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Article by: Jacob Madison
The web is a complex and ever-changing environment.
Because of this, it is necessary to constantly be on the look
out for new and better ways to market your website. Currently,
fresh content is the best way to attract search engines to your
site. Having up-to-date information will keep the search engines
coming back to your site looking for more. Because of the search
engine's attraction to new content, your updated site will be
rewarded with higher placement in search results. Exactly how
fresh should your content be? Consider updating your content several
times per week - if not every other day, then twice weekly.
One popular trend to providing fresh content to a wide audience
is the use of an RSS Feed.
RSS Feeds. What are they?
There are several beliefs as to what "RSS" stands for,
but the most commonly adopted meaning is "Really Simple Syndication".
This term is quite appropriate, in fact, because of the ease of
creating an RSS feed for broad distribution of your content. One
example of effectively using an RSS feed is to create custom-written
articles for your website. Put your articles on their own page
(http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/articles/article1.htm).
After you create your RSS Feed, your subscribers will be able
to link to a specially created web address to access your feed.
Subscribers to your feed will paste a code on their own website
which will display the headline and a few words (a description)
of your article. The headline will act as a link back to your
article (on your website). This is a direct benefit to you, both
building in-bound links to your domain and pointing search engines
to your website for fresh content.
Making an RSS Feed
RSS Feeds use a language similar to HTML called XML. You must
be careful when using XML, not closing tags or failing to validate
the code can cause problems. The RSS Feed includes information
about your feed (Title of your article, short description, and
a link back to your original article). Your audience will see
this information instantly as you update your content. Think of
the potential – thousands of websites displaying YOUR content
to their visitors, and each of those visitors having the ability
to get to your website with one click.
To create your RSS feed, simply copy the following code into
your favorite text editor and edit a few fields. As you can see,
the first part of the code (below the RSS version), is used to
identify information about your website and company. The second
half, beginning at , is used to identify information about your
article.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"
?>
<rss version="0.91"></p><p><channel>
<title>YOUR TITLE HERE</title>
<link>YOUR URL HERE</link>
<description>YOUR DESCRIPTION HERE</description>
<language>en-us</language></p><p><item>
<title>YOUR ARTICLE TITLE HERE</title>
<link>YOUR ARTICLE URL HERE</link>
<description>YOUR ARTICLE DESCRIPTION HERE</description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
Change YOUR TITLE HERE with the title of your RSS Feed. This can
be anything; I would suggest using your brand, for example "Jacob
Madison Marketing Solutions". Then, replace YOUR URL HERE
with your main URL, for example, "http://www.jacobmadison.com".
Once you have done this, replace YOUR DESCRIPTION HERE with the
name of your feed. One example would be, "Internet marketing
solutions".
Finally, replace YOUR ARTICLE TITLE HERE with your article title,
YOUR ARTICLE URL HERE with the web location of your new article,
and YOUR ARTICLE DESCRIPTION HERE with a quick summary of your
content.
Save this file to your domain, for example,
http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/rss/rss-feed.xml
To keep your readers from being overwhelmed, I recommend keeping
the number of articles to the 5 most recently published.
You have now created an RSS Feed that is ready for syndication.
Syndicating Your RSS Feed
By advertising your RSS Feed, you will immediately boost the web
traffic to your website. Syndication of your RSS Feed will allow
others to easily add your feed to their website - increasing your
exposure quickly. There are a few ways to syndicate your feed.
One way is to submit your RSS feed URL to various RSS aggregators
and news readers. This will allow them to check your RSS feed
for updates. Popular aggregators are:
- Daypop.com
- Feedster.com
- Postami.com
- Syndic8.com
- Userland.com
Another option is to place an XML button on your home page. This
little orange button has quickly caught on and is appearing everywhere,
indicating that an RSS feed is available from that website. To
get this on your site, copy the XML image and paste it on your
homepage, linking it to your RSS page. Your code should look like
this:
<a href="http://www.YOURSITEHERE.com/rss/rss-feed.xml">
< img border="0" src="rss/rss_icon.jpg"
alt="YOUR WEB DESCRIPTION" width="36" height="14"></a>
Keeping up on your RSS Feed
Be sure to maintain your RSS Feed, failing to update it regularly
will cause search engines to loose interest, counteracting all
of your hard work. Also, be sure to link each article back to
your website to increase traffic to your website.
Utilizing RSS Feeds is a great way to improve your search engine
rankings. As your audience expands, you will be naturally building
incoming links to your website. RSS Feeds are a new approach to
internet marketing, once you set them up, however, it takes very
little time to see the traffic to your website increase.
Jacob Madison is an internet marketing professional specializing
in high-return growth and advanced marketing tactics. Find out
more about him at http://www.jacobmadison.com
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