ComputerHunter.org |
|
|
|||
|
 |
Tips for a Better RSS Feed
Like anything else, a little work can pay dividends. Well-written RSS feeds are more useful to readers and result in more website traffic for the publisher. Below are several tips for making your RSS feed more effective. 1. Use interesting titles Like a book is often judged by its cover, an RSS feed item is judged by its title. Make sure your title is interesting, and try to put the most important information early in the title, since some newsreaders truncate title beyond a certian length. Also, keep in mind that some newsreaders are set to only show feed item titles. Don't assume that any feed item descriptions will be shown. 2. Include keywords Since some readers will discover your feed through the many RSS search engines on the internet, you will want to include as many descriptive keywords in your feed item titles and descriptions. That does NOT mean you should just add a string of keywords. Rather, incorporate keywords naturally into your titles and descriptions. 3. Don't include all your content Some publishers put full content text directly in the feed item. The problem with including full text in a feed is that a reader has no incentive to click through to the publisher's website. Instead, write your feed item descriptions as 'teasers' that make a reader want to click over to the website to read more. Make your feed item descriptions brief, and include descriptive keywords. Remember some newsreaders are set to truncate long descriptions, and some newsreaders won't show descriptions at all. Keep your most important information at the start of your description. 4. Keep your content fresh Updating your feed regularly is a good way to keep reader interest. Feeds (like websites) that are not updated for months on end tend to lose repeat visitors. How often you refresh your content is up to the publisher. Keep in mind, however, that readers can set their reader to show as few as three feed headlines at a time. While it's not likely a problem, updating too often could mean that some items may get overlooked. 5. Make sure your RSS feed is compliant! Finally, make sure your feed is readable. The best-written feed in the world won't be read if the feed code is bad. If you are hand-coding your RSS feed files, you can use a website like http://feedvalidator.org can determine if your feed is valid and suggest reasons why it isn't. Content is king. Use these tips to keep your RSS feeds well-read and your website well-trafficed! S.R. Daley is the web developer for http://www.myrealtyfeed.com, a service that allows real estate professionals to create, maintain and promote multiple RSS feeds with a simple web interface. This article may be republished without changing the content and the bio box.
Google News - Top Stories
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
24 Tips and Strategies on How Everyone Can Blog Right and Get Everybody to Read By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. "Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is." - Pew Internet & American Life Project Blogging Is Not Important - Its Crucial It has been established that having a 'blog' helps your web site gain visitors and higher rankings in search engines. But a small study which I have just completed shows that blogging is much more important than this. Blogging appears to be absolutely essential to your web site success. If you are not blogging, your web site will fade into obscurity. Should Affiliates Really Use Blogging and Pinging To Get Indexed? There seems to be a huge craze lately with everyone trying to blog and ping to get their websites indexed into the search engines. Although this can be a great tool, all marketers should first understand exactly what they're getting themselves into before starting. It Really Is Simple RSS I have 'Googlebot' coming to my site every day since a month ago I put up my first news feed, since then I have put up yet another. Shared RSS - Syndication for the Rest of Us RSS Syndication or RSS Newsfeeds (RSS Feeds for short) all refer to the same thing. There are two parts to the process, the publisher, and the consumer. The publisher produces a small text file in a special format that lists the title and address of an article or resource published on the World Wide Web. The consumer uses a program, usually called an aggregator to read and display the contents of that simple text file, with links to the web page. Or the consumer may visit a website that includes an aggregator program, and view the results as a web page. Members of Yahoo.com, for example, can set their personal 'My Yahoo' pages to display the contents of any RSS feeds they select. Should You Get A Blog? A blog is a type of website. It allows the website owner to easily write messages that get posted to the site automatically, often in a journal or diary-like style. A particularly appealing thing about blogs is that your readers can comment back to your posts fairly easily, and a continuous stream of fresh conversations result. (This is a good thing.) Strategic RSS Positioning: How to Hotwire Your Site to Google! There's no denying it, the Internet has changed. The change was so subtle most people missed it. It was no great momentous event, just a slight sideways flex in how information is exchanged on the web. However, this slight shift has significant ramifications for anyone trying to achieve top rankings in the different search engines. So keep reading to find out how you can use this new SEO wildcard to 'hotwire' your site to the major search engines such as Google, Msn and Yahoo. Steps To Creating and Promoting RSS Feeds RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is commonly known, is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet. It seems like all Internet businesses now have RSS feeds available; at least your competitors do. You have finally made the decision that you have to have one. Where do you start? How Can RSS Feeds Help Your Online Business? So who should I use RSS Feeds? How can it help with my online business? RSS - The Intelligent Marketing Medium Are you new to RSS? If so here is a introduction to what RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is and how your website will benefit from offering an RSS feed to your visitor's. How to Use RSS for Free Targeted Website Traffic RSS (real simple syndication) is the new rage in communication. Why? Because people are beginning to see the traffic and communication potential of using RSS to boost their business. So how can RSS help boost traffic to your website? How using RSS will attract and maintain visitors There are nowhere near the amount of webmasters using RSS that there should be. There is more exposure about RSS than there has ever been but take up of RSS still seems to be slow. I think the main reason for this is the lack of understanding of how to implement an RSS feed.. Comparing Free Blogging Software With the increased interest in Blogging (web Logging), many web hosting providers now provide an assortment of free usage, open source blogging software packages. Among the most popular of these blogging tools are B2evolution, WordPress and Nucleus. Each of these programs offer similar basic features, so the question arises as to which one is easiest to use and would be appropriate for the requirements of your particular website. Prescription Blogs are Helping to Educate the Consumers on Prescription Consumption Blogs are being used on a more consistent basis due to their simplicity and accessibility to the public. Blogs: Todays Internet Diary and Marketing Tool The popular blogger.com owned by Google, Inc. has been around the internet for a while. What Are RSS Feeds? RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." It's a format that web sites and blogs can use to send updated headlines to you via services like My Yahoo!. My Yahoo! gathers the content you select from a variety of sources and displays it for you in one convenient location. Syndication means you don't have to visit each site individually to see what's new -- you simply scan headlines or brief article summaries and click to read the full text. That's the "really simple" part. And it's "really simple" for publishers to make their content accessible this way too. How Yahoos Recent Facelift Can Mean More Traffic To Your Site It even surprised me. Yes, even though I have been pointing out the possibility since July, and was forced by demand to release my study findings before my book was even half finished, I was shocked when I heard the news as well. You see, I was sure we were at least a year off from this glorious day. The News Yahoo has had a little facelift, which you've probably read about by now. The real news is more important for your site - the "My Yahoo!" page looks different too. On September 28, 2004, surfers who logged in to their personalized Yahoo area saw an announcement explaining the RSS and Atom files that show updated information to a website as content feeds, effectively pushing news feeds into the mainstream. The new look to this section of Yahoo was presented as a full page ad to every single account holder upon first log in that day, and even now, there remains a notice posted. When I logged into my page in the "My Yahoo!" section, I saw a big difference in the number of feeds left to choose from, as well as in the way they were presented. Currently, the RSS module boasts "150,000 sources". If your site isn't one of them, its crucial that you act now. If you have one and you're not getting the results you'd like from your set-up, there are small changes you can implement that will make a huge difference in your listing. Best results aren't as easy as submitting your feed now, but you're still within the window of opportunity - if you do it properly. What the News Could Mean For Your Site If You Act Now One of my clients recently called this "the back door into Yahoo". Whether that statement is accurate as far as getting included, or receiving an increase in rankings within Yahoo's search engine via your feed, depends on your site, and whether you create your feed correctly. If you could use a daily stream of traffic from even a small portion of Yahoo's estimated 20 million users, this could be your final wake-up call. You'll want to learn how to create a feed that gets well listed immediately. Currently, the RSS module boasts "150,000 sources". Yahoo will still need hundreds, perhaps thousands more, even if it only intends to list the "creme de la creme" of the submissions it gets. Being in that group is as easy as submitting your feed. Being at the top of the list isn't. However, you're still within the window of opportunity if you take the time to learn how to do this properly. You can get free details on how to do that at helpmerss.com . "My Yahoo!" RSS Headline module Coming Out of Beta? If I had to guess, I'd say all signs point to yes. When that happens, Yahoo's RSS/Atom directory will likely contain only those who added their feeds early. New feeds seeking to be included will probably face stricter standards. If you don't have one yet don't worry, because it's never been easier to make one. If you can cut and paste, there are tools all over the Net that will show you how- some will even generate the file for you. However, there are still certain guidelines you need to follow with your feed to get a good result out of Yahoo - it's not as simple as adding your feed now that there are more competing listings. Yahoo is still accepting new sources for RSS feeds. Readers of my last book state that they are getting excellent results following my instructions, though initial inclusion no longer occurs at the same rate. Plenty of markets have few feeds available, or none at all. Your site could fill that void. That means you still have a chance at a first page ranking. The traffic I get on a daily basis from My Yahoo readers alone sounds like I just like to brag. And I do, but that's hardly the point. The point is, there's no place you can even go to buy the caliber of exposure to the quality of audience that reads feeds. The typical audience that accesses information by feed are also blog readers. A study this summer estimated that the 69.3% of blog readers are aged 29-50, and that 40% of this audience are people who have household incomes greater than $90,000. The type of surfer that would subscribe to your feed has pre-qualified themselves as a lead, with a certain level of understanding and interest in your topic, often on a professional level. And if you don't spend every post hitting them over the head with your sales pitch, they can be both loyal and interactive. (If you do, they'll unsubscribe from your feed faster than you can spell s-p-a-m.) And if you're in the business of providing information you can use, in a way that shows how you can solve their problem, it's like preaching to the converted. If your product solves their problem, and you show that you deserve the trust of this subscriber, you'll also find the route to a sale an increasingly downward slope. The bottom line - this is the power surfer's favorite toy. And if your content appeals to them, you need to learn how to play. 7 Tips for Choosing the Right Blog Software for Your New Blog Choosing the right blog software for your new blog requires that you ask yourself some questions and make a list of all of the features and tools you need as well as your budget. Once you have this information written down you will be prepared to start shopping for blog software. However, keep in mind the following seven tips for choosing the best software for you. Marketing With Blogs - Part 3 In part 1 and part 2 of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing, and provided some tips on using your blog to sell your products and services online. Are You Thinking of Republishing RSS Feeds? There is lively debate about the republishing of RSS feeds on other sites. The argument surrounds the use of RSS feeds from the feed publisher being used in an unfair manner. This includes republishing the entire articles and not displaying sufficient credit to the original source. Before we go into the details you may want to brush up on your understanding of RSS. This will help you fully appreciate and fully understand the issues involved. I am glad this conversation is happening now as it needs to be made clear what fair use of RSS feeds actually means. There may be webmasters who are republishing RSS feeds in all innocence at the moment not realising the furore that is going on around them with regards to their republishing activities. I would like to help clear up any misunderstandings that surround RSS republishing. Being an RSS publisher myself who is considering republishing other authors RSS feeds I would like to make sure I am not treading on any toes. I am basing the following RSS republishing etiquette on the good practice that Rok Hrastnik has enthused. If you wish to republish an RSS feed then you should first consult the publisher with your intentions. This would be an email to the author stating how you wish to reuse their feed and the page or pages the feed will be republished on and the attributions you will make. You will need to clarify some points. If the authors feed contains ads then will they be republished? Will you be monetizing the authors work by placing ads on your republished page? To avoid conflict these issues need to be sorted out. The general guidelines Rok Hrastrnik has provided state that the article title must link back to the original article. If the RSS feeds contains a complete article only an excerpt, Rok suggests 100 to 200 words, can be republished. A link should be provided to the article source, the website of the original publisher. Further to this it is suggested that no archives are kept on the republished site and no full articles are used. I would suggest permission is sought from the original author if you wish to keep an archive on your site. You can follow this discussion further at PR meets the WWW and Micro persuasion.
|
|
|
|
|
