Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. Search Engines: A Brief History III. Web 2.0: The New Internet

IV. Web 2.0: The Technical Landscape

V. SEO Linking Strategy in Web 2.0

VI. Social Media Optimization: A Piece of the SEO Puzzle

VII. Usability vs. Searchability: The RIA Search Challenge

VIII. Googles Personalized Search: The End of Traditional SEO?

IX. Search Behavior R&D: Customized Engines and Long Tail Keywords

X. Conclusion

References

I. Introduction To those of us whose passion for the growth of the World Wide Web is exceeded only by the marketing possibilities that emerge from that growth, the Internet has become a playground for the imagination. There is a large number of marketers, however, who are fascinated by the Web but approach its marketing capabilities more out of necessity than lifestyle. The Internets capacity has advanced in so many areas in the past few years that marketers playing catch-up are at a significant disadvantage. Marketing directors and account managers with traditional media backgrounds need to expand their breadth of knowledge in order to make informed decisions in todays e-commerce. This article provides clarification surrounding the fairly recent buzzword Web 2.0 and focuses on the evolution and future of the search engine born occupation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO and its implications are expanding so fast and in so many directions that it has never been more important for C level professionals and traditionally oriented marketers to fully understand the world of Internet search.

II. Search Engines: A Brief History When the first search engines began cataloging the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, obtaining a high rank on search engine results pages (SERP) was not particularly difficult or secretive. It was the webmasters who submitted URLs to the engines and communicated a pages relevancy to a keyword search through keyword meta tags in the HTML code. Early engines, like AltaVista, struggled with providing relevant search results because webmasters, who were paid on a cost-per-impression basis at the time, wrote inaccurate meta tags using high search volume keywords in order to increase visits to their websites.[1]

It was Google who finally answered the call for a more complex ranking algorithm that would greatly improve the relevancy of SERPs. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, invented the concept of PageRank, an algorithm which helps rank web pages based on the probability that a random person surfing the Internet will find a given page.[2] The PageRank algorithm assigns a numerical value to each web page by analyzing the quantity and quality of the pages that link back to a given page. Known as a backlink, each link represents a vote for the page it links to by the page on which the link appears. The significance of each vote depends on how relevant the page giving the link is to the page receiving the link, as well as the PageRank of the linking page.

Along with the changing search engines continually trying to provide more relevant search results to the user, the entire Web has been evolving to meet the needs of the massive Internet population. In conjunction with the growth of the Internet and the popularity of search, a unique profession known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was born. SEO tactics and skills have evolved alongside the changing Internet, but such changes have never been as significant as the most recent. We have entered into a second phase of the Internet, and as a result SEO is taking on a new face. This second generation of the Internet, often referred to as Web 2.0, has moved away from the old model based on static websites, clicks, and impressions and burst onto a cyber playing field built around communities, participation and open cooperation towards better products and services.[3] An unprecedented level of interaction between consumers, businesses, and interest groups exists in this new Web. Due to the existence of a new social presence, vehicles for driving organic traffic to ones website have expanded far beyond the major search engines. While obtaining high rankings on the major search engines is still an SEOs main objective, the means by which this positioning is achieved requires a much broader capacity for creativity than ever before. Many of these new tactics also provide additional avenues of incoming traffic, which has significantly expanded the big picture view of the SEO professional.

PDF version of SEO White Paper at http://www.bkv.com/search-engine-optimization.jsp

III. Web 2.0: The New Internet

Defining or labeling the new Internet is often met with a considerable amount of critique due to the expansive reach of such a description. There are so many different things that have changed about the Internet in the past several years; a concise definition is difficult to come by. In addition, the term Web 2.0, while perhaps the most accurate term, is typically scoffed at by the skeptical industry veteran who is wary of a vendor or brass employee attempting to sound Internet savvy. The World Wide Web has existed for almost twenty years. What is so significant about the changes in the last few years that distinguish the current Web as an upgrade from its previous omnipotent self? The simple answer to this question is you. Web 2.0 represents the users needs, hopes, and desires finally manifesting into a definable force of voluntary motivation.[4] The blogosphere, social networks, wikis, and other new forms of expression on the Internet have captured the Web population by harnessing their goals, skills, and interests onto a platform of collaborative creation and production. Websites are reflecting an up-to-the-minute common voice rather than a collection of static informational documents. The Web has never before experienced this level of effective interaction between its users, and that reason alone warrants its 2.0 designation.

Ease of self-expression, now apparent on the Internet through the popularity of websites like MySpace and YouTube, is generating massive amounts of original content. Critics of this tremendous increase in creativity and public opinion complain about the dilution of reliable quality content on the Internet. Many social networks, however, naturally weed out undesirable content, and promote popular, well referenced content to the top of searches. In Web 2.0, popular content emerges via a user-generated ranking system that determines the positioning of articles by the number of user votes they receive. This model was made most popular by Digg.com, which joins several community-based popularity websites like Slashdot.com and Reddit.com in providing a user-edited resource for finding news stories, blog entries and other websites. In Web 2.0, up-to-date, reliable content is produced by the editing abilities of the wiki. Wikipedia, the Internets user-written and -edited encyclopedia, boasts an accuracy level not far from the widely accepted Encyclopedia Britannica. In a study that compared forty-two science entries in both resources, Wikipedia had only four inaccuracies per entry compared to Britannicas three.[5]

Social network websites in the new Internet also have a way of allowing like-minded people to find each others favorite content through a system called social bookmarking. Del.icio.us.com is the most popular example of a social bookmarking website. This system of classification, known as folksonomy, involves users assigning labels, or tags, in the form of keywords, to content on the web. Through this collaborative form of tagging, web content becomes grouped by recognizable categories. Continuous tagging and creation of categories by users increases the contents ability to be searched by a wider range of people. This social phenomenon happens because stable patterns emerge in tag proportions [allowing] minority opinions [to] coexist alongside extremely popular ones without disrupting the nearly stable consensus choices made by many users.[6]

IV. Web 2.0: The Technical Landscape

Aside from the collaborative aspect of the new Internet, there is another reason the Web has earned its 2.0 upgrade. The users interaction, not with other users but with the interface of the Net itself, has changed significantly. Technical advancements in web navigation and design, as well as increased penetration of high-speed and broadband connection, make the new Web a foreign landscape compared to its older version. Web applications have continued to improve, providing a profoundly different user experience. The implementation of rich internet applications (RIA) is gaining ground. RIA technologies, such as Flash, Ajax and Java, are leading the Internet in the direction of a Web without web pages. Websites are traditionally made up of networks of static pages linked together by text in the form of the computer language HTML. These pages behave in a synchronous manner. That is, after the user clicks on a link, there is a short period while the server processes the input, in turn triggering the browser to download the requested page. RIAs operate in an asynchronous fashion, allowing response time to be much faster. RIAs increased responsiveness results from the following five factors: [8]

Information can be obtained from a server by anticipating certain user input.

The screen can be refreshed in pieces instead of all at once, eliminating the need for entirely different pages to load when navigating content.

More than one users input can be collected and validated before it is sent to the server.

Some responses to user input can take place without any server communication.

Certain processing that was once handled on the server end can be stored on the user desktop.

Growing implementation of RIA has important implications on search engines and optimizers alike.

V. SEO Linking Strategy in Web 2.0 The Blogosphere & RSS The common SEO adage continues to be valid in the 2.0 world: content is king. It is the content boundaries and means for dispatching content that have truly taken SEO to another level. Since the inception of the blogosphere a term that describes all blogs as a social network of public opinion rumblings of the peoples voice via the Internet have quickly risen to a powerful roar. Beginning in the form of an online diary in the mid 90s, the blog has since developed into a simple vehicle of communication for anyone who desires to send content across the Web. The dissemination of information through blogging has become so mainstream that one can find a blog from an authority source on virtually any topic. The blogosphere, centered on the concept of original content, has provided a link rich venue for the SEO to plan his or her linking strategy surrounding good content.

So what is good content, and what does it have to do with good linking strategy in Web 2.0? In this new era of the Internet, good content is viral. Whether this content is a written article, a homemade video or a podcast, if it grabs, provokes or tickles the user, it will travel, and it will travel fast. From the contents eye-view, the Internet has become much easier to navigate following the advent of Really Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS allows for a program called an aggregator (or feed reader) to notify users of new content added to a website, retrieve that new content, and present it to the user in an easy-to-use interface. RSS and blogging go hand-in-hand because of the constantly updating nature of the blog. As a result of RSS, people are discovering new content on the Internet, passing it along, and linking to it at an unprecedented rate.

Baiting the Link

The SEO practice of producing content in hopes that people will link to it from their own website is known as link baiting. Good link bait has the same qualities as good content. From a well written controversial article to a video clip of a bulldog on a skateboard, website owners will link to any and all content as long as it is interesting and catches peoples attention. There are no boundaries surrounding the types of content one can use to bait a link. In fact, the very name of a new kind of link baiting suggests an indefinable quality. This new link baiting tactic is called widget baiting. Nick Wilson, CEO and senior strategist of the social media market agency Clickinfluence, declared that the holy grail of linkbaiting in 2007 will be the widget.[9]

In reference to computers, a widget is an element of user interface that displays information or provides a specific way for a user to interact with an application. A widget could be a calendar, a stock ticker, a quote of the day, or an icon that collects the most popular YouTube videos. To get an idea of the limitless widget possibilities, check out Yahoo! Widgets (http://widgets.yahoo.com/). In its most basic form, a widget is a downloadable interactive virtual tool made up of simple bits of code that can easily be added to a webpage. When a widget is added to a webpage, if coded correctly, it will act as a crawlable link pointing back to its page of origin. These links can help to boost a site in the search engine rankings, but they also represent great potential for organic traffic.

Creating a popular widget could, in some cases, outweigh traffic from the major search engines. One example of traffic generated by a widget is a blog editor Firefox extension created by the professional blogging company, Performancing, that received close to half a million downloads when it was first released.[10] The brand awareness that widgets can promote has also made advertisers extremely enthusiastic. One would be hard pressed to find a better method of exposure than a logo attached to a button that sits in front of a users eyes daily.

VI. Social Media Optimization: A Piece of the SEO Puzzle

In this new age of the Internet, people have been quick to deviate from the title Search Engine Optimization when describing the organic promotion of a website. In August 2006, Rohit Bhargava, VP of Interactive Marketing for Ogilvy Public Relations, coined the phrase Social Media Optimization (SMO) and defined it as the following:

[The act of implementing] changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.[11] On one hand, Bhargavas point is well taken. If the tasks one is performing to drive traffic to a website are not intended to do so by improving search engine rankings, but rather by building a presence in social networks, than perhaps SEO is not the appropriate definition of their occupation. There is no doubt that SEO has undergone, and will continue to undergo, a certain level of compartmentalization. As different areas of SEO continue to experience the growth of specialized services, such as blogging, widget baiting and social networking, the future SEO will spend a large part of his or her time moderating and collaborating with more outsourcing opportunities that are not, by themselves, SEO related. In the end, however, SEO is a sum of its parts, and from the perspective of a company looking to pay for SEO services, all methods of driving organic traffic will reside under the umbrella of Search Engine Optimization. Notwithstanding the new coinage, SMO is an important component of SEO in Web 2.0. An SEOs intention in a social network is to create the illusion of natural links that occur during the interaction that takes place on networks such as Kaboodle.com, MyBlogLogs.com and Flickr.com. It is these links that search engines value the most because they happen as a result of real interests, not paid or reciprocal contracts. These links often lead to spikes in traffic, which have been criticized for only providing unqualified visitors and using up bandwidth. While these spikes continue to be a topic of debate on SEO forums, traffic after the spike does typically return to a level higher than it was before. The more authentic the illusion of natural interaction created by the SEO, the better the results. SEO in Web 2.0 introduces a new skill set of creativity that was previously not present. The space for this creativity, which ties in with the above link baiting topic of quality content, is especially exciting for the SEO of the future. The possibilities for attracting genuine links and organic traffic are limited only by the SEOs imagination.

To read the last four sections of this white paper — Usability vs. Searchability: The RIA Search Challenge, Googles Personalized Search: The End of Traditional SEO?, Search Behavior R&D: Customized Engines and Long Tail Keywords, and the Conclusion — visit the following URL to download the PDF version of the paper: http://www.bkv.com/search-engine-optimization.jsp

References

[1] Doctorow, Cory, Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia. Version 1.3, 26 August 2001. http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm

[2] Brin, Sergey and Page, Larry, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web 7, 1998, Pages: 107-117 [3] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. London: Portfolio, 2006, Page: 19 [4] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Page: 68

[5] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Page: 75

[6] Golder, Scott A. Huberman, Bernardo A. “The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems.” Information Dynamics Lab, HP Labs. Aug. 18, 2005. http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0508082. Cornell University Library. [8] Loosley, Chris. Rich Internet Applications: Design, Measurement, and Management Challenges. http://www.keynote.com/docs/whitepapers/RichInternet_5.pdf. Keynote Systems, 2006.[9] Wilson, Nick. 2007 Guide to Linkbaiting: The Year of Widgetbait? http://searchengineland.com/070118-074231.php. January 18, 2007. [10] Wilson, Nick. January 18, 2007

[11] Bhargava, Rohit. 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO). Influential Interactive Marketing blog. http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html. August 10, 2006.

Author: Will Fleiss
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Pressure Cooker

You hear all the time about bad SEOs. Bad SEOs are offering worthless services, failing to deliver on their internet marketing promises, polluting the search engine resultswell, a lot of bad things. But how much ever gets said about bad SEOs’ spiritual counterparts: bad SEO clients?

As an SEO, I can see things from the other side of the table. You see, despite trying hard to make it clear I’m a good, ethical, results-oriented, smarter marketing, white-hat SEO, I have gotten no end of inquiries from bad prospective SEO clients. Sure, no one who gets cheated is ever entirely to blame, and some cheated businesses are entirely blameless. But the bad SEOs would have too small a market to stay in business if it weren’t for almost-as-bad clients.

Shades of Bad SEO Clients

First, let me make clear what I mean by bad SEOs. Bad SEOs are bad because they either do unethical things to get e-marketing results, or because they consistently fail to deliver results. A good SEO delivers results and does it without trampling over other people’s rights (like submitting automated comments to their websites or trying to get good sites de-indexed).

A bad SEO client, in turn, is someone who will only be satisfied (albeit temporarily) with a bad SEO. Because they refuse to consider ethical web consultants or smarter marketing strategies, they are creating markets for the e-marketing charlatans and black-hats. There are two basic types of bad SEO clients: crooks and fool–oops, I mean, ethically challenged and judgmentally-challenged.

Ethically-Challenged SEO Clients

I haven’t gotten so many inquiries asking for out-and-out unethical services. Still, I’ve been asked about blog-sp@mming software and other shady internet marketing tactics a couple times. A colleague shared this gem with me: Have you thought about just scanning a book from the library and using it for web content? Or is that too high-risk? (Seriously, someone asked him this.)

Of course, judging from the amount of comment sp@m and SEO-motivated hacking on the web, there is plenty of demand for this stuff.

Judgmentally-Challenged SEO Clients

A much larger group of bad SEO clients are simply those who insist on putting themselves in the way of fraud. Yes, that’s right: I’m blaming the victim. Someone who goes looking for a $5 gold watch can’t cry too long if the watch turns out to be fake or hot. With SEO, there are a few more nuances, but it’s the same essential idea.

The overwhelming majority of these judgmentally challenged souls are private individuals whose only business is the business-in-a-kit variety. Yet they are also sometimes representatives of actual successful companies. The real businesspeople tend to be quicker to let their misconceptions go (after all, they can afford the real SEO alternatives), but not always. Let’s look at some representative types of this group, straight out of my own inbox (note: these are inquiries from prospects, not actual clients).

1. Something-for-(Little More than)-Nothing Clients

Really, I tend to think these people should be in the ethically challenged group, but maybe that’s just the remnant of my work ethic making me be mean There are actually two kinds of these clients:

• The ambitious but cheap client: I’d like to get to the top of Google for the keyword, ‘mortgage’ so I can turn over $100,000/month in revenue. I can spend up to $1,000.
• The Adsense-is-my-business-plan client: you wouldn’t believe the numbers of inquiries I get from people who only plan to make money off Adsense or other on-site advertisingthey don’t even have a plan for getting repeat traffic, nor do they have content to synergize with the SEO effort. By buying promotional services, they would essentially be buying advertising in order to make money off advertisingyou see where that could be a problem?

Another way of looking at it: why wouldn’t I just create a site myself and keep all the profit from my efforts? In fact, most SEOs do have their own project sites, which are often monetized by Adsense. The money we could otherwise get from Adsense is one very low baseline for pricing our services. Legitimate SEO clients are typically selling goods or services at a profit rate that works out to ten or more times what they could get from Adsense.

In addition to the greedy, I also see a few other kinds of less common, but still problematic prospective SEO clients:

2. SEO-Starry-Eyed Clients: Search engine traffic is definitely the best way for me to get pet-sitting clients in my tiny Himalayan village.
3. The Little-Knowledge-Is-a-Dangerous-Thing Client: Don’t tell me about keyword research, content, anchor text, or natural linking strategy, just get me the PageRank (or links, keyword density, or whatever the fad is).
4. Gullible-and-Not-Letting-Go Client: I know of at least two services that will submit my site to thousands of search engines for $29.95. If you can’t do that, I’ll take my business elsewhere.
5. I-Will-Never-Trust-SEO-But-I’ll-Consider-It-Anyway Client: No one can guarantee a good search engine ranking so this is all pointlessI’ll just go with that $29.95 search engine submission package someone just emailed me about. At least it’s cheap.

In short, if you are going to find good SEO web consultants, you need: 1) realistic expectations; 2) a realistic budget; 3) solid information. Don’t expect something for nothing, do a little reading, and it’s much less likely you’ll fall victim to bad SEOs.

Author: Lee Rummage
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cellphone news

Before proceeding to other parts of the article, please take your
time to read the following definitions:

RSS:

RSS, rich site summary, or really simple syndication, is an XML format for sharing contents (such as news items) among different Web sites.

Feed:

It is an xml file containing headlines and descriptions also called news feed, content feed, xml feed or web feed.

Web Syndication:

Web syndication is a form of syndication in which a section of a website is made available for other sites to use. This could be simply by licensing the content so other people can use it, but more commonly these days web syndication refers to making Web feeds available

XML:

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup languages, capable of describing many different kinds of data. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data
across different systems, particularly systems connected via the Internet.

Atom:

atom is a really small particle or an XML-based document format and HTTP-based protocol designed for the syndication of Web content such as weblogs (or blogs) and news headlines to Web sites as well as directly to user agents. It is based on experience gained in using the various versions of RSS.

Now let move to other parts of this article.

How does RSS work?

A website can allow other sites to publish its content by creating an RSS document and register the document with an RSS publisher.

Some Benefits of Using RSS:

1)Alternative To Email

Although you subscribed for email newsletter but you may be tired of all the junk mail you receive. By subscribing to RSS feed, you don’t need to worry about receiving any email.

2)Faster Than Browsing Web Page

RSS feeds are loosely coded and thus reading RSS feed is faster.

3)Search Engine Friendly

Being rich in contents and keywords and also constantly updating, major search engines like google, yahoo and alexa love them.

4)More Exposure For Your Site

Unless regular messages, RSS feeds are picked up and monitored by feed reader and blog sites such as weblog.com. This is similar to getting more targeted search engine traffic.

5)Content Is Delivered Instantly

With RSS, contents are delivered instantly to the reader over their choices of feed reader. RSS is a content delivery system that does not get filtered. All RSS articles are sent straight through your subscriber.

6)Can Get Listed Within Hours

You can get your site indexed in yahoo and msn within hours, using RSS.

7) Easily Remove Yourself From The Subscription

All RSS articles are also instantly delivered. You can easily remove yourself from the RSS feed subscription and it is as simple to hitting the delete key.

Different Media Type Support

RSS can support many media types including audio and video.

9) Easy Handling Options For Publishers
There are no subscription or removal links that RSS publishers need to take care of.

What Does It Require To Read A RSS Feed?

1)Internet connection

2) A Feed reader, to read the RSS feed from the RSS
channel (browser like opera has inbuilt feed reader)

3)If you are a publisher, then you need a way to publish your article.

For creating an RSS feed, you need to create an RSS file.
For creating an RSS file, read some tutorial by searching at google.

After creating the rss file you need to save it with either of the two extensions .xml or .rss. After saving you need to validate the RSS file, which you can do at
http://www.feedvalidator.org

After validating your RSS file, you need to syndicate it. For this you should have a code that other webmasters can place on their websites that will display your headlines. This code is usually a java script that the webmaster places on his site.

When anybody click on the XML or RSS link, the RSS feeds (or XML feeds) are instantly downloaded to his computer.

Author: Shouvik Mazumder
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Times

RSS – or what is now known as “Really Simple Syndication” – is a file format that is incorporated by Internet users in their websites to allow for ‘web syndication’, making their web content available in a format that can be universally understood by other people.

In essence, RSS is a ‘mini database’ that contains headlines and descriptions (a summary or a line or two of the full article) of your web content, including hyperlinks that enable users to link back to the full article of their choice.

RSS websites – that is, websites that contain RSS ‘feeds’ (articles or postings) – typically have colorful graphics to indicate to users that the specific web content is available through RSS feeds. These graphics are usually depicted by orange rectangles that are usually marked with ‘RSS’ or ‘XML’.

With its increased popularity, RSS is now being adopted and used by more website owners or publishers. Today, numerous resources are now available that aid Internet surfers (and even beginners as well) on how to set up and use RSS.

Setting up RSS feeds and adding them to your website can be a simple process that does not involve a lot of time or any money. Listed below are some simple and basic steps that you might want to follow:

1. Have your web content and/or news in an RSS feed format, such as XML (appropriate and ‘ready-made’ feeds are also available from other sources).

2. Click the orange graphic – this is the RSS feed icon. Take note of the URL of the RSS feed; this will be displayed in the address bar (for Internet Explorer).

3. Input the feed URL on your RSS feed creation program.

4. Click on the “Generate Feed” button. This will generate the RSS code for your web content.

5. Enter the RSS code in the appropriate place on your own website.

Having created an RSS feed for your website, next comes the task of publishing your web content and news and having them displayed on other sites and headline viewers. This is made possible with the use of RSS readers or aggregators.

RSS readers or news aggregators are used to view particular web contents. RSS readers contain the collection of ‘feeds’ or RSS files from content providers, and they are generally classified into 3 types:

Desktop RSS readers – also known as standalone desktop application, they generally ‘run’ in the background and are similar to an e-mail client, collecting the feeds and refreshing items automatically as they are updated.

Web-based aggregators – these are online services that enable users to personalize web pages, refreshing them each time the page is accessed or each time a person logs in to the service.

Plug-in aggregators/readers – these make use of either web browsers or e-mail clients, which allow users to view RSS feeds while inside an existing program.

Having an RSS-enabled website provides Internet users (especially those who are website owners) with the following benefits:

Allows users to generate up-to-date news and postings, as information and content in the RSS readers or aggregators are automatically updated each time the RSS feed is ‘refreshed’.

Allows users to have control over the information that they wish to view or receive, as they can remove a feed of their choosing any time they want to.

Aside from these benefits, RSS websites are also useful for people who conduct their business in the Internet, particularly in Internet or Online Marketing. RSS can be an effective marketing tool for your website, especially in the following fields:

E-mail marketing and publishing

Search engine marketing and optimization

Business blogging

Internet advertising

Digital public relations

Branding and e-commerce

In addition, RSS can ‘power’ your website, providing you with the following:

Valuable, updated, and relevant resources for site visitors and potential clients – RSS is ideal for websites that contain (and syndicate) a lot of information that has to be changed or updated regularly.

Search engine optimization for the website.

Increased traffic for the website – your website can ‘harvest’ and display information from other sites, driving more traffic to your own website.

A wide selection of ‘channels’ for content distribution, such as PDA’s, cellular phones, voice mails, and email ticklers.

A reliable way to have your web content delivered to Internet users and potential clients – RSS ensures that your site is viewed by the people who are interested in them, without having them blocked and ‘cleaned’ by ISPs or Spam filters.

These are just some of the advantages that RSS can give your website (and your business). The possibilities are endless, as more and more comes up almost everyday. Do not be left behind – take the advantage of the marketing and publishing power of RSS.

Author: Jeremiah Patton
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Beading Necklace

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
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