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

Okay, you have a website setup to promote your books, music, and other products you wish to sell. With a bit of Internet savvy, you have created an attractive design to catch the Internet user’s eyes, and with your expertise on the subject at hand you are able to provide thoughtful, provoking content. You are confident your site is optimized for good search results, with a good saturation of keywords in your content. Your site is simple to navigate, fun to read, and yet informative enough to be highly regarded by engines. You are ready for the world!

Yet, you feel as though what you are doing is not enough. Perhaps you enjoy a steady increase in traffic through traditional online marketing means, occasional tweaking of metadata and e-mail advertising. Offline advertising is not in the budget right now, and you want to try other, cheaper alternative before delving into pay-per-click advertising. What else is there to do?

Have you considered creating an RSS feed for your website? If you are in the business of promoting and selling many products and services, having an RSS feed attached to your website may be beneficial in attracting new visitors to your website. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, and it is a specific format for aggregating news and information to other websites and Internet users who read news through special aggregators, or readers.

Think of RSS as a distant cousin of the news tickers you see on your favorite 24-hour news or sports network. As new information is made public, the wires pick up the story and syndicate the content to interested third parties seeking information to distribute. An all-sports network, for example, would select only the most recent sports news from various syndicates to put on television. RSS works in a similar way.

Not sure how? Next time you log onto the Internet, take a look at your start up page, if you use My Yahoo or My MSN or anything similar. What do you see? Maybe you have updated news bytes from Associated Press or Reuters, daily comic strips, weather and horoscope, and so on. You know, of course, that such pages can be customized to show only what you want to see. If you’re interested only in entertainment news, you would adjust your page so you only receive movie gossip and reviews, and news from the top entertainment magazines, right? All of this information is syndicated, and your start up page acts as an aggregator, collecting only the relevant information you want it to collect and display.

Now, stay with me, because here’s the fun part: by creating an RSS feed, you can become a syndicate! Say you are a romance author and offer a series of passionate stories you know romance fans will love. You can create an RSS feed using news about your books and information related to writing, the romance genre, and the publishing industry to create usable content for aggregators. With proper promotion and distribution, users interested in romance novels can either add your feed to their private readers, or even their websites, thereby increasing your exposure. This in turn can increase traffic to your site, and account for more sales!

Sounds like something you want to do to further promote yourself on the Internet? If so, great! But if you are new to the concept of RSS and are not sure how to start, don’t fret. Once you learn the basic of creating and promoting an RSS feed, you will find it is as simple as creating a website. Here follows a basic step by step for creating a simple feed. Once you get the hang of RSS content and wish to work with something more advanced, a good instruction manual on Real Simple Syndication can help you achieve much more for your books, music, and products.

For now, though, let’s get the basics down pat.

1) Content

Before you even think about messing with RSS software or hand coding the proper markup language, you need to consider carefully the type of content you plan to use for your feed. Syndicated content in this context will differ from standard website content in that it needs to entice readers to click through to your website and buy your books or take advantage of your services. If you give too little, readers may not be interested enough to visit your site. Give too much, and readers may be overwhelmed, or think they don’t have to click your links.

Study RSS feeds that typify what you plan to distribute. Especially if you are trying to promote a book, a CD, or other items, you want to look at shopping RSS feeds in particular to see how they are executed. Think of your content as a 30-second commercial: depending upon the types of aggregators used to collect your feed data, users may see only a headline first, so think of one that grab attention. Use easy to understand language in your content: sharp, peppy and to the point. Emphasize the purchase links and any sales or discount incentives.

Some RSS aggregators accept code for images, so take advantage of that. Display your book or CD cover, a picture of your product, or your logo. For readers that don’t aggregate images, be sure to use the ALT option and describe the item.

Plan ahead for your feed. An RSS feed should be treated as a regular newswire. So if you feel you do not have enough content to necessitate a regular feed, consider supplemental information related to your site and map out when you plan to add new items to your feed. Once you have a working schedule, now you can into the work of creating your feed and having some real fun!

2) Creation

If you are completely new to the idea of RSS and have only moderate skills where website development is concerned, you can still build an attractive, effective feed for your site. Before you do, bear this one thing in mind:

An RSS feed is a file hosted on your server, identified by either a .rss or .xml suffix rather than the .html extension. Most updates to browsers will allow visitors to see the feed as it is supposed to look should a link to your feed be clicked. Don’t panic, however, if somebody clicks on your feed link and claims to see “gibberish.” They are likely seeing only the raw code.

Now that you are ready to create a feed, it is highly recommended to use software designed for this purpose. An Internet search for “RSS freeware” or “RSS software” will point you in the right direction. I personally use RSS Builder to create my feeds. It is user friendly and simple to install. As you learn more about RSS, you may want to test a few programs before deciding on one to use regularly.

Choose a name for your feed that is indicative of your products or site. The romance author may want to use romancenovels.rss or romancebooks.rss, while a freelance consultant may want to try consultingnews.rss. There’s no guarantee having such a name will boost search referrals, but to have a relevant keyword in the filename may help readers in their search for content to aggregate.

Check your RSS program to see if there are options to input metadata, or your feed’s description. This is important, as the metadata in a published feed helps RSS spiders determine the relevancy of your feed against various searches. As the Internet grows, so does the ability for search engines to mine things like blogs and feeds for data, so you want to be thorough in this respect. If the metadata options ask for a URL and an image logo, provide them.

Now, depending upon your program, you have the options to add and delete topics, set times for their publication, and to order them by appearance. This is the heart of the feed, where the information goes. If you approach this part of RSS creation as would with a weblog, you will find it remarkably simple.

Each topic is a new post. Depending upon the volume of news you wish to distribute, you can create new topics daily or several in a day. Don’t give away too much information in your posts. Enticing text should prompt readers to click through to your main site, where the action (and point of sale) is. Use keyword rich text to attract those spiders that mine data from RSS. As your catalog grows, as you write more books or take on new projects, you will have more material for your feed.

3) Distribution

Once you have a few entries in your feed, now you can upload your RSS file for readership and distribution. Depending upon the RSS building software you are using, you may be able to upload directly to your site using the software. Otherwise you may need to use an FTP program to do this.

Make sure you know your ID and password for your website, and make sure the file for the feed is correctly named with the .rss or .xml extension. Once it’s live on your site, check the file in an RSS aggregator or in a web browser that reads RSS to make sure it is working to your satisfaction. If so, congratulations! You have just published an RSS feed.

But, you are not finished yet. In order to help site visitors know that you have a feed you need to do things. First, you need to place links on your website indicating that you have a feed. You would do this the same way you would create a hyperlink to another URL. In the HREF anchor tag, indicate the full URL of your feed with a note saying “Subscribe to our RSS feed.” You may also want to use a small graphic to bring attention to your feed. Many sites use a small, orange rectangle with RSS or XML in white letters, to direct visitors to feeds.

To direct RSS aggregators and spiders to your feed, you will need to place a LINK REL tag in the HEAD section of your HTML code. It will look like this (just place carats before and after

link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” href=”Your RSS URL goes here”

This lets the spider know there is RSS content available.

4) Promote

Once your feed is active, you can actively promote it. A quick Internet search for “RSS Search Engines” will led you to many resources where you can submit your feed information. You would submit your feed the same way you would submit a website, just make sure to provide all necessary information.

In addition, you may want to consider some viral marketing of your feed. Include the feed URL in your e-mail signature, or contact other websites of relevant topics and let them know you have content for distribution in RSS. Websites similar to yours looking for material may wish to aggregate your feed and place the content on their sites. You, in turn, get free exposure and increase your chance for sales.

5) Ping

If you know where to look, there are websites and software available designed to notify, or “ping,” RSS directories and search engines when a feed is updated. This is believed to expedite the updating process on their end. The sooner they know new information is available, the sooner they will mine your feed for data. A quick Internet search for “RSS pinger” will lead you information on how to regularly notify users of updates to your feed. Some sources will let you notify several engines at once, and it can be a helpful tool in your promotion.

From writing content to publicizing your products, using RSS feeds to enhance your website can be very helpful in increasing exposure to your books and music, services and products. Syndicate your content and watch your site traffic, and sales, grow.

Author: Kathryn Lively
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Netbook, Tablets and Mobile Computing

RSS is certainly still far from being user-friendly, which is especially evident once you try and left-click on an RSS subscribe button.

In most cases your browser will simply display the XML code of the RSS feed … which does not go far in making internet users comftorable with RSS.

Heck, if you didn’t know what RSS was and clicked on an RSS button only to get a page full of code you don’t understand, would that aid in turning you in to an RSS user?

Probably no. And much worse, you’d probably never consider clicking on one of those buttons again, at least not any time soon.

Consequently, if as a marketer you’re trying to generate RSS subscribers, simply using an RSS subscribe button is the worst way to go for you and for the RSS industry as a whole as well.

So, what alternatives are there?

a] CREATE AN RSS PRESENTATION PAGE

If you’re trying to generate RSS subscribers from your site and are targeting audiences that might not be farmiliar with RSS, you need at least a basic presentation of what RSS is on your site, and you need to link to that either directly from the RSS subscribe button or from a location right next to that button, like you can see on the MarketingStudies.net example.

On this page you should explain in easy-to-understand terms what RSS is, how your visitors can use it and how they’ll benefit, and then provide links to some RSS readers and again links to your RSS feeds.

This page will be instrumental in telling your visitors about RSS and helping them subscribe to your feeds.

And of course, the feeds themselves and the RSS presentation page should be promoted in prominent locations on your website, especially directly below your e-mail e-zine subscription box and, if you’re publishing topic oriented feeds, next to their respective topics on the site, just as Lockergnome.com is doing.

B] TRANSFORM AN RSS FEED IN TO XHTML

Having a link to an RSS presentation page right next to your RSS subscribe button does aid visitors in learning about RSS and helps them to subscribe, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of a user actually clicking on an RSS feed button. That will still result in the visitor getting heaps of code he really won’t know what to do with.

Going one step further, you can use XSL Transformations to make sure that the feed can in fact also be displayed in a browser (without making it useless for an RSS reader as well) … and that with some additional information and instructions, such as a brief overview of RSS and a quick explanation on how the user can subscribe to this feed via an RSS reader.

I don’t want to get technical here, so to see what I mean simply click on this link (via FeedBurner):
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BurnThisRSS2

This is basically an RSS feed, which has been transformed in order to be displayed in a Web browser with some additional information, but can still be subscribed to via every RSS reader as well.

Some feed maintanance and publishing services such as FeedBurner already provide this functionality “out-of-the-box”, without you having to do practically anything. All you need to do is register for their free service, enter your feed and then get this link, which you will place “behind” the RSS subscribe button on your site, as a link, instead of a direct link to your RSS feed.

If you don’t want to use a third-party service like FeedBurner, you can actually do the XSL Transformations by yourself. More information on how to do this is available at Wikiedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xslt).

c] TAKING THE MIDDLE ROAD: SMARTER SUBSCRIBE BUTTONS

If you don’t want to use a third-party service such as FeedBurner or if your RSS vendor does not provide this functionality or if you don’t want to be bothered with doing XSLT by yourself, there is actually an alternative you can use.

David Battino at MacDevCenter.com (http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/wlg/7821) just wrote a simple piece of code you can use instead of the typical link to your RSS feed behind the RSS feed subscription button, which will, after you click on the link, display a simple message saying that in order to subscribe to the feed you need to copy and paste this URL in your your RSS reader.

This certainly doesn’t go very far in making RSS more user-friendly, as the notification really can’t be used to explain what RSS is and why your visitors should use it, but it at least saves the visitor from getting the XML code in his browser and hating RSS before he or she even find out what it is.

The simple code to do so is http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/wlg/7821

Also, do not forget about using buttons like Add To MyYahoo!, since many MyYahoo! users for example dont know what RSS is, but they will use this button to subscribe.

d] TARGETING EXISTING RSS USERS

If you’re targeting existing RSS users or at least users that won’t be put off by a long list of names they won’t be able to understand, using the free script from Methodize.org might be the solution.

When the user hovers his mouse above your RSS feed subscribe button, the script will display a long list of RSS readers that the visitors can use to directly subscribe to the feed. By simply clicking on the appropriate link, the user will quickly subscribe to the feed with the RSS reader he is currently using.

There’s also a “What’s this” link at the bottom of the list, but still many visitors will be put off by long list of RSS reader names they won’t be able to understand, before even being motivated enough to click on the “What’s this” link at the bottom.

But still, if you’re targeting a more technical or internet oriented audiences, this just might do the trick.

The script is available from here: http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/

e] USING RSS AUTODISCOVERY

RSS Autodiscovery is a very nice feature that allows certain RSS Autodiscovery-enabled browsers to find a feed on your site and promptly offer the subscribe option to the visitor.

While most browsers still do not support this, FireFox for example does.

Using RSS Autodiscovery can’t substitute the other options above, but it will serve you well for the small part of your audience that’s using RSS Autodiscovery-enabled browsers.

How to use this?

Simply place the following piece of code in to the HEAD section of the HTML code of your webpages:

[link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/index.xml" /]

And dont forget to replace the [ and ] characters with < and >.

f] STRONG COPY

No matter how many times we write this, it still needs repeating. The best way to get your visitors to subscribe is to entice them to do so with strong copy that provides clear and valuable benefits, explaining to the visitor exactly why he needs to subscribe to exactly your RSS feed.

Author: Rok Hrastnik
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker

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

By Jason Hulott

With more and more experts and search engine enthusiasts claiming the right way and the wrong way to handle link swapping, link exchanging or reciprocal linking!

You can tell something is important when there is more than one name for it! GRIN!

There are also two schools of thought on the reasons link swapping.

The first reason for link swapping has always been to carry favour with Search engine rankings. Have a good site with lots of links and this is seen as a good thing and therefore Search Engines will rank you higher.

Sadly, like all things in life, this system can be abused and taken to the extreme. Sites are buying in hundreds if not thousands of links trying to “boost” their ranking artificially. This is fine in the short term but we are starting to see a fundamental shift in Search Engine algorithms.

My last article of link swapping , If Content is King, then surely relevance is Queen! explains my personal view of relevant linking which is still follow.

There is now a second and perhaps more disturbing reason for swapping links.

To build a useful link resource or directory for your visitors.

With working with similar themed sites, swap links to build a directory service which can share and drive traffic to sites within it. Some have even claimed this can drive more traffic that a Search engine ranking.

So how do I create this vision of loveliness.

Simple, build an on topic directory of your major site content.

There are a couple of great tools you can use to automate this process.

http://www.j2-squared.com/linking-101.htm

http://www.j2-squared.com/power-linking.htm

These tools will add new sections, manage your directory structure, and allow you to add links or even allow others to add their own links which you just approve.

This can all be run from a web browser so you can be swapping links sat on the beach or in fact from anywhere.

They are so simple to use you could get family to help out too! GRIN!

In terms of places to find links try:

www.linkpartners.com

as a good start point.

Remember, Search Engines change their algorithms all the time and you could fall out of favour at any time.

Your visitors are also getting more sophisticated and demanding at the same time. Give the visitor what they want first and let the search engine sort the rest out!

Good Luck!

The install of WordPress 2.5 is a pretty painless event if you can follow easy directions and don’t go out of your way to make things harder than they really are.  I know what you are thinking thinking, why would anyone want to make things harder than they need to be.  The answer is simple, they are either idiots, morons who think they know everything already, or simply really bored smart people who need a challenge in their life and do so at the risk of being thought of as idiots, morons or assholes put on this earth to aggravate everyone else.

If you are doing a clean unassisted install on your server, you will need a few things.

1. A clear head, trying to do an install with a migraine going on is just plain stupid.  Do as I say not do as I do and you will have much better luck getting things done right the first time.
2. If you are caffeine junky you should get your fix before starting and keep another hit close at hand.
3. You need to know some pretty basic information if you are attempting a clean install on a new database.  The database name, your mysql user name and password are the ones you need most often.  If you set up the database, then you should know them too.  The address is 99% of the time the default: localhost.  Unless you know differently try this first.
4. Load up your directory  in FireFox your web browser of choice and follow the instructions.
5. First it will tell you  it needs to create a wp-config.php file.  Click the link and enter the information I told you to get in step three.
6. Click through the next two screens and enter the admin login information with its randomly generated password.
7. If you are used to earlier versions of WordPress be prepared to stumble along for a while trying to figure out where they put what.
8. Before stumbling around proceed immediately to the Users link in the top right corner of the screen.  Click on the admin user link and immediately enter a new passowrd that you can remember because you will never remember jhkj83l or what ever other crap it feeds you.
9. After that is done create a second administrator level user and make sure it uses a different email address.  You will be thankful you did this the first time you get locked out of your account and primary email at the same time.  I use one with a Yahoo and one a Gmail address to be the safe side.  A third Redundant isn’t a horrible idea, but a fourth is probably just playing to your paranoia.