your Very Own RSS Feed
11. Understanding RSS – A Full RSS Template File to Create Your Very Own RSS Feed
12. Understanding RSS – A Full RSS Feed Template For Podcasting & VideoCasting
13. Understanding RSS – How To Get Your RSS Feed Up On The Web

Copyright © 2005 Ted W. Gross. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author’s information with live links only.)

Author: Ted Gross
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable pressure cooker

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 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

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Smart cooker

The purpose of this post is twofold in terms of blogging.  First I wanted to introduce to you two plugins you might not have ever seen.  Secondly I wanted to talk about professionalism for designers.

Plugin One is an affiliate publishers best friend.  Adrotate is every bit as good as Max Blog Press’s Ninja Affiliate.  Not only will the last several versions of this plugin provide you with quick affiliate masking slash redirect through your own site, it keeps track of your banner impressions and click throughs.  Version 2.4 even has a feature to block banners when they reach a certain number of impressions or clicks. Unlike Ninja Affiliate version 2.3.1 of AdRotate works quite well in WorPress Mu.  There are things to be aware of though.  If you use the banner wizard you can not later make the link an auto redirect link, you will have to stop rotating the banner and make a new entry.  Secondly in version 2.4 he automatically sticks a link back to his site in your meta information links, there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop this short of editing the code that I can see which is in direct violation of wordpress.org rules for plugins.

The second plugin I wanted to mention this week is Stumble for WordPress.  This is basically your very own blog version of Stumbleupon.  You can edit the settings to decide what percentage of stumbles are for pages on your site and which are for network wide.  I use this on most of my blogs and find different ratios better suit my purposes on different blogs.  I recommend using the defaulkt setting as traffic will start coming in from other sites the more that goes out from your site.  This is a fine plugin that will really help you build exposure from other sites.  I highly recommend it.  I also recommend that you leave the optional link back to the plugin site intact.  People who provide a great product deserve some credit.

Now on to the second part of this post, professionalism.  i wok up this morning with a ping from a website I didn’t reconize, Making The Web.  This is the Stumble for Wordpress designer’s site.  I was quite pleased that my site, Brad’s Tiny World had served up more network stumbles by a large margin over the next nearest site.  Brendon didn’t go out of his way to get backlinks or praise from me, he simply made a post and said thanks, good work, here are the leaders.  He makes fine plugins and doesn’t try and take over your blog with links and garbage proclaiming how great he is.  This is professionalism and not what you get from Arnan who makes AdRotate.

Arnan has a long history of not only being unprofessional when you question the quality of his plugins and showing some incompetence as a designer. Truth be told he is quite an asshole who seems to think if you don’t love his plugins or say anything bad about them, it is some sort of attack on him personally.  By extension if you read some of his rambling not directly related to his plugins but on the same site you will find he he also takes any lack of enthusiasm for Apple products as personal disrespect towards him as well.  I would like to say the behavior is typical of all mac fanatics, but he suffers from some additional megalomania, he also seems like the type who would preorder a Mac Book Wheel or voted for Scott MacIntyre on American Idol had he been listed as an iScott.

BTW if you choose to use AdRotate make sure you use the call on website for theme insertion.  If you use the call in the readme file which has been told is wrong repeatedly nothing will show up.  Use <?php echo adrotate_banner(‘1′); ?> not <?php adrotate_banner(‘1′); ?> which is what the readme file still says several releases after it quit working.  Now that he has been called out let’s see how long it takes hime to fix it.

By Matt Colyer

1) Title Tag – The title tag is the most powerful on-site SEO technique you have, so use it creatively! What you place in the title tag should only be one thing, the exact keyword you used for the web page that you are trying to optimize. Every single web page should have it’s own title tag.

2) ALT Tags – ALT tags were meant to be for text browsers because the images didn’t show in text browsers and the ATL tags would tell the visitor what it’s about. You should put your main keyword(s) in the ALT tags, but don’t over do it because you could get dropped in the results or even worse banned for life!

3) Link Popularity – Link popularity is the most powerful SEO tool out of all them. Most search engines don’t even consider web sites if there is not at least one or two links pointing to the web site. Having another site(s) link to your web site is important when it comes to getting your site a good ranking. Your keywords should be in the links you get and keep the keywords short. When you receive requests for a link exchange, check the site out before linking with them, check for spam (Repeat keywords, hidden text, etc.).

4) Keyword Density – This is also vital and should be used with research. You should use the keyword(s) once in the title tag, once in the heading tag, once in bold text, and get the density between 5% to 20% (Don’t over do it!). Also use your keyword(s) both low and high on the web page, keyword(s) should be in the first sentence and in the last one.

5) Page Size – Your web page’s speed is important to your visitors and the search engines. Why? Because the robots will be able to spider your web page faster and easier. Try your best to keep your web page over 5k and under 15k in size.

6) Rich Theme – Search engines are looking at themes more and more. Build content (Articles, FAQ, tips, etc.) much as possible and keep the web pages around 200 to 500 words. Create content that’s related to your market and link them out to other related content on your site. Try to get 200 web pages or more.

7) Web Site Design – This is also important, if you want to get indexed! Text content should out weigh the HTML content. The pages should validate and be usable in all of today’s leading edge browsers. Stay away from flash and Java Script, search engines dislike them both a lot.

Insite Cross Linking – This will help you get all of your web pages indexed by the search engines. Your web pages should be no more than three clicks away from the home page. Link to topic related quality content across your site. This will also help build you a better theme through out your web site. On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

Matt Colyer is the owner of the Superior Webmaster. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matt_Colyer
http://EzineArticles.com/?8-Essential-SEO-techniques&id=39