by: S. Housley
Measuring and tracking RSS while a fairly simple concept, is really anything but. Unlike websites, RSS have the added caveat of potential syndication, making accurate tracking a challenge to anyone but the extremely tech savvy.
It is not unrealistic for marketers to want to know how many subscribers they have, which items in their feeds attract the most interest, or how many click-throughs are generated as a result of an RSS feed.
There are a number of 3rd party providers who focus on tracking the consumption of RSS feeds. Some solutions are rudimentary but likely sufficient for a small business testing the waters with RSS. Other RSS tracking solutions are more complex and while they can come close to being accurate, with syndication there is no solution that tracks with 100% accuracy.
Techniques Used to track RSS Consumption
Small businesses can view web logs to provide information on how many times a specific file (RSS feed) is requested. The logs and information is rudimentary but will give a basic sense of a feeds success. Many 3rd party tracking options have additional tracking information available.
Hosting
The most common method to track the number of feed accesses or individuals accessing a feed is to use a 3rd party feed host. Companies like FeedBurner essentially track feeds based on accesses. The downside to using a 3rd party like Feedburner, is that the url is a FeedBurner url and any PageRank or popularity associated with the url will benefit the feed host rather than the feed creator. Additionally, no distinction is made between unique views or syndicate feeds.
FeedBurner provides a free no frills service to host RSS feeds and they have been proactive in circumventing user concerns. Recently implementing a service that eases users concerns about migrating from FeedBurner. There is a 3 step process for users interested in migrating from FeedBurner's free service, implementing a permanent redirect, and url forwarding.
Details can be found at: http://www.burningdoorc.om/feedburner/archives/001251.html
Some publishers, who were concerned about lock-in or wanted to retain control of the domain and feed urls often resist a hosting service. The new program FeedBurner Partner Pro is not free, but allows for users to point to their own domain, retaining complete control of their feeds without sacrificing statistical tracking.
The downside to using a service like FeedBurner is that some filtering applications used on corporate proxy servers block feeds residing on FeedBurner or other free hosts.
Redirects
Companies like SyndicateIQ have more complex tracking solutions that generate unique urls for each subscriber. The tracking benefits to such a customized solution is obvious. Individual user habits can be monitored and any users abusing their access and inappropriately syndicating a feeds content can have their feed turned off. The downside of course is that the success of RSS is in a large part due to the anonymity. Users don't want their personal habits tracked.
Considering the venture capital interest in these 3rd party hosting services. It is important to note that their value is in the data that they collect. As with any 3rd party service, it goes without saying that publishers should read the privacy policy carefully, be aware of who owns the rights to the collected information, and how that information might be used. It goes without saying that the value in many of the free services currently available lies in their aggregate data.
Uniquely Named Transparent Images
Uniquely named transparent 1x1 graphics can be added to the description field of an RSS feed. Users can use standard web logs to see the number of times the image is viewed and determine the number of times the feed was accessed.
Companies Specializing in Tracking and RSS Metrics
Pheedo - Pheedo creates tools that enable individuals, organizations and corporations to promote, analyze, and optimize their weblogs and content.
http://www.pheedo.com/
SyndicateIQ - SyndicateIQ's position in the content distribution chain provides clients a set of analytics.
http://www.syndicateiq.com/
FeedBurner - FeedBurner offers a full range of services to help you build awareness, track circulation, and implement revenue-generating programs in your feed(s).
http://www.feedburner.com/
Each individual using RSS needs to make a decision of the extent and importance of the analytics they require. Realizing that any system they employ is not going to be perfect.
Saturday 9 August 2008
How to Use Your Google API Key as Your Secret Weapon: Part Two (updated)
by: Tinu AbayomiPaul
Copyright 2004 Tinu AbayomiPaulUnlike part one , the rest of this article series will outline fewer Google API applications, as it focuses on only one thing. By the time you finish reading it, you will know how to implement what in my humble opinion, is the best way to use certain Google API Applications to enhance your own site. This simple idea isn’t new. It has been used by dozens, perhaps hundreds of sites. You may have even attempted to use this idea yourself, but gave up because of the amount of time involved, or how much it used to cost to attempt to put into practice - it used to take weeks just to compile enough information to get started. Now, several Google API applications make this particular kind of major site improvement much faster and easier to carry out. You can now combine free tools that help you create an RSS feed about your site with the power of your free Google API key, to transform your site into an industry leader on your site's topic. You probably already knew that you can collect RSS feeds and have the content displayed on your site, and also create a feed of your site and its updates without spending any money. With your Google API key, you can now leverage the power of the RSS format in less time.What is an RSS feed, and why does your site need one? Briefly, its most common abbreviation is “Really Simple Syndication”. The purpose of an RSS feed is to distribute the headlines of news or content that appears on your site. Once the feed is compiled, all you need to do is syndicate your content - and it doesn’t have to be just yours.RSS has been around for a while, but is becoming progressively popular, as the end-user base increases, and becomes more education. Also, site owners like you and I who are becoming more frustrated with the ever-increasing barriers to distributing newsletters. There’s another reason why your visitors may prefer to subscribe to your RSS feed instead of your newsletter that we’ll get to shortly. For now, let’s focus on the reason you need one.One of the greatest things about using RSS feeds to get your site more visibility is that the headlines don’t need to be just about your particular site, as I mentioned before. You could also turn your web property into the news desk for your entire niche. Especially if no one else is doing this in your field, it can turn your home page into the destination for anyone who wants to know what is happening in your industry. Why would you want to do this?1- More free traffic to your siteOnce you have an RSS feed, you can get additional exposure to your website by promoting your feed at dozens of high-traffic directories. People will go to these sites, looking for an RSS feed about their favorite topic, and sign-up to get the feeds pushed to them - this is great for newsletter publishers not only because these updates can direct them back to your site, but because it cuts out the time you would need to spend managing your ezine. 2- More free traffic to your siteEspecially if you narrowly target the news at your site to a popular but under-served demographic, sooner or later, Google may recognize your site as an industry leader in your category for its fresh relevant content on the subject. As a result, not only can this increase your overall page rank, and get your site spidered more often, the rankings of the keywords you are listed for can also begin to climb as a result. 3- More free traffic to your siteThe sites that index your feed must point to your site in order to access and update it. For sites that carry an information page about the data that your feed contains, it often means a free incoming link from their site to yours, often from a site with high Google Page Ranks.Getting the idea? You can get high-quality, targeted traffic to your site from implementing the steps I'll be outlining in this series. It's quite a project and may take a while, but anyone who can build a site can do it. If you're wary about setting up pages of your site that will have users leaving, you can set up a members-only section that you give away free with purchases of your product, or with subscriptions to your newsletter. Now that you understand the reasoning behind this idea, part three will go through the steps you'll need to take in order to make it work for you.
Copyright 2004 Tinu AbayomiPaulUnlike part one , the rest of this article series will outline fewer Google API applications, as it focuses on only one thing. By the time you finish reading it, you will know how to implement what in my humble opinion, is the best way to use certain Google API Applications to enhance your own site. This simple idea isn’t new. It has been used by dozens, perhaps hundreds of sites. You may have even attempted to use this idea yourself, but gave up because of the amount of time involved, or how much it used to cost to attempt to put into practice - it used to take weeks just to compile enough information to get started. Now, several Google API applications make this particular kind of major site improvement much faster and easier to carry out. You can now combine free tools that help you create an RSS feed about your site with the power of your free Google API key, to transform your site into an industry leader on your site's topic. You probably already knew that you can collect RSS feeds and have the content displayed on your site, and also create a feed of your site and its updates without spending any money. With your Google API key, you can now leverage the power of the RSS format in less time.What is an RSS feed, and why does your site need one? Briefly, its most common abbreviation is “Really Simple Syndication”. The purpose of an RSS feed is to distribute the headlines of news or content that appears on your site. Once the feed is compiled, all you need to do is syndicate your content - and it doesn’t have to be just yours.RSS has been around for a while, but is becoming progressively popular, as the end-user base increases, and becomes more education. Also, site owners like you and I who are becoming more frustrated with the ever-increasing barriers to distributing newsletters. There’s another reason why your visitors may prefer to subscribe to your RSS feed instead of your newsletter that we’ll get to shortly. For now, let’s focus on the reason you need one.One of the greatest things about using RSS feeds to get your site more visibility is that the headlines don’t need to be just about your particular site, as I mentioned before. You could also turn your web property into the news desk for your entire niche. Especially if no one else is doing this in your field, it can turn your home page into the destination for anyone who wants to know what is happening in your industry. Why would you want to do this?1- More free traffic to your siteOnce you have an RSS feed, you can get additional exposure to your website by promoting your feed at dozens of high-traffic directories. People will go to these sites, looking for an RSS feed about their favorite topic, and sign-up to get the feeds pushed to them - this is great for newsletter publishers not only because these updates can direct them back to your site, but because it cuts out the time you would need to spend managing your ezine. 2- More free traffic to your siteEspecially if you narrowly target the news at your site to a popular but under-served demographic, sooner or later, Google may recognize your site as an industry leader in your category for its fresh relevant content on the subject. As a result, not only can this increase your overall page rank, and get your site spidered more often, the rankings of the keywords you are listed for can also begin to climb as a result. 3- More free traffic to your siteThe sites that index your feed must point to your site in order to access and update it. For sites that carry an information page about the data that your feed contains, it often means a free incoming link from their site to yours, often from a site with high Google Page Ranks.Getting the idea? You can get high-quality, targeted traffic to your site from implementing the steps I'll be outlining in this series. It's quite a project and may take a while, but anyone who can build a site can do it. If you're wary about setting up pages of your site that will have users leaving, you can set up a members-only section that you give away free with purchases of your product, or with subscriptions to your newsletter. Now that you understand the reasoning behind this idea, part three will go through the steps you'll need to take in order to make it work for you.
Make Money Blogging
by: Matt Bacak
You have created a blog and your blog is dedicated to a niche industry. Have you ever thought that the blog could make money for you? We would look here in this article, ways and means, to make money blogging. Lets first have a look at what are the prerequisites for a blog needed to make money:1. Blog needs to be dedicated to a niche market.2. Updated regularly.3. Enough back links (Don't worry for it. Directory submission would be enough to begin with)4. Good blog host or application (blogger, Xanga or typepad recommended), and5. High quality articles or news items supported with images.Get the above criteria in place and Hurrah... You are ready to Make Money Blogging.Top 5 Ways to Make Money BloggingLets now take a look at top 5 ways using which you could make money blogging:1. Google AdsenseGoogle Adsense delivers text and image ads to the authorized websites/blogs depending on the content of the website. Small code is required to be pasted at proper locations on a webpage and Google automatically recognizes the page. Google shares the revenue it gets from the advertisers whenever a visitor clicks on these ads. Google bills advertisers on price per click basis (PPC). Advertisers are required to pay only when any visitor clicks on their ads. They bid against each other for the keywords in order to receive better placement and thus prices for each keyword differ from one another. It is better to choose keywords for your blog which pays high $ per click.2. AmazonAmazon Associate program is another important way to make money blogging. The Amazon Associate program gives opportunity to website/blog publishers to promote any product from its inventory by adding a predefined code to their website/blog, which, when clicked by a visitor, takes them to the relevant product page. Once the visitor buys the product, the blog owner will be compensated with a commission.3. BlogadsYou can use Blogads as an effective tool to have a better control over the advertisers in your blogs. You can analyze and compare your profits with any one of your online agencies. Blogads can be simply specified as an advertising service used for the web logs or blogs. From the total money generated by Blogads, it retains 20% of it and the remaining money is paid to you through PayPal or checks. Alternative Services:• Crispads is another useful network focused on the blogs. You can put your advertisements in their blogs using Crispads. You can move through their RSS/ATOM feeds that help in generating revenues. • Tagword – It is similar to Blogads. It makes you select the ads and their price.Users can place their text-based ads in the site within minutes and the ads will be displayed instantly on the website. 4. Affiliate ProgramsYour affiliate programs can help you earn a lot of money for selected products and services. Lot of websites offers you to become affiliate members. These affiliate programs can provide a better reach and an in-depth exposure to the products. The commissions for the sales differ according to the quality of the product, sales and marketing strategy involved. You can gather information related to the commissions by looking into the catalogues of Link Share and Commission junctions. 5. Text Links Text links has emerged out to be the best form of moneymaking source that you can use instead of cluttering or crowding the page with ads. You don’t have to make these text links prominent within your website. This link can act as an extra value to your site and will also help to promote the rankings of other sites. In most of the cases you will find these text links placed in the bottom of the web pages. The best part of this strategy is that the publishers send and accept links as the market continues to grow.
You have created a blog and your blog is dedicated to a niche industry. Have you ever thought that the blog could make money for you? We would look here in this article, ways and means, to make money blogging. Lets first have a look at what are the prerequisites for a blog needed to make money:1. Blog needs to be dedicated to a niche market.2. Updated regularly.3. Enough back links (Don't worry for it. Directory submission would be enough to begin with)4. Good blog host or application (blogger, Xanga or typepad recommended), and5. High quality articles or news items supported with images.Get the above criteria in place and Hurrah... You are ready to Make Money Blogging.Top 5 Ways to Make Money BloggingLets now take a look at top 5 ways using which you could make money blogging:1. Google AdsenseGoogle Adsense delivers text and image ads to the authorized websites/blogs depending on the content of the website. Small code is required to be pasted at proper locations on a webpage and Google automatically recognizes the page. Google shares the revenue it gets from the advertisers whenever a visitor clicks on these ads. Google bills advertisers on price per click basis (PPC). Advertisers are required to pay only when any visitor clicks on their ads. They bid against each other for the keywords in order to receive better placement and thus prices for each keyword differ from one another. It is better to choose keywords for your blog which pays high $ per click.2. AmazonAmazon Associate program is another important way to make money blogging. The Amazon Associate program gives opportunity to website/blog publishers to promote any product from its inventory by adding a predefined code to their website/blog, which, when clicked by a visitor, takes them to the relevant product page. Once the visitor buys the product, the blog owner will be compensated with a commission.3. BlogadsYou can use Blogads as an effective tool to have a better control over the advertisers in your blogs. You can analyze and compare your profits with any one of your online agencies. Blogads can be simply specified as an advertising service used for the web logs or blogs. From the total money generated by Blogads, it retains 20% of it and the remaining money is paid to you through PayPal or checks. Alternative Services:• Crispads is another useful network focused on the blogs. You can put your advertisements in their blogs using Crispads. You can move through their RSS/ATOM feeds that help in generating revenues. • Tagword – It is similar to Blogads. It makes you select the ads and their price.Users can place their text-based ads in the site within minutes and the ads will be displayed instantly on the website. 4. Affiliate ProgramsYour affiliate programs can help you earn a lot of money for selected products and services. Lot of websites offers you to become affiliate members. These affiliate programs can provide a better reach and an in-depth exposure to the products. The commissions for the sales differ according to the quality of the product, sales and marketing strategy involved. You can gather information related to the commissions by looking into the catalogues of Link Share and Commission junctions. 5. Text Links Text links has emerged out to be the best form of moneymaking source that you can use instead of cluttering or crowding the page with ads. You don’t have to make these text links prominent within your website. This link can act as an extra value to your site and will also help to promote the rankings of other sites. In most of the cases you will find these text links placed in the bottom of the web pages. The best part of this strategy is that the publishers send and accept links as the market continues to grow.
Tools for Online Tracking
by: Sharon Housley
Copyright 2005 Sharon HousleyIn order to determine which advertising and marketing efforts are effective you must have ways to measure the results of those efforts. Alerts and instant notifications can be instrumental in monitoring search engine position, trademarked terms, monitoring competitors and staying abreast of online occurrences. And, of course, the notification can be used for "ego searches".Ego Searches What is an ego search? Find out where your name or company is mentioned, view forum posts or online articles that mention your name or company.TrademarksThe best offense is a good defense. By monitoring newsgroups or search engines for trademarked terms, you often head off a future conflict. As a trademark owner, it is your responsibility to actively protect your mark. Otherwise, you could lose your trademark rights. Monitoring tools send immediate notification should any suspected trademark infringements occur.Search PositionStatistics show that more than 85% of Internet users find web sites with the help of the search engines. Therefore, a website's search engine position is crucial to its success. Prudent webmasters regularly check their search engine position. Monitoring fluctuations and re-indexing of major search engines affects keyword terms and phrases. Monitoring of positions will alert webmasters to any shifts before sales decline.Competitor WatchMonitoring newsgroups for mentions of competitors may allow you opportunities to chime in and offer an alternative solution in a helpful, friendly way. Knowing exactly what your online competitors are doing provides a competitive edge that can be used to your advantage. Website Downtime Accessibility is the most critical measure of your website's performance. If customers can't access your site, they can't shop; and if they can't shop, they can't buy. More important, your business could gain a bad reputation among your customers, which translates into negative word of mouth and even worse, if you're highly visible, negative press. So regardless of what else you monitor, you want to monitor websites for downtime. Take a look at the various tools available and how they can be used to keep you current on relevant issues.
Copyright 2005 Sharon HousleyIn order to determine which advertising and marketing efforts are effective you must have ways to measure the results of those efforts. Alerts and instant notifications can be instrumental in monitoring search engine position, trademarked terms, monitoring competitors and staying abreast of online occurrences. And, of course, the notification can be used for "ego searches".Ego Searches What is an ego search? Find out where your name or company is mentioned, view forum posts or online articles that mention your name or company.TrademarksThe best offense is a good defense. By monitoring newsgroups or search engines for trademarked terms, you often head off a future conflict. As a trademark owner, it is your responsibility to actively protect your mark. Otherwise, you could lose your trademark rights. Monitoring tools send immediate notification should any suspected trademark infringements occur.Search PositionStatistics show that more than 85% of Internet users find web sites with the help of the search engines. Therefore, a website's search engine position is crucial to its success. Prudent webmasters regularly check their search engine position. Monitoring fluctuations and re-indexing of major search engines affects keyword terms and phrases. Monitoring of positions will alert webmasters to any shifts before sales decline.Competitor WatchMonitoring newsgroups for mentions of competitors may allow you opportunities to chime in and offer an alternative solution in a helpful, friendly way. Knowing exactly what your online competitors are doing provides a competitive edge that can be used to your advantage. Website Downtime Accessibility is the most critical measure of your website's performance. If customers can't access your site, they can't shop; and if they can't shop, they can't buy. More important, your business could gain a bad reputation among your customers, which translates into negative word of mouth and even worse, if you're highly visible, negative press. So regardless of what else you monitor, you want to monitor websites for downtime. Take a look at the various tools available and how they can be used to keep you current on relevant issues.
Do Marketers Really Need RSS?
by: Rok Hrastnik
Copyright 2005 Rok HrastnikThe recent Forrester Research study, which claims that only 2% of online households in North America use RSS, took the internet marketing world by storm. Does this data really mean that marketers can still afford to ignore this channel?Soon after the Forrrester study became public, I received a press enquiery asking whether marketers should be interested in RSS now that so few online adults use it.Is this the correct question to ask? Let’s take a look at the bigger picture …1. THE FORRESTER STUDY VALIDITYThe Forrester study is just one of those available and cannot be considered as the only relevant study, although it was conducted on a sample of 68,000 households. Jupiter Research estimates RSS penetration at 12% of the American online population, while the latest report from PEW shows that 9% of the American online population has a good idea of what RSS is. An October 2004 PEW study actually estimated RSS penetration at 5%.It is also important to understand that Forrester data does not include those that might not even be aware they are using RSS, especially through services such as My.Yahoo, which is actually the most popular RSS reader.Also, at the same time, Forrester Vice President Henry Harteveldt says that »RSS is critical for any organization that wants to reach out to people under the age of 30«.2. THE FUTURE GROWTH OF RSSRegardless of the numbers we put our faith in, the future growth of RSS is without question. Microsoft just recently announced full RSS support in the next edition of their Internet Explorer browser and full RSS integration in the next edition of their operating system, the Windows Vista.Once RSS becomes easily available to most internet users out-of-the-box and becomes as widely spread as bookmarks, its adoption will grow at an incredible rate. Microsoft has now made sure this in fact will happen.Consequently, the time for marketers to not only become interested in RSS but also master it is now. Those that test and discover the best possible ways of using RSS for marketing will be ahead of their competition once everyone starts using RSS.Furthermore, since RSS implementation can actually be free of any charge, there’s no reason not to start providing your content in RSS feeds now.3. GOOGLE SHOWS THE WAYMicrosoft and Yahoo! aren’t the only big players to show support for RSS. Google recently launched RSS advertising as part of their Google AdSense program, giving publishers reason to start their own RSS feeds to generate direct revenues.Those that depend on Google AdSense for part or all of their online revenues actually need to provide RSS feeds, or stand to lose some of those revenues due to their visitors switching to sites and feeds from their competitors.Face it, today many users are already starting to request publishers provide them with RSS to subscribe to their content. This trend will only continue, with many users selecting RSS as their primary channel of receiving and reading online content.4. THE QUESTIONABLE RELIABILITY OF E-MAILAll marketers today are experiencing e-mail delivery problems, constantly wondering whether their messages are getting through or not. Simply put, e-mail can no longer be relied on.For one, offering your content via RSS as a supplement to e-mail will help you make certain that at least a portion of your visitors, those that decide for the RSS option, will be receiving all of your content without any doubt. Lockergnome.com decided to start pushing RSS instead of e-mail some time ago, and as a result saw that their RSS feeds are outperforming e-mail when it comes to clickthrough rates for about 500%. Also an interesting fact, they today have 5 times more RSS subscribers than e-mail subscribers.And two, for your most important content updates, RSS really is becoming a must, especially if you need to be in contact with your existing customers, partners and other key audiences. If you want to be 100% certain that your messages reach your audience, RSS is the way to go.5. OTHER BENEFITS OF RSSBut all of the above don’t even touch all the reasons why marketers should start using RSS today …a) RSS will help you generate additional traffic and reach new audiences. Considering the low cost of RSS implementation, this is reason enough to get started with RSS today.b) RSS helps you to easily get your content published on other sites, thus generating you more credibility and visitors.c) As a publisher you can use RSS to display content from other sources, thus making your site more relevant and interesting to your existing visitors.And the list goes on and on.RSS may not be mainstream yet, but it provides enough advantages even today to make it a must-choice for marketers.
Copyright 2005 Rok HrastnikThe recent Forrester Research study, which claims that only 2% of online households in North America use RSS, took the internet marketing world by storm. Does this data really mean that marketers can still afford to ignore this channel?Soon after the Forrrester study became public, I received a press enquiery asking whether marketers should be interested in RSS now that so few online adults use it.Is this the correct question to ask? Let’s take a look at the bigger picture …1. THE FORRESTER STUDY VALIDITYThe Forrester study is just one of those available and cannot be considered as the only relevant study, although it was conducted on a sample of 68,000 households. Jupiter Research estimates RSS penetration at 12% of the American online population, while the latest report from PEW shows that 9% of the American online population has a good idea of what RSS is. An October 2004 PEW study actually estimated RSS penetration at 5%.It is also important to understand that Forrester data does not include those that might not even be aware they are using RSS, especially through services such as My.Yahoo, which is actually the most popular RSS reader.Also, at the same time, Forrester Vice President Henry Harteveldt says that »RSS is critical for any organization that wants to reach out to people under the age of 30«.2. THE FUTURE GROWTH OF RSSRegardless of the numbers we put our faith in, the future growth of RSS is without question. Microsoft just recently announced full RSS support in the next edition of their Internet Explorer browser and full RSS integration in the next edition of their operating system, the Windows Vista.Once RSS becomes easily available to most internet users out-of-the-box and becomes as widely spread as bookmarks, its adoption will grow at an incredible rate. Microsoft has now made sure this in fact will happen.Consequently, the time for marketers to not only become interested in RSS but also master it is now. Those that test and discover the best possible ways of using RSS for marketing will be ahead of their competition once everyone starts using RSS.Furthermore, since RSS implementation can actually be free of any charge, there’s no reason not to start providing your content in RSS feeds now.3. GOOGLE SHOWS THE WAYMicrosoft and Yahoo! aren’t the only big players to show support for RSS. Google recently launched RSS advertising as part of their Google AdSense program, giving publishers reason to start their own RSS feeds to generate direct revenues.Those that depend on Google AdSense for part or all of their online revenues actually need to provide RSS feeds, or stand to lose some of those revenues due to their visitors switching to sites and feeds from their competitors.Face it, today many users are already starting to request publishers provide them with RSS to subscribe to their content. This trend will only continue, with many users selecting RSS as their primary channel of receiving and reading online content.4. THE QUESTIONABLE RELIABILITY OF E-MAILAll marketers today are experiencing e-mail delivery problems, constantly wondering whether their messages are getting through or not. Simply put, e-mail can no longer be relied on.For one, offering your content via RSS as a supplement to e-mail will help you make certain that at least a portion of your visitors, those that decide for the RSS option, will be receiving all of your content without any doubt. Lockergnome.com decided to start pushing RSS instead of e-mail some time ago, and as a result saw that their RSS feeds are outperforming e-mail when it comes to clickthrough rates for about 500%. Also an interesting fact, they today have 5 times more RSS subscribers than e-mail subscribers.And two, for your most important content updates, RSS really is becoming a must, especially if you need to be in contact with your existing customers, partners and other key audiences. If you want to be 100% certain that your messages reach your audience, RSS is the way to go.5. OTHER BENEFITS OF RSSBut all of the above don’t even touch all the reasons why marketers should start using RSS today …a) RSS will help you generate additional traffic and reach new audiences. Considering the low cost of RSS implementation, this is reason enough to get started with RSS today.b) RSS helps you to easily get your content published on other sites, thus generating you more credibility and visitors.c) As a publisher you can use RSS to display content from other sources, thus making your site more relevant and interesting to your existing visitors.And the list goes on and on.RSS may not be mainstream yet, but it provides enough advantages even today to make it a must-choice for marketers.
15 Tips to Bring More Traffic to Your Blog
by: Kevin Oorlynck
There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use: 1. Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to "Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts" by TNL.net 2. Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo. 3. Submit to Google's Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google's Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site. 4. Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process. 5. Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post. 6. Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN. 7. Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying? 8. Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT. 9. Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like "I agree." Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder "who wrote this?" 10. Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site. 11. Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists. 12. Add a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block. 13. Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure to use your blog URL like it is your name. 14. Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave. 15. Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or "tags" that everyone interested in that tag can see.
There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use: 1. Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to "Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts" by TNL.net 2. Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo. 3. Submit to Google's Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google's Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site. 4. Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process. 5. Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post. 6. Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN. 7. Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying? 8. Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT. 9. Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like "I agree." Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder "who wrote this?" 10. Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site. 11. Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists. 12. Add a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block. 13. Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure to use your blog URL like it is your name. 14. Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave. 15. Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or "tags" that everyone interested in that tag can see.
New Google Blog Search is Great Marketing News for Business Podcasts, Blogs and RSS Feed Publishers
by: Rodney Rumford
Copyright 2005 Rodney RumfordGoogle just introduced Blog Search in beta yesterday. This new search function allows for you to search the internet for Blogs, Podcasts and RSS feeds. You simply type in your keywords and it will show you results that have come from these sources.The results they display are not showing any preferences to Blogs that are published on Blogger. We are seeing results for all Blogging platforms. Actually Google Blog Search is not just looking at Blogs. They are looking for any RSS feed, which might be from a Blog, Podcast, or any other XML feed. It appears that the search tool is pretty responsive and we are seeing results show up in a matter of hours after a new post is made to the RSS Blog and Podcast Feed. This is another way that you can create online visibility for your business. The organic results are sorted by relevancy, but you have the option to sort them by date as well. This is especially nice if you want to locate the latest post for a fast breaking news topic and want to find it quickly in the blogosphere. The other thing that Google has done is to try to eliminate some of the “noise” and Spam of the blogosphere. They are looking at high quality Blogs and show them at the top of the page under what is called “Related Blogs”. This is prime real estate for your Blog to be listed in. As an example: Go to the new Google Blog search ( http://blogsearch.google.com ) and type in podcasting tips. The results that are shown at the top 2 of the 3 Related Blogs happen to be authored by me. You will also see over 1600 results and we have several additional results on the front page. This is because we are writing 6 quality Blogs and publishing quality content frequently to these Blogs. http://blog.podblaze.com Google currently does not support a manual submission for your Blog feed. I think this is smart, since it keeps the unethical people out of the picture. If you are Blogging or Podcasting properly and following best practices; your feed will be found by Google. Make sure that you are also following best practices for pinging after your feed is updated. This will ensure that your feed is updated by Google.It looks like Google started to index Blogs, Podcasts and RSS feeds in June of 2005. They are currently not showing posts that were made previous to this. They may change this in the future. Google has found a way to somewhat keep the black hat SEO and unethical Bloggers out of the results. We can all celebrate this; because this means quality and relevant results for searchers. Podcasters should also take note that individual podcast shows are also being listed in the results. This is a great way for users find your podcasts and individual podcast shows, based upon specific topics and content.If you are serious about improving your marketing and the online visibility for your business website; then you need to be creating quality content with a quality Blog or Podcast. If your business wants to get maximum exposure in this important new area of Google you should work with professionals that truly understand this technology. You can look at http://www.leveragedpromotion.com as they have experience with many Blogging, RSS and Podcasting Solutions.
Copyright 2005 Rodney RumfordGoogle just introduced Blog Search in beta yesterday. This new search function allows for you to search the internet for Blogs, Podcasts and RSS feeds. You simply type in your keywords and it will show you results that have come from these sources.The results they display are not showing any preferences to Blogs that are published on Blogger. We are seeing results for all Blogging platforms. Actually Google Blog Search is not just looking at Blogs. They are looking for any RSS feed, which might be from a Blog, Podcast, or any other XML feed. It appears that the search tool is pretty responsive and we are seeing results show up in a matter of hours after a new post is made to the RSS Blog and Podcast Feed. This is another way that you can create online visibility for your business. The organic results are sorted by relevancy, but you have the option to sort them by date as well. This is especially nice if you want to locate the latest post for a fast breaking news topic and want to find it quickly in the blogosphere. The other thing that Google has done is to try to eliminate some of the “noise” and Spam of the blogosphere. They are looking at high quality Blogs and show them at the top of the page under what is called “Related Blogs”. This is prime real estate for your Blog to be listed in. As an example: Go to the new Google Blog search ( http://blogsearch.google.com ) and type in podcasting tips. The results that are shown at the top 2 of the 3 Related Blogs happen to be authored by me. You will also see over 1600 results and we have several additional results on the front page. This is because we are writing 6 quality Blogs and publishing quality content frequently to these Blogs. http://blog.podblaze.com Google currently does not support a manual submission for your Blog feed. I think this is smart, since it keeps the unethical people out of the picture. If you are Blogging or Podcasting properly and following best practices; your feed will be found by Google. Make sure that you are also following best practices for pinging after your feed is updated. This will ensure that your feed is updated by Google.It looks like Google started to index Blogs, Podcasts and RSS feeds in June of 2005. They are currently not showing posts that were made previous to this. They may change this in the future. Google has found a way to somewhat keep the black hat SEO and unethical Bloggers out of the results. We can all celebrate this; because this means quality and relevant results for searchers. Podcasters should also take note that individual podcast shows are also being listed in the results. This is a great way for users find your podcasts and individual podcast shows, based upon specific topics and content.If you are serious about improving your marketing and the online visibility for your business website; then you need to be creating quality content with a quality Blog or Podcast. If your business wants to get maximum exposure in this important new area of Google you should work with professionals that truly understand this technology. You can look at http://www.leveragedpromotion.com as they have experience with many Blogging, RSS and Podcasting Solutions.
Blog and Boost Your Search Engine and RSS Traffic
by: Kamau Austin
One of the more recent secrets people are using to get their websites in the search engines, the last couple of years, is with Blogs. Blogs are short for web logs and are like daily dairies on the web.Blogs started out as ways for Internet reality types to share their lives with other people on the web, without having to learn very complicated web design applications like Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.Dreamweaver, the standard professional web design program takes a least 6 months to master. While FrontPage on the other hand looks a lot like Microsoft Word, and therefore can be used a bit more quickly by people just starting out.Blogs are much easier to use than any web design software. They can be used to change web content from a browser, email, and even simple desk top software. Blogs are web pages created with automated software that date stamps all changes to content.One of the secrets the web marketers use to get their new websites into the major search engines like (Google - Yahoo! and MSN) is called blog and ping. So many Internet fortunes are being built on this simple technique.If you want your new website to be indexed (or included in the search engine database) you shouldn't submit it to the search engines -- instead you should blog and ping.There is a new feature with Google and Yahoo! known as sitemaps, which will also get your site indexed, but most of us will do fine with learning first to blog and ping.Blogs index and file your web pages automatically according to the way you specify in advance.Google loves blogs and has its own web based application called Blogger. You can set up a Blogger account for free at Blogger.com.You should use Blogs for your business to give updates to your customers and supporters every few days on your company's news or inside information. You can also reflect on industry trends with your business blog.What's nice about blogs if you want to get your site in the search engines or keep the search engines up to date with your latest optimization or content efforts. You can post your new website or page to your blog page and link to that page.The search engines will visit the blog page more frequently and index your new pages or web sites some times in a day or two. Also make sure when you post a new blog in Blogger.com you set up your account to ping (or notify) the other major blog directories that your blog has been updated.Or if you want to get your new site into Google go to a high ranked blog listed in Google. If the Blog allows comments give a good comment on the blog. Then link back to the page you want indexed in the Blog.Make sure you give a worth while or useful comment or it will be considered blog spam by the website administrators. Sometimes blog publishers disable the comment feature for this reason, therefore it is important to have your own blogs especially if you have more than one site.This will get the Google spider to index your new sites or web pages within a few days and consider your site for its database given the criteria of its algorithm.If you are looking for a fast, inexpensive and efficient way to build a lot of content on your site, which the search engines will pick up, go to Blogger and open up a free blogging account and join the blogosphere.- The Love Affair between the Search Engines, Blogs and RSSI have been extolling the SEO benefits of Blogs since almost two years ago. Although blogs and search engines don't seem to enjoy the free for all love affair they once had, the search engines and blogs seem to still be married "for better or for worst".The romance and infatuation phase between search engines and blogs has waned because of blog spam. However search engines dare not divorce blogs because they tend to cook up regularly updated content.Blogs are also search engine friendly in design. As publishers we love blogs because it is an easy way for us to update our sites with new content.Many top marketers are extolling about the power of blogs and their natural extension RSS feeds. Almost every successful Internet Marketers today is using some variation of blogs and RSS feeds.Everywhere you go the web gurus are talking about the great upside potential of blogs and RSS. RSS for the purpose of discussing this issue stands for Really Simple Syndication.RSS is presently being used by Internet marketers to share their blog headlines with websites and desktops all over the world. Think of RSS as giving you the ability to blog without boundaries.People on other websites and with downloadable RSS newsreader software can read your newest blog posts without visiting your site. Sites that value your expertise will in a viral fashion feature your RSS feeds and help generate traffic to your site.This allows you to leverage traffic from other peoples sites who feature your blog. Moreover, your subscribers who read your RSS headlines on their desktop software will avoid email filters.Before you explore or upgrade to RSS marketing experiment with desktop newsreaders like Tristana or News Gator. If you prefer to read RSS from your browser download and install Mozilla's FireFox Browser.RSS feeds will be the next phase in Internet marketing following the search engines, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and joint ventures.By having people subscribe to your blog's RSS feeds, or having them syndicated on other people's websites you will be getting a running start on the explosion in blog and RSS marketing once Internet Explorer integrates RSS into its browser.
One of the more recent secrets people are using to get their websites in the search engines, the last couple of years, is with Blogs. Blogs are short for web logs and are like daily dairies on the web.Blogs started out as ways for Internet reality types to share their lives with other people on the web, without having to learn very complicated web design applications like Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.Dreamweaver, the standard professional web design program takes a least 6 months to master. While FrontPage on the other hand looks a lot like Microsoft Word, and therefore can be used a bit more quickly by people just starting out.Blogs are much easier to use than any web design software. They can be used to change web content from a browser, email, and even simple desk top software. Blogs are web pages created with automated software that date stamps all changes to content.One of the secrets the web marketers use to get their new websites into the major search engines like (Google - Yahoo! and MSN) is called blog and ping. So many Internet fortunes are being built on this simple technique.If you want your new website to be indexed (or included in the search engine database) you shouldn't submit it to the search engines -- instead you should blog and ping.There is a new feature with Google and Yahoo! known as sitemaps, which will also get your site indexed, but most of us will do fine with learning first to blog and ping.Blogs index and file your web pages automatically according to the way you specify in advance.Google loves blogs and has its own web based application called Blogger. You can set up a Blogger account for free at Blogger.com.You should use Blogs for your business to give updates to your customers and supporters every few days on your company's news or inside information. You can also reflect on industry trends with your business blog.What's nice about blogs if you want to get your site in the search engines or keep the search engines up to date with your latest optimization or content efforts. You can post your new website or page to your blog page and link to that page.The search engines will visit the blog page more frequently and index your new pages or web sites some times in a day or two. Also make sure when you post a new blog in Blogger.com you set up your account to ping (or notify) the other major blog directories that your blog has been updated.Or if you want to get your new site into Google go to a high ranked blog listed in Google. If the Blog allows comments give a good comment on the blog. Then link back to the page you want indexed in the Blog.Make sure you give a worth while or useful comment or it will be considered blog spam by the website administrators. Sometimes blog publishers disable the comment feature for this reason, therefore it is important to have your own blogs especially if you have more than one site.This will get the Google spider to index your new sites or web pages within a few days and consider your site for its database given the criteria of its algorithm.If you are looking for a fast, inexpensive and efficient way to build a lot of content on your site, which the search engines will pick up, go to Blogger and open up a free blogging account and join the blogosphere.- The Love Affair between the Search Engines, Blogs and RSSI have been extolling the SEO benefits of Blogs since almost two years ago. Although blogs and search engines don't seem to enjoy the free for all love affair they once had, the search engines and blogs seem to still be married "for better or for worst".The romance and infatuation phase between search engines and blogs has waned because of blog spam. However search engines dare not divorce blogs because they tend to cook up regularly updated content.Blogs are also search engine friendly in design. As publishers we love blogs because it is an easy way for us to update our sites with new content.Many top marketers are extolling about the power of blogs and their natural extension RSS feeds. Almost every successful Internet Marketers today is using some variation of blogs and RSS feeds.Everywhere you go the web gurus are talking about the great upside potential of blogs and RSS. RSS for the purpose of discussing this issue stands for Really Simple Syndication.RSS is presently being used by Internet marketers to share their blog headlines with websites and desktops all over the world. Think of RSS as giving you the ability to blog without boundaries.People on other websites and with downloadable RSS newsreader software can read your newest blog posts without visiting your site. Sites that value your expertise will in a viral fashion feature your RSS feeds and help generate traffic to your site.This allows you to leverage traffic from other peoples sites who feature your blog. Moreover, your subscribers who read your RSS headlines on their desktop software will avoid email filters.Before you explore or upgrade to RSS marketing experiment with desktop newsreaders like Tristana or News Gator. If you prefer to read RSS from your browser download and install Mozilla's FireFox Browser.RSS feeds will be the next phase in Internet marketing following the search engines, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and joint ventures.By having people subscribe to your blog's RSS feeds, or having them syndicated on other people's websites you will be getting a running start on the explosion in blog and RSS marketing once Internet Explorer integrates RSS into its browser.
Can A Ping Really Help Your Blog Get Top Search Engine Rankings?
by: Tinu AbayomiPaul
Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaulIt’s been all over the SEO-student rumor mill for weeks now, and has finally made it into my Inbox – in droves. The new get-traffic-quick scheme for search engine results has arrived – flooding ping notification sites with update announcements, even though your blog hasn’t been updated.The question is does this- or some variation of it work? If not, where did this idea come from?Okay, bad news first. Pinging sites like Yahoo and Syndic8 every half-hour for several days or weeks, to notify of updates when they haven’t been made, does nothing but clog up the system. It’s called spam-pinging and it has been around since 2002.If you haven’t updated your blog, or you’re pinging updates of a site that isn’t even a blog (or RSS feed, where applicable), in the long run it’s just going to make it harder to get listed at these sites. In the short run, you could get yourself banned from sites like Yahoo, though it isn’t officially their policy to drop sites for spam-pinging.Yet.True, not all sites that have recently updated lists you can ping to be on are set up to block pings of sites that aren’t updated. But they’ve found ways to block certain sites and users before – it’s only a matter of time.So even in the unlikely event that you could find some way to make this work temporarily, you’d just be setting yourself up to be dropped, in as little as a day in some cases.So if this method doesn’t work, why are there tools available to help you flood these directories? Well, let’s look at the situation logically.Until the middle of 2004, certain adult web properties were able to create several bogus blog sites – in particular, blogspot.com. They’d found that the links leading back to them from those sites helped their page rank in Google, as well as their search results placement. Although Google got wise to them and closed this loophole by fall of this past year, several legitimate blog sites have found that they continue to enjoy high rankings for some keywords that are easier to get. Some people erroneously assume that it’s because their updates appear on Weblogs.com and/or in Blogger’s Most Recently Updated pages several times a day.Having noticed that occasionally, they would get spidered around the same time they posted, they realized that there was a correlation between pinging and better search engine listings.And they’re not completely wrong – there is a parallel. But a parallel is not a cause. It’s just one facet of the relationship between blogs and getting better results in Yahoo, Google and MSN.Their frequency of updates had something to do with their rankings, yes. But it is not what guarantees they get spidered – and if the blog isn’t set up to take advantage of the visit from the search engine spiders, they don’t get listed.To begin to have an understanding of how to get similar results for your site, you have to look at the bigger picture. Spam-pinging isn’t going to do it, and as I’ve said in other articles, there are other ethical, faster, simpler ways to do this.So what is this bigger picture?First of all, blogs have a natural tendency to rank higher in search engines because they Have well-structured site architectureMake use of anchor text linkingAre well linked, Are frequently updated, and, Are focused tightly around a narrow theme, among other things.Couple this with the ease of being able to get one-way links from several sites favored by the search engines, and you have two-thirds of the formula for a well-ranked blog.However, just because these sites appear on publicly displayed ping notification lists and other sites that keep abreast of blog updates, this doesn’t mean that you can get away with pinging them without updating your site.It also doesn’t mean that sites that have authentically updated and sent pings will appear in Google, Yahoo or MSN simply from being frequently updated. The good news is, you don’t need to deluge the ping sites to get noticed. Doing so is often a waste of time, and may be a harmful one. Your best bet for now is to continue to achieve your natural search engine position through blogging, basic search engine optimization, and a common sense approach to frequent updates.And yes, by the way, there IS an ethical way to get into search engines and achieve high rankings with a blog, but it’s not a matter of volume. It’s more a matter of timing, supply and demand. But explaining that process takes a level of detail and an amount of space not available here.
Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaulIt’s been all over the SEO-student rumor mill for weeks now, and has finally made it into my Inbox – in droves. The new get-traffic-quick scheme for search engine results has arrived – flooding ping notification sites with update announcements, even though your blog hasn’t been updated.The question is does this- or some variation of it work? If not, where did this idea come from?Okay, bad news first. Pinging sites like Yahoo and Syndic8 every half-hour for several days or weeks, to notify of updates when they haven’t been made, does nothing but clog up the system. It’s called spam-pinging and it has been around since 2002.If you haven’t updated your blog, or you’re pinging updates of a site that isn’t even a blog (or RSS feed, where applicable), in the long run it’s just going to make it harder to get listed at these sites. In the short run, you could get yourself banned from sites like Yahoo, though it isn’t officially their policy to drop sites for spam-pinging.Yet.True, not all sites that have recently updated lists you can ping to be on are set up to block pings of sites that aren’t updated. But they’ve found ways to block certain sites and users before – it’s only a matter of time.So even in the unlikely event that you could find some way to make this work temporarily, you’d just be setting yourself up to be dropped, in as little as a day in some cases.So if this method doesn’t work, why are there tools available to help you flood these directories? Well, let’s look at the situation logically.Until the middle of 2004, certain adult web properties were able to create several bogus blog sites – in particular, blogspot.com. They’d found that the links leading back to them from those sites helped their page rank in Google, as well as their search results placement. Although Google got wise to them and closed this loophole by fall of this past year, several legitimate blog sites have found that they continue to enjoy high rankings for some keywords that are easier to get. Some people erroneously assume that it’s because their updates appear on Weblogs.com and/or in Blogger’s Most Recently Updated pages several times a day.Having noticed that occasionally, they would get spidered around the same time they posted, they realized that there was a correlation between pinging and better search engine listings.And they’re not completely wrong – there is a parallel. But a parallel is not a cause. It’s just one facet of the relationship between blogs and getting better results in Yahoo, Google and MSN.Their frequency of updates had something to do with their rankings, yes. But it is not what guarantees they get spidered – and if the blog isn’t set up to take advantage of the visit from the search engine spiders, they don’t get listed.To begin to have an understanding of how to get similar results for your site, you have to look at the bigger picture. Spam-pinging isn’t going to do it, and as I’ve said in other articles, there are other ethical, faster, simpler ways to do this.So what is this bigger picture?First of all, blogs have a natural tendency to rank higher in search engines because they Have well-structured site architectureMake use of anchor text linkingAre well linked, Are frequently updated, and, Are focused tightly around a narrow theme, among other things.Couple this with the ease of being able to get one-way links from several sites favored by the search engines, and you have two-thirds of the formula for a well-ranked blog.However, just because these sites appear on publicly displayed ping notification lists and other sites that keep abreast of blog updates, this doesn’t mean that you can get away with pinging them without updating your site.It also doesn’t mean that sites that have authentically updated and sent pings will appear in Google, Yahoo or MSN simply from being frequently updated. The good news is, you don’t need to deluge the ping sites to get noticed. Doing so is often a waste of time, and may be a harmful one. Your best bet for now is to continue to achieve your natural search engine position through blogging, basic search engine optimization, and a common sense approach to frequent updates.And yes, by the way, there IS an ethical way to get into search engines and achieve high rankings with a blog, but it’s not a matter of volume. It’s more a matter of timing, supply and demand. But explaining that process takes a level of detail and an amount of space not available here.
RSS Ego Searches
by: Sharon Housley
Copyright 2005 Sharon HousleyEgo searches are free and simple searches designed to monitor blogs and news portals for mentions of your company, product, competitors or other specific keywords. Conducting ego searches not only allows you to stay informed, but also allows you to maintain a strategic advantage over competing companies. A number of new Internet services are freely available that make these 'ego searches' painless and easy. Dynamically created keyword based RSS feeds, update in your RSS reader or news aggregators, each time new information containing the keyword appears in the searched resources. The dynamic feeds match requests against new information, as it comes online in real time. The following free services allow for RSS feed ego searches.Google News - Simply conduct a keyword search of Google News and then click the text that says "RSS" then save the url of the RSS feed into your news reader. Every time a new article with that keyword appears in Google News the feed in your RSS reader will automatically update.http://news.google.com/news BlogPulse - Find out what is being said about your products, company or your industry in the blogosphere. Conduct a keyword or url search on BlogPulse. Click the orange RSS icon above the search results and save the feed in your reader. Each time the keyword appears in a blog indexed by BlogPulse you will receive a new item in your feed reader. Another feature of BlogPulse is it will graph the keyword occurrences, providing a picture representation so that trends can be easily visualized. Hovering over the lines of the graph will provide details of actual blog mentions.http://www.blogpulse.comPubSub - Search on a keyword, then save and add the feed to your RSS reader using the icons provided. Optionally with PubSub you can direct your search to only alert you of posts in specific areas of interest including Press Releases, SEC/EDGAR Filings, Newsgroup Posts, or Weblog Entries http://www.pubsub.comTechnorati - Create watch lists, by entering the search term add item to the watch list and then scroll to the bottom click the blue RSS icon to obtain the url of the RSS feed that can be added to your reader. Technorati is a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere. In order to setup a watchlist you will have to create a Technorati account.http://www.technorati.comIce Rocket - Simply search Ice Rocket then click the RSS 2.0 button to obtain the url of the RSS feed that contains your search term. Add the url to your RSS reader or newsaggregator.http://www.icerocket.com/ Find Articles - Traditional media channels can even be monitored using RSS. FindArticles routinely scans magazines and publications for keyword mentions. Conduct a search then click "RSS Alert" to obtain the url to the RSS feed. Add the feed to your reader to receive instant notification of new articles.http://www.findarticles.com/ NewsTrove - NewsTrove indexes millions of news articles from a myriad of sources. Build an RSS feed on any topic imaginable. Enter your search words in the search box. Click 'Search' click the orange XML icon on the right side of the search results page and save the feed to your news reader.http://www.newstrove.com BlogDigger - BlogDigger monitors the blogosphere and generally what is said daily in the blogs. Conduct a search on Blogdigger and click the orange XML icon to retrieve the url of the search feed. The feed should then be added to your RSS reader.http://www.blogdigger.com/DayPop - Conduct a search and click the icon on the right that says XML, save the feed to your RSS aggregator. Only the most recent search results will appear.http://www.daypop.comYahoo News - Conduct a search then click "view as RSS" in the right column save the feed in your aggregator. The feed will check Yahoo news for mentions.http://news.yahoo.com/Overall, ego searches are an excellent way to stay informed and maintain a strategic advantage over competitors. Knowing exactly what your online competitors are doing provides a competitive edge that can be used to your advantage. Keyword RSS feeds can be used to monitor key phrases for trademark abuses or monitoring the effectiveness of a specific press promotion. Although they sound daunting ego searches are simply good business sense.
Copyright 2005 Sharon HousleyEgo searches are free and simple searches designed to monitor blogs and news portals for mentions of your company, product, competitors or other specific keywords. Conducting ego searches not only allows you to stay informed, but also allows you to maintain a strategic advantage over competing companies. A number of new Internet services are freely available that make these 'ego searches' painless and easy. Dynamically created keyword based RSS feeds, update in your RSS reader or news aggregators, each time new information containing the keyword appears in the searched resources. The dynamic feeds match requests against new information, as it comes online in real time. The following free services allow for RSS feed ego searches.Google News - Simply conduct a keyword search of Google News and then click the text that says "RSS" then save the url of the RSS feed into your news reader. Every time a new article with that keyword appears in Google News the feed in your RSS reader will automatically update.http://news.google.com/news BlogPulse - Find out what is being said about your products, company or your industry in the blogosphere. Conduct a keyword or url search on BlogPulse. Click the orange RSS icon above the search results and save the feed in your reader. Each time the keyword appears in a blog indexed by BlogPulse you will receive a new item in your feed reader. Another feature of BlogPulse is it will graph the keyword occurrences, providing a picture representation so that trends can be easily visualized. Hovering over the lines of the graph will provide details of actual blog mentions.http://www.blogpulse.comPubSub - Search on a keyword, then save and add the feed to your RSS reader using the icons provided. Optionally with PubSub you can direct your search to only alert you of posts in specific areas of interest including Press Releases, SEC/EDGAR Filings, Newsgroup Posts, or Weblog Entries http://www.pubsub.comTechnorati - Create watch lists, by entering the search term add item to the watch list and then scroll to the bottom click the blue RSS icon to obtain the url of the RSS feed that can be added to your reader. Technorati is a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere. In order to setup a watchlist you will have to create a Technorati account.http://www.technorati.comIce Rocket - Simply search Ice Rocket then click the RSS 2.0 button to obtain the url of the RSS feed that contains your search term. Add the url to your RSS reader or newsaggregator.http://www.icerocket.com/ Find Articles - Traditional media channels can even be monitored using RSS. FindArticles routinely scans magazines and publications for keyword mentions. Conduct a search then click "RSS Alert" to obtain the url to the RSS feed. Add the feed to your reader to receive instant notification of new articles.http://www.findarticles.com/ NewsTrove - NewsTrove indexes millions of news articles from a myriad of sources. Build an RSS feed on any topic imaginable. Enter your search words in the search box. Click 'Search' click the orange XML icon on the right side of the search results page and save the feed to your news reader.http://www.newstrove.com BlogDigger - BlogDigger monitors the blogosphere and generally what is said daily in the blogs. Conduct a search on Blogdigger and click the orange XML icon to retrieve the url of the search feed. The feed should then be added to your RSS reader.http://www.blogdigger.com/DayPop - Conduct a search and click the icon on the right that says XML, save the feed to your RSS aggregator. Only the most recent search results will appear.http://www.daypop.comYahoo News - Conduct a search then click "view as RSS" in the right column save the feed in your aggregator. The feed will check Yahoo news for mentions.http://news.yahoo.com/Overall, ego searches are an excellent way to stay informed and maintain a strategic advantage over competitors. Knowing exactly what your online competitors are doing provides a competitive edge that can be used to your advantage. Keyword RSS feeds can be used to monitor key phrases for trademark abuses or monitoring the effectiveness of a specific press promotion. Although they sound daunting ego searches are simply good business sense.
Submit Your Articles: Guidelines for getting the most out of article syndication
by: Jack Humphrey
Copyright 2005 Jack HumphreyThe prevailing, generic internet marketing advice in vogue right now is that you need to syndicate your content. In other words, submit your articles to content directories and syndication hubs in order to win new traffic and links to your website.The problem is that most new online business owners looking for solid step-by-step advice on how this is practically accomplished are turning up little more than the advice above.People in the know have been there and done that. In fact, although article syndication is all the rage these days, expert internet marketers have been doing this for years. The system of getting the most out of syndication is a bit more advanced than simply paying someone to syndicate your content for you, to say the least.Something to consider is that article dispersal hubs (article directories) come in all shapes and sizes. And some are far more advanced than most.Consider the fact, which you might not have been aware of until now, that just getting your articles posted on a bunch of directories doesn't necessarily mean you are getting your articles read in great numbers by your target market.Surprised? You shouldn't be. Think about the old link farms. It was awhile before anyone realized that no one in their target market was actually seeing their links! Certainly no one from their target market. Yet it was all the rage in its short-lived days as a top-notch marketing tactic!The same can be said of most of the article directories on the web today. The two main visitors of such directories are website owners looking for content for their sites and authors looking for places to get published.If neither of these groups are your target market, you are in big trouble if your articles only get syndicated to directories and no further.The real point of syndication is consumption of your information by your target audience. Followed by a click on your link in the byline of your articles. A side benefit is any resulting search engine boost you might get for your site, but it is far less than most experts are telling you.You see, when you submit your articles to the average directory they simply sit there and go no further. The average directories get little or no traffic and they do not in turn promote themselves properly through RSS feeds to bring your articles any real exposure.The directories that give you the most bang for your buck are the directories that further syndicate your content through RSS and newsletters for each topic for which they accept articles.What you want to look for are directories that are promoting your content actively and promoting themselves professionally. Look for directories with pagerank and high traffic stats and you can easily forget about any others.In fact, just one submission to one high traffic, RSS feed-enabled directory can net you more traffic and backlinks than most of the rest of the content directories out there, since most of the others are small sites with article scripts put up by amateur marketers.So when choosing places to spend time hand-submitting your content for the widest distribution possible, make sure you check to make sure submission is even worth that valuable effort. Check each directory's pagerank and traffic stats before you waste time submitting your content to a black hole.If you are going to use a service, carefully go through their stated list of submission sites before paying them a dime. Like the useless "search engine submission" companies that say they will submit your site to 7 zillion search engines (when there are really only a handful of real search engines on the web) many syndication companies pad their submission list with sites where no one will ever see your article or click your link.Also, any syndication or PR specialist worth their fee should syndicate your article content through their own RSS feeds and have a popular site themselves. If not, don't think they are going to do any better for you if their own site lacks significant traffic and pagerank.You only have so much time each day to spend getting the most out of your efforts. Simply submitting articles to a huge list of directories expecting large amounts of links and traffic to come your way in the coming weeks is a loser's bet.Most people are doing this now, but you should have enough information here to avoid making that mistake yourself. Hit the big directories and don't waste your time with the small fry. You can save yourself more time to write more content and syndicate it as well by skipping the ineffective article directories that are nothing more than content ghost towns.
Copyright 2005 Jack HumphreyThe prevailing, generic internet marketing advice in vogue right now is that you need to syndicate your content. In other words, submit your articles to content directories and syndication hubs in order to win new traffic and links to your website.The problem is that most new online business owners looking for solid step-by-step advice on how this is practically accomplished are turning up little more than the advice above.People in the know have been there and done that. In fact, although article syndication is all the rage these days, expert internet marketers have been doing this for years. The system of getting the most out of syndication is a bit more advanced than simply paying someone to syndicate your content for you, to say the least.Something to consider is that article dispersal hubs (article directories) come in all shapes and sizes. And some are far more advanced than most.Consider the fact, which you might not have been aware of until now, that just getting your articles posted on a bunch of directories doesn't necessarily mean you are getting your articles read in great numbers by your target market.Surprised? You shouldn't be. Think about the old link farms. It was awhile before anyone realized that no one in their target market was actually seeing their links! Certainly no one from their target market. Yet it was all the rage in its short-lived days as a top-notch marketing tactic!The same can be said of most of the article directories on the web today. The two main visitors of such directories are website owners looking for content for their sites and authors looking for places to get published.If neither of these groups are your target market, you are in big trouble if your articles only get syndicated to directories and no further.The real point of syndication is consumption of your information by your target audience. Followed by a click on your link in the byline of your articles. A side benefit is any resulting search engine boost you might get for your site, but it is far less than most experts are telling you.You see, when you submit your articles to the average directory they simply sit there and go no further. The average directories get little or no traffic and they do not in turn promote themselves properly through RSS feeds to bring your articles any real exposure.The directories that give you the most bang for your buck are the directories that further syndicate your content through RSS and newsletters for each topic for which they accept articles.What you want to look for are directories that are promoting your content actively and promoting themselves professionally. Look for directories with pagerank and high traffic stats and you can easily forget about any others.In fact, just one submission to one high traffic, RSS feed-enabled directory can net you more traffic and backlinks than most of the rest of the content directories out there, since most of the others are small sites with article scripts put up by amateur marketers.So when choosing places to spend time hand-submitting your content for the widest distribution possible, make sure you check to make sure submission is even worth that valuable effort. Check each directory's pagerank and traffic stats before you waste time submitting your content to a black hole.If you are going to use a service, carefully go through their stated list of submission sites before paying them a dime. Like the useless "search engine submission" companies that say they will submit your site to 7 zillion search engines (when there are really only a handful of real search engines on the web) many syndication companies pad their submission list with sites where no one will ever see your article or click your link.Also, any syndication or PR specialist worth their fee should syndicate your article content through their own RSS feeds and have a popular site themselves. If not, don't think they are going to do any better for you if their own site lacks significant traffic and pagerank.You only have so much time each day to spend getting the most out of your efforts. Simply submitting articles to a huge list of directories expecting large amounts of links and traffic to come your way in the coming weeks is a loser's bet.Most people are doing this now, but you should have enough information here to avoid making that mistake yourself. Hit the big directories and don't waste your time with the small fry. You can save yourself more time to write more content and syndicate it as well by skipping the ineffective article directories that are nothing more than content ghost towns.
Analyzing the New Yahoo! RSS Report for Marketers
by: Rok Hrastnik
Copyright 2005 Rok HrastnikWe were waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. Yahoo!, one of the key providers of mass-market RSS aggregators, finally took a step forward and published their RSS whitepaper, covering their own findings with RSS, based on their usage data.1. YAHOO!'S KEY FINDINGSLet's first take a look at Yahoo! key findings and what they mean for marketers.a] Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.Although RSS awareness is increasing, only few internet users yet understand what RSS is and how to use it.For marketers, this means that simply placing an RSS button on their site it not nearly enough, with the report finally demonstrating that marketers needs to use clear and persuasive copy to get their visitors interested in RSS, explain RSS to them and get them to subscribe to their feeds.In addition it also shows that marketers need to make sure they are using "user-friendly" buttons to generate subscribers, such as "Add to MyYahoo!", which consumers do understand.b] 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.This finding only underlines the above suggestions.Stop touting your RSS feeds only using an RSS button, but rather aim for a "subscribe feature" and then explain to the visitor how to use it.Strong copy has never been so important.c] 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.Goes to show that podcasting still has a long way to go and can right now function only as a supplement to your existing marketing activities.It might also give an indication that audio is not the most appropriate format for much online content.d] Even tech-savvy "Aware RSS Users" prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly, browser-based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).e] My Yahoo! has the highest awareness and use of any RSS-enabled product.Both of the findings above, although indicating that these are the results Yahoo! would want to publish, show that having browser-based RSS reader subscribe buttons is a must.It also shows that the market is ready for the soon-coming IE and Outlook integrated RSS features, which should really boost RSS usage among consumers online.Now, let's take a deeper look at the report ...2. "UNAWARE RSS USERS" VS "AWARE RSS USERS"The whitepaper makes a strong distinction between "Unaware RSS Users" and "Aware RSS Users", positioning the "Unaware" batch as the mainstream Internet population.This makes it absolutely clear that B2C marketers, targeting consumers, should take special care to promote their feeds using "friendly" subscribe buttons.On the other hand, if targeting a more tech-savvy audience, going the way of "RSS" and more complex RSS reading tools might be a better choice. This might also prove more effective for targeting executives and other corporate target audiences that might be using an enterprise-wide RSS solution, such as NewsGator.3. CONSUMPTION LEVELSThe whitepaper says that on the average "Aware RSS Users" subscribe to 6.6 feeds.The consequences of this are not as simple as they might seem. Even "RSS Aware" users do not subscribe to "just anything" and seems they only subscribe or keep being subscribed to the content of highest relevance to them.The message for marketers is to become even more relevant and more focused on providing real value for their target audiences.RSS does not mean that end-users will start consuming that much more online content, but simply that their primary consumption channel will change. It's up to you to make place for yourself in this consumption channel, but you can only do so if you become one of the key targeted content providers for your market and can deliver consistently high-quality content.4. TYPES OF RSS CONTENT CONSUMEDEven in the world of RSS, mainstream media rules, with World news and National news both leading the pack at 52% and followed by Entertainment at 34% and Weather ad 31%.If we take a look at what lies beneath this we can see that end-users still see RSS as a news consumption tool and a tool to receive time-sensitive updates, such as weather info.The interesting part is that blogs achieve only 23% and although they are gaining quickly are still not part of the mainstream.Whichever way you look at this, the real long tail is still far from fruition.There are two are interesting categories listed in the report: investment/financial info/banking at 13% and Shopping/online commerce at 10%.The popularity of these two shows that RSS in fact is appropriate for delivering business info and that RSS can be used for e-commerce. A strong case in point urging e-retailers to start providing RSS feeds.5. WHY END-USERS USE RSS"RSS Aware" end-users subscribe to feed because of "ease" or "convenience", followed by being able to choose what they read.To marketers, these three should be the founding stones of how to get their visitors to adopt RSS.6. THE FAMOUS ORANGE BUTTONMarketers, pay attentin to this.Only 4% of total RSS end-users actually use the orange XML button, and only 38% of RSS aware users use it.It seems the orange button isn't dead ... it was never alive.Let's move on and replace it with something more user-friendly.And BTW --- 22% of the people that clicked on the button don't even know what action they took after clicking the button and 26% left the site. Goes to show the RSS button is only losing us subscribers.7. HOW USERS FIND THEIR FEEDS50% use the defaults available in the RSS reader and only 13% use the search engines to find them.Yes, it's cruical to be in the RSS feed search engines, but it would be even better if you could move your way to the default seetings. And by all means, actively promote the feeds on your site as end-users, according to the report, actively tend to subscribe to the feeds on the sites they find interesting.8. CONCLUSIONTo conclude this, here's a direct quote from the report, saying exactly what I've been trying to get through for a couple of months:"To position RSS among mainstream Internet users, it is essential to effectively communicate the benefits of RSS (ease, convenience, access to information of interest). Internet users do not understand how to use the XML button, how to actively seek out RSS feeds, or even what the term RSS means. Instead, they need a simple interface where they can choose the information and content that interests them. This is where personalized start pages and browser-based experiences can help move RSS into the mainstream."
Copyright 2005 Rok HrastnikWe were waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. Yahoo!, one of the key providers of mass-market RSS aggregators, finally took a step forward and published their RSS whitepaper, covering their own findings with RSS, based on their usage data.1. YAHOO!'S KEY FINDINGSLet's first take a look at Yahoo! key findings and what they mean for marketers.a] Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.Although RSS awareness is increasing, only few internet users yet understand what RSS is and how to use it.For marketers, this means that simply placing an RSS button on their site it not nearly enough, with the report finally demonstrating that marketers needs to use clear and persuasive copy to get their visitors interested in RSS, explain RSS to them and get them to subscribe to their feeds.In addition it also shows that marketers need to make sure they are using "user-friendly" buttons to generate subscribers, such as "Add to MyYahoo!", which consumers do understand.b] 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.This finding only underlines the above suggestions.Stop touting your RSS feeds only using an RSS button, but rather aim for a "subscribe feature" and then explain to the visitor how to use it.Strong copy has never been so important.c] 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.Goes to show that podcasting still has a long way to go and can right now function only as a supplement to your existing marketing activities.It might also give an indication that audio is not the most appropriate format for much online content.d] Even tech-savvy "Aware RSS Users" prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly, browser-based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).e] My Yahoo! has the highest awareness and use of any RSS-enabled product.Both of the findings above, although indicating that these are the results Yahoo! would want to publish, show that having browser-based RSS reader subscribe buttons is a must.It also shows that the market is ready for the soon-coming IE and Outlook integrated RSS features, which should really boost RSS usage among consumers online.Now, let's take a deeper look at the report ...2. "UNAWARE RSS USERS" VS "AWARE RSS USERS"The whitepaper makes a strong distinction between "Unaware RSS Users" and "Aware RSS Users", positioning the "Unaware" batch as the mainstream Internet population.This makes it absolutely clear that B2C marketers, targeting consumers, should take special care to promote their feeds using "friendly" subscribe buttons.On the other hand, if targeting a more tech-savvy audience, going the way of "RSS" and more complex RSS reading tools might be a better choice. This might also prove more effective for targeting executives and other corporate target audiences that might be using an enterprise-wide RSS solution, such as NewsGator.3. CONSUMPTION LEVELSThe whitepaper says that on the average "Aware RSS Users" subscribe to 6.6 feeds.The consequences of this are not as simple as they might seem. Even "RSS Aware" users do not subscribe to "just anything" and seems they only subscribe or keep being subscribed to the content of highest relevance to them.The message for marketers is to become even more relevant and more focused on providing real value for their target audiences.RSS does not mean that end-users will start consuming that much more online content, but simply that their primary consumption channel will change. It's up to you to make place for yourself in this consumption channel, but you can only do so if you become one of the key targeted content providers for your market and can deliver consistently high-quality content.4. TYPES OF RSS CONTENT CONSUMEDEven in the world of RSS, mainstream media rules, with World news and National news both leading the pack at 52% and followed by Entertainment at 34% and Weather ad 31%.If we take a look at what lies beneath this we can see that end-users still see RSS as a news consumption tool and a tool to receive time-sensitive updates, such as weather info.The interesting part is that blogs achieve only 23% and although they are gaining quickly are still not part of the mainstream.Whichever way you look at this, the real long tail is still far from fruition.There are two are interesting categories listed in the report: investment/financial info/banking at 13% and Shopping/online commerce at 10%.The popularity of these two shows that RSS in fact is appropriate for delivering business info and that RSS can be used for e-commerce. A strong case in point urging e-retailers to start providing RSS feeds.5. WHY END-USERS USE RSS"RSS Aware" end-users subscribe to feed because of "ease" or "convenience", followed by being able to choose what they read.To marketers, these three should be the founding stones of how to get their visitors to adopt RSS.6. THE FAMOUS ORANGE BUTTONMarketers, pay attentin to this.Only 4% of total RSS end-users actually use the orange XML button, and only 38% of RSS aware users use it.It seems the orange button isn't dead ... it was never alive.Let's move on and replace it with something more user-friendly.And BTW --- 22% of the people that clicked on the button don't even know what action they took after clicking the button and 26% left the site. Goes to show the RSS button is only losing us subscribers.7. HOW USERS FIND THEIR FEEDS50% use the defaults available in the RSS reader and only 13% use the search engines to find them.Yes, it's cruical to be in the RSS feed search engines, but it would be even better if you could move your way to the default seetings. And by all means, actively promote the feeds on your site as end-users, according to the report, actively tend to subscribe to the feeds on the sites they find interesting.8. CONCLUSIONTo conclude this, here's a direct quote from the report, saying exactly what I've been trying to get through for a couple of months:"To position RSS among mainstream Internet users, it is essential to effectively communicate the benefits of RSS (ease, convenience, access to information of interest). Internet users do not understand how to use the XML button, how to actively seek out RSS feeds, or even what the term RSS means. Instead, they need a simple interface where they can choose the information and content that interests them. This is where personalized start pages and browser-based experiences can help move RSS into the mainstream."
7 Reasons to Add Podcasting to Your Business Marketing Mix
by: Rodney Rumford
Copyright 2005 Rodney RumfordLeveraging podcasting technology can give you a marketing edge that will allow you to increase your online visibility, increase your client acquisition rates and improve customer loyalty. The smart businesses and marketing companies will add podcasting to the marketing mix for their business. Adding podcasting to your marketing mix can have tremendous positive impact on your business.Many small and large businesses are still trying to understand the basics of podcasting technology. There are many articles and white papers that can educate people on the basics of podcasting 101. If you are looking to educate yourself more on podcasting for your business you can read the 6 blogs that are available at http://blog.podblaze.comSo exactly how does marketing with podcasts work? Think of podcasting as a communication tool for your business. How do you currently use marketing tools such as: your website, newsletter and email marketing? You probably use these mediums to communicate messaging to your target audience. But there are some problems with trying to market through these communication channels.People don’t always get your email due to overly aggressive Spam filters. They don’t come back and visit your website, or read your newsletter. People actually have to make an effort to read your content. If you have a podcast, they can actually stream the audio and let it play while they are doing other tasks at their computer. People tend to multitask in order to be more efficient with the use of their time. Additionally, most users tend to prefer value added audio content that is specific to their areas of interest. Your quality audio podcast content also tends to have a higher perceived value by your target market. Providing value added content is what your business should be focusing on. Podcasting is only a communication tool, and your podcast is only as good as the content that you provide to your audience. Make sure that you produce relevant content and not just a rambling piece of audio. Follow the best practices that I wrote about in my last article.Most businesses need to be made aware of the increased online visibility that podcasting can provide. Your podcast could be in front of 40 million iTunes listeners if you have made an iTunes compatible RSS podcast feed; multiple Blog directories or specialized podcast ping directories such as http://www.freshpodcasts.com or http://audio.weblogs.com Verify that the major podcast ping directories receive a ping every time you add a new show to your podcast RSS feed. Additionally, the search engines will look at the RSS podcasting feed and spider the show notes that are tied to your podcast as well.Here are 6 of the 7 reasons that your business should be podcasting and some of the business benefits that you could derive from a properly executed podcast...1. Increase your marketing reach and online visibility2. Improve your sales & conversion rates3. Regular line of communication with subscribed listeners4. Value added content increases loyalty5. Industry news and trends sets you apart from the competition6. Interviews with leaders in your particular niche will establish your business as a respected leader in your niche or industry.You can get the 7th reason and learn even more about using podcasting as a business marketing tool by reading these 6 podcasting business blogs at http://blog.podblaze.comSo don't wait any longer; start podcasting today and leverage this audio technology for your business
Copyright 2005 Rodney RumfordLeveraging podcasting technology can give you a marketing edge that will allow you to increase your online visibility, increase your client acquisition rates and improve customer loyalty. The smart businesses and marketing companies will add podcasting to the marketing mix for their business. Adding podcasting to your marketing mix can have tremendous positive impact on your business.Many small and large businesses are still trying to understand the basics of podcasting technology. There are many articles and white papers that can educate people on the basics of podcasting 101. If you are looking to educate yourself more on podcasting for your business you can read the 6 blogs that are available at http://blog.podblaze.comSo exactly how does marketing with podcasts work? Think of podcasting as a communication tool for your business. How do you currently use marketing tools such as: your website, newsletter and email marketing? You probably use these mediums to communicate messaging to your target audience. But there are some problems with trying to market through these communication channels.People don’t always get your email due to overly aggressive Spam filters. They don’t come back and visit your website, or read your newsletter. People actually have to make an effort to read your content. If you have a podcast, they can actually stream the audio and let it play while they are doing other tasks at their computer. People tend to multitask in order to be more efficient with the use of their time. Additionally, most users tend to prefer value added audio content that is specific to their areas of interest. Your quality audio podcast content also tends to have a higher perceived value by your target market. Providing value added content is what your business should be focusing on. Podcasting is only a communication tool, and your podcast is only as good as the content that you provide to your audience. Make sure that you produce relevant content and not just a rambling piece of audio. Follow the best practices that I wrote about in my last article.Most businesses need to be made aware of the increased online visibility that podcasting can provide. Your podcast could be in front of 40 million iTunes listeners if you have made an iTunes compatible RSS podcast feed; multiple Blog directories or specialized podcast ping directories such as http://www.freshpodcasts.com or http://audio.weblogs.com Verify that the major podcast ping directories receive a ping every time you add a new show to your podcast RSS feed. Additionally, the search engines will look at the RSS podcasting feed and spider the show notes that are tied to your podcast as well.Here are 6 of the 7 reasons that your business should be podcasting and some of the business benefits that you could derive from a properly executed podcast...1. Increase your marketing reach and online visibility2. Improve your sales & conversion rates3. Regular line of communication with subscribed listeners4. Value added content increases loyalty5. Industry news and trends sets you apart from the competition6. Interviews with leaders in your particular niche will establish your business as a respected leader in your niche or industry.You can get the 7th reason and learn even more about using podcasting as a business marketing tool by reading these 6 podcasting business blogs at http://blog.podblaze.comSo don't wait any longer; start podcasting today and leverage this audio technology for your business
The 6 Top Reasons Marketers Should Blog
by: Linda Bruton
If there is a downside to blogging, I have yet to find it. The more you learn about blogging, the more there is to like.In fact, here are 6 mouth-watering reasons why every marketer should be blogging:1- Fast Search Engine Spidering and Indexing of Your Site:Did you know that Google owns the most popular blogging platform on the planet? Blogger at http://www.blogger.com is used to produce thousands of blogs. Even a complete internet newbie can set up a blog in about 5 minutes at Blogger. And guess who can be counted on to come by and quickly spider all those new blog posts as they are written?Yahoo is also embracing blogs and feeds in a big way. Savvy marketers know that adding their blogs and feeds to their MyYahoo page can bring the Yahoo spider to their site almost immediately.One of the reasons that blogs get spidered so quickly is that most of them produce a feed. Many blogs automatically "ping" (or notify) some of the large sites that carry these feeds and make them available for syndication. Search engines spider these sites many times a day. Blogger, for instance, pings Weblogs every time you make a post. You can also "ping" a free site called Pingomatic (http://www.pingomatic.com) every time you add a new blog post. Your ping will notify Yahoo and 11 other large feed sites that you've added a post. If it only were so easy to get Google to notice new pages on regular sites!If you have a new site that you are having trouble getting indexed, adding a blog or RSS feed is one of the quickest ways to get the spiders to come calling. 2-Blogs can Build Your Backlinks Quickly:If you've spent time trying to get reciprocal links to your site, you know how frustrating, boring, and time-consuming it can be. I've long considered reciprocal link building to be one of the worst ways to develop link popularity. Many SEO experts consider one-way links to be far more effective. A blog can build one-way links to your site fast. If you've just started a blog, you should submit it to the large blog and feed directories. Here is a list of the Top 55:http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/Once you've submitted your blog to these directories, you'll find your backlinks growing quickly. This past year, more webmasters are using RSS feeds on their sites to keep their sites fresh and spidered frequently. Software applications such as RSS Equalizer, Express RSS, and CARP make this easy.After starting my first blog, I was amazed at how many different sites carried my feed with a link back to my site! These links can multiply exponentially over time. Now tell me something. Wouldn't you rather be spending your time adding content to your site than trying to get questionable reciprocal links? Especially when it doesn't take any extra time?3-A Frequently Updated Blog will Keep the Spiders Visiting Your Site Often:Most of us are aware that the search engines like sites that are updated frequently. If you have your blog set up correctly, every post will update several pages of your site. Then pinging Yahoo and the blog and feed directories at Pingomatic can bring out the spiders in just a few hours. This is a great way to get new pages of your site indexed quickly and frequently.4-Your Site is Stickier and More Appealing to Visitors:A blog on your site is an easy way to keep your site updated on a regular basis. The upside is that visitors will come by more often. If they find your blog interesting and informative, they may bookmark your site. That means you have a much greater chance of making sales. And you have a ready-made audience for any new products you launch.A blog can also add a human face to your website that potential customers will trust and respond to. Most marketers know that people buy from people they like and respect. A well-written blog is a great way to build a relationship with your visitors.5-A Blog Is The Fastest And Easiest Way To Build A Brand-New Website Without Training:Even a 10 year old could set up a blog at Blogger.com and be blogging almost immediately. No HTML knowledge is necessary. You don't need to know how to FTP. You don't need to know how to link the pages in your site together. All you have to do is type in your post and click on the "publish" button. And yet you can still set up an attractive, spiderable site in record time.Blogs can be used for any type of site, not just for online ezine delivery or a place to announce new products. Using a blog you could quickly build a niche site. Just research the best keywords for your niche. Then write articles around those keywords and post them to your blog. Include your keywords in your title. You now have an instant niche site that will be spidered quickly and be easy to maintain.6-Keyword competition in RSS feed sites is much less than in the SE's:Google, Yahoo, and MSN each have many millions of webpages in their indexes. It can be almost impossible to get top rankings for competitive keywords if you don't have a high PR site with lots of backlinks.It's a completely different story at the RSS feed sites. The competition for many high-competition keywords is almost nonexistent. Setting up a blog in some of these high-competition niches is a good way to successfully compete.Marketers spend a lot of time and money getting traffic to their sites, creating backlinks, getting good SE rankings, and building relationships with their customers. A blog can improve your results in all those areas. There aren't very many free marketing techniques that can make that claim!
If there is a downside to blogging, I have yet to find it. The more you learn about blogging, the more there is to like.In fact, here are 6 mouth-watering reasons why every marketer should be blogging:1- Fast Search Engine Spidering and Indexing of Your Site:Did you know that Google owns the most popular blogging platform on the planet? Blogger at http://www.blogger.com is used to produce thousands of blogs. Even a complete internet newbie can set up a blog in about 5 minutes at Blogger. And guess who can be counted on to come by and quickly spider all those new blog posts as they are written?Yahoo is also embracing blogs and feeds in a big way. Savvy marketers know that adding their blogs and feeds to their MyYahoo page can bring the Yahoo spider to their site almost immediately.One of the reasons that blogs get spidered so quickly is that most of them produce a feed. Many blogs automatically "ping" (or notify) some of the large sites that carry these feeds and make them available for syndication. Search engines spider these sites many times a day. Blogger, for instance, pings Weblogs every time you make a post. You can also "ping" a free site called Pingomatic (http://www.pingomatic.com) every time you add a new blog post. Your ping will notify Yahoo and 11 other large feed sites that you've added a post. If it only were so easy to get Google to notice new pages on regular sites!If you have a new site that you are having trouble getting indexed, adding a blog or RSS feed is one of the quickest ways to get the spiders to come calling. 2-Blogs can Build Your Backlinks Quickly:If you've spent time trying to get reciprocal links to your site, you know how frustrating, boring, and time-consuming it can be. I've long considered reciprocal link building to be one of the worst ways to develop link popularity. Many SEO experts consider one-way links to be far more effective. A blog can build one-way links to your site fast. If you've just started a blog, you should submit it to the large blog and feed directories. Here is a list of the Top 55:http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/Once you've submitted your blog to these directories, you'll find your backlinks growing quickly. This past year, more webmasters are using RSS feeds on their sites to keep their sites fresh and spidered frequently. Software applications such as RSS Equalizer, Express RSS, and CARP make this easy.After starting my first blog, I was amazed at how many different sites carried my feed with a link back to my site! These links can multiply exponentially over time. Now tell me something. Wouldn't you rather be spending your time adding content to your site than trying to get questionable reciprocal links? Especially when it doesn't take any extra time?3-A Frequently Updated Blog will Keep the Spiders Visiting Your Site Often:Most of us are aware that the search engines like sites that are updated frequently. If you have your blog set up correctly, every post will update several pages of your site. Then pinging Yahoo and the blog and feed directories at Pingomatic can bring out the spiders in just a few hours. This is a great way to get new pages of your site indexed quickly and frequently.4-Your Site is Stickier and More Appealing to Visitors:A blog on your site is an easy way to keep your site updated on a regular basis. The upside is that visitors will come by more often. If they find your blog interesting and informative, they may bookmark your site. That means you have a much greater chance of making sales. And you have a ready-made audience for any new products you launch.A blog can also add a human face to your website that potential customers will trust and respond to. Most marketers know that people buy from people they like and respect. A well-written blog is a great way to build a relationship with your visitors.5-A Blog Is The Fastest And Easiest Way To Build A Brand-New Website Without Training:Even a 10 year old could set up a blog at Blogger.com and be blogging almost immediately. No HTML knowledge is necessary. You don't need to know how to FTP. You don't need to know how to link the pages in your site together. All you have to do is type in your post and click on the "publish" button. And yet you can still set up an attractive, spiderable site in record time.Blogs can be used for any type of site, not just for online ezine delivery or a place to announce new products. Using a blog you could quickly build a niche site. Just research the best keywords for your niche. Then write articles around those keywords and post them to your blog. Include your keywords in your title. You now have an instant niche site that will be spidered quickly and be easy to maintain.6-Keyword competition in RSS feed sites is much less than in the SE's:Google, Yahoo, and MSN each have many millions of webpages in their indexes. It can be almost impossible to get top rankings for competitive keywords if you don't have a high PR site with lots of backlinks.It's a completely different story at the RSS feed sites. The competition for many high-competition keywords is almost nonexistent. Setting up a blog in some of these high-competition niches is a good way to successfully compete.Marketers spend a lot of time and money getting traffic to their sites, creating backlinks, getting good SE rankings, and building relationships with their customers. A blog can improve your results in all those areas. There aren't very many free marketing techniques that can make that claim!
Blogging will take over the world!
by: Chris Everson
In recent years, it's been pretty obvious that "blogging" (Web + Log = Blog)has simply taken over the internet.Early blogs were first used by creative (bored?) indivuals, and larger news companies. http://info.cern.ch/ was one of the earliest blogs, followed by NCSA's "Whats New" and also NetScapes "Whats New" blog. After this point the blogging scene exploded.What exactly is blogging? Many consider blogging in it's truest form a type of internet diary. In it's most pure and basic form its simply a single, scrolling webpages with a few links on the side, and an archive table, and larger, prominent updates in the center of the pages. Users usually post small excerpts about daily life, recent events, or news.Creative writers often attract groups of people, who will pursue and follow that blog, often posting comments on updates. Some writers write outrageous, offensive things that also attract readers. Some people write about personal experiences, and some just flat out write whatever they want!RSS, (really simple syndication) also started directly because of blogs. Rather than visit an indivual site over and over again to read the updates and posts, coders started using xml to enable these updates to be available anywhere in the world. In response, RSS has created a whole new chapter in the SEO world, all because of blogging.Many people have begun to weave affiliate links and even sell there own products through their blogs, relying on their dedicated readerbase to generate huge conversion rates. Programs like WordPress can generate ENTIRE web sites simply by advanced forms of blogging. One of my own sites, www.emoneyreport.com utilizes this program. Instead of bloggin real life experiences, we blog our article updates and program reviews. Very nifty!Even major search engines are taking part in the blog scene. Most noticably, Google, purchased the site www.blogger.com. Now google controls the largest, most successful blogging site to date! Google indexes and spiders every post created on this site, EVERY day. It's common practice to create a blog, write small posts and link to your own site through the blog, and doing this you can get spidered and indexed within a day!We have to ask ourselves, whats next for blogging? Will blogging become the next form of linking? Who knows? All I know for sure is that I like what blogging has become, and that it allows my site to generate income for hundreds of people all over the internet.
In recent years, it's been pretty obvious that "blogging" (Web + Log = Blog)has simply taken over the internet.Early blogs were first used by creative (bored?) indivuals, and larger news companies. http://info.cern.ch/ was one of the earliest blogs, followed by NCSA's "Whats New" and also NetScapes "Whats New" blog. After this point the blogging scene exploded.What exactly is blogging? Many consider blogging in it's truest form a type of internet diary. In it's most pure and basic form its simply a single, scrolling webpages with a few links on the side, and an archive table, and larger, prominent updates in the center of the pages. Users usually post small excerpts about daily life, recent events, or news.Creative writers often attract groups of people, who will pursue and follow that blog, often posting comments on updates. Some writers write outrageous, offensive things that also attract readers. Some people write about personal experiences, and some just flat out write whatever they want!RSS, (really simple syndication) also started directly because of blogs. Rather than visit an indivual site over and over again to read the updates and posts, coders started using xml to enable these updates to be available anywhere in the world. In response, RSS has created a whole new chapter in the SEO world, all because of blogging.Many people have begun to weave affiliate links and even sell there own products through their blogs, relying on their dedicated readerbase to generate huge conversion rates. Programs like WordPress can generate ENTIRE web sites simply by advanced forms of blogging. One of my own sites, www.emoneyreport.com utilizes this program. Instead of bloggin real life experiences, we blog our article updates and program reviews. Very nifty!Even major search engines are taking part in the blog scene. Most noticably, Google, purchased the site www.blogger.com. Now google controls the largest, most successful blogging site to date! Google indexes and spiders every post created on this site, EVERY day. It's common practice to create a blog, write small posts and link to your own site through the blog, and doing this you can get spidered and indexed within a day!We have to ask ourselves, whats next for blogging? Will blogging become the next form of linking? Who knows? All I know for sure is that I like what blogging has become, and that it allows my site to generate income for hundreds of people all over the internet.
Developing Content Sites as Marketing Tools
by: Sharon Housley
Copyright 2005 Sharon HousleyTargeted Content SitesHighly targeted, focused sites that are related to specific market segments are highly advantageous and can often be created using existing web content. The key is to provide value. Think of the time spent surfing the web gathering resources and information. By creating a topic-centric resource compiling information, webmasters are providing a service or value. In many cases that value is simply the compilation of topic-specific information in a single resource. The compilation of this information in itself is the value. These highly focused content sites can be great supplemental portals that are invaluable as a marketing tool for niche products. Niche portals help define expertise in a specific market segment, not to mention the added benefit of providing valuable topic-specific links. The topic-centric portals also tend to achieve high search placement and will often provide advertisers high quality exposure, allowing webmasters the opportunity to capitalize on their efforts. What to put in topical portal? ARTICLESMany article writers allow webmasters to republish their articles. Search the large article directories for quality topic-specific articles using keyword searches. The articles contained in these directories often allow publishers to freely reproduce the article's contents as long as the hyperlinks in the article and article resource box remain intact. Resource for finding articles for publication:GoArticles - http://www.goarticles.comRSS FEEDSBy nature, RSS feeds are designed for syndication. Most RSS feeds can be freely reproduced. Locate topic-specific feeds using keyword or category searches. The contents of the feeds can be used to populate web pages. There are a number of free scripts available that allow webmasters to display the contents of an RSS feed (see http://www.rss-specifications.com/displaying-rss-feeds.htm for instructions on displaying feeds). Resources for finding RSS feeds for syndication:RSS Network - http://www.rss-network.com RSS Locator - http://www.rss-locator.comLINK DIRECTORYWhile this takes a little more time, compiling a collection of niche websites on related topics can significantly enhance the value of a portal. Topic-specific directories and search engines can achieve high search engine rankings with the larger engines like Google and MSN, and can easily be optimized for a collection of search terms. The process can even be automated if you have programming experience.Sample Link Directory - http://www.investing-partners.com TOPIC SPECIFIFC FORUMThe most successful forums are those that are highly focused and niche-oriented. Establishing a community of individuals with common interests will result in return visitors. Managing a forum is not overly complex and there are free forum scripts available that will provide the forum structure. Many of the forums have scripts available that will allow for search engines to spider the contents and forum posts. As the content flourishes, the site will increase in value. Free Forum Scripts: http://www.phpbb.comMore on topic-specific portals or information radars can be found in Robin Good's book 'Newsmastering'. http://www.masternewmedia.org/reports/newsmasterstoolkit/ A site that is focused on a relatively narrow range of goods and services will find that there is less competition. Topic-centric websites that provide a gateway to niche information related to a particular industry, sector, topic or market segment are becoming increasingly valuable and popular. Compiling the resource using free resources will minimize the capital investment. Regardless of whether you are marketing a product, service or advertising, narrowing the topic focus will attract a targeted audience who genuinely are interested in the website topic, allowing you to monetize the portal, and minimize the expense.
Copyright 2005 Sharon HousleyTargeted Content SitesHighly targeted, focused sites that are related to specific market segments are highly advantageous and can often be created using existing web content. The key is to provide value. Think of the time spent surfing the web gathering resources and information. By creating a topic-centric resource compiling information, webmasters are providing a service or value. In many cases that value is simply the compilation of topic-specific information in a single resource. The compilation of this information in itself is the value. These highly focused content sites can be great supplemental portals that are invaluable as a marketing tool for niche products. Niche portals help define expertise in a specific market segment, not to mention the added benefit of providing valuable topic-specific links. The topic-centric portals also tend to achieve high search placement and will often provide advertisers high quality exposure, allowing webmasters the opportunity to capitalize on their efforts. What to put in topical portal? ARTICLESMany article writers allow webmasters to republish their articles. Search the large article directories for quality topic-specific articles using keyword searches. The articles contained in these directories often allow publishers to freely reproduce the article's contents as long as the hyperlinks in the article and article resource box remain intact. Resource for finding articles for publication:GoArticles - http://www.goarticles.comRSS FEEDSBy nature, RSS feeds are designed for syndication. Most RSS feeds can be freely reproduced. Locate topic-specific feeds using keyword or category searches. The contents of the feeds can be used to populate web pages. There are a number of free scripts available that allow webmasters to display the contents of an RSS feed (see http://www.rss-specifications.com/displaying-rss-feeds.htm for instructions on displaying feeds). Resources for finding RSS feeds for syndication:RSS Network - http://www.rss-network.com RSS Locator - http://www.rss-locator.comLINK DIRECTORYWhile this takes a little more time, compiling a collection of niche websites on related topics can significantly enhance the value of a portal. Topic-specific directories and search engines can achieve high search engine rankings with the larger engines like Google and MSN, and can easily be optimized for a collection of search terms. The process can even be automated if you have programming experience.Sample Link Directory - http://www.investing-partners.com TOPIC SPECIFIFC FORUMThe most successful forums are those that are highly focused and niche-oriented. Establishing a community of individuals with common interests will result in return visitors. Managing a forum is not overly complex and there are free forum scripts available that will provide the forum structure. Many of the forums have scripts available that will allow for search engines to spider the contents and forum posts. As the content flourishes, the site will increase in value. Free Forum Scripts: http://www.phpbb.comMore on topic-specific portals or information radars can be found in Robin Good's book 'Newsmastering'. http://www.masternewmedia.org/reports/newsmasterstoolkit/ A site that is focused on a relatively narrow range of goods and services will find that there is less competition. Topic-centric websites that provide a gateway to niche information related to a particular industry, sector, topic or market segment are becoming increasingly valuable and popular. Compiling the resource using free resources will minimize the capital investment. Regardless of whether you are marketing a product, service or advertising, narrowing the topic focus will attract a targeted audience who genuinely are interested in the website topic, allowing you to monetize the portal, and minimize the expense.
How Non-technical Webmasters Are Harnessing the Power of RSS...
by: Ron Hutton
Copyright 2005 Ron HuttonThe opportunity to quickly and easily implement and harness the power of RSS is quite real and new programs become available every week that allow non-technical marketers and webmasters to capitalize on the effective use of RSS.Jim Edwards spoke of this trend in the recent "For a Greater Cause" teleseminar. Media-rich blogs and content sites are stickier and keep visitors on site longer.Consider delivering audio content via the internet by setting up a blog and incorporating streaming audio. By doing so, your media-rich message creates a relationship with visitors that cannot be achieved with text alone.If you'd like to take this one step further, start using video content. It's the difference between reading a flyer versus listening to the radio versus watching television. Why do people gravitate to the TV when every home has a radio? When presented with the option, we prefer the satisfaction of both the auditory and visual senses.The real power of blogs, audio and video is that you can invite your visitors to participate and interact with you by allowing them to post comments. Your blog becomes a community event and we all love a party.If you'll be using the strategy of blogging with audio and video, there are three things that you should do.First, as mentioned above, allow your visitors to post comments to your blog.Second, always give visitors the opportunity to sign up for your newsletter or ezine directly from your blog.Third, for those who prefer to receive news via RSS feeds, post your RSS feed on every page of your blog.Recorded interviews with industry experts fed via podcast can raise your credibility simply by association. Arrange for a phone interview with an expert in your market area, get permission to record the call and post it to your blog. If you're offering publicity and exposure for the interviewee, it should be simple to find willing and eager parties.RSS offers you the ability to provide high frequency content updates. It can be daily or hourly. Deliver important messages, news and other content on demand rather that waiting for your regularly scheduled e-zine.What's next?...Here's where things get fun for the online marketer and webmaster. One area in particular where you can really start to take advantage of RSS technology is to build sticky content on your sites and monetize it with programs like Google's Adsense.RSS feeds are available in abundance that provide product news, press releases and updates. Sites such as PRWeb (http://www.prweb.com) want you to use their news feeds on your site. So why not? Build your site's content with news and information feeds that deliver steady streams of traffic.Do a bit of searching and you'll find programs and scripts that make the addition of RSS feeds to your website very simple and fast.RSS gives you an edge over your competition by allowing you to create a sense of community, offer interaction and provide the latest news and information nearly on autopilot.
Copyright 2005 Ron HuttonThe opportunity to quickly and easily implement and harness the power of RSS is quite real and new programs become available every week that allow non-technical marketers and webmasters to capitalize on the effective use of RSS.Jim Edwards spoke of this trend in the recent "For a Greater Cause" teleseminar. Media-rich blogs and content sites are stickier and keep visitors on site longer.Consider delivering audio content via the internet by setting up a blog and incorporating streaming audio. By doing so, your media-rich message creates a relationship with visitors that cannot be achieved with text alone.If you'd like to take this one step further, start using video content. It's the difference between reading a flyer versus listening to the radio versus watching television. Why do people gravitate to the TV when every home has a radio? When presented with the option, we prefer the satisfaction of both the auditory and visual senses.The real power of blogs, audio and video is that you can invite your visitors to participate and interact with you by allowing them to post comments. Your blog becomes a community event and we all love a party.If you'll be using the strategy of blogging with audio and video, there are three things that you should do.First, as mentioned above, allow your visitors to post comments to your blog.Second, always give visitors the opportunity to sign up for your newsletter or ezine directly from your blog.Third, for those who prefer to receive news via RSS feeds, post your RSS feed on every page of your blog.Recorded interviews with industry experts fed via podcast can raise your credibility simply by association. Arrange for a phone interview with an expert in your market area, get permission to record the call and post it to your blog. If you're offering publicity and exposure for the interviewee, it should be simple to find willing and eager parties.RSS offers you the ability to provide high frequency content updates. It can be daily or hourly. Deliver important messages, news and other content on demand rather that waiting for your regularly scheduled e-zine.What's next?...Here's where things get fun for the online marketer and webmaster. One area in particular where you can really start to take advantage of RSS technology is to build sticky content on your sites and monetize it with programs like Google's Adsense.RSS feeds are available in abundance that provide product news, press releases and updates. Sites such as PRWeb (http://www.prweb.com) want you to use their news feeds on your site. So why not? Build your site's content with news and information feeds that deliver steady streams of traffic.Do a bit of searching and you'll find programs and scripts that make the addition of RSS feeds to your website very simple and fast.RSS gives you an edge over your competition by allowing you to create a sense of community, offer interaction and provide the latest news and information nearly on autopilot.
The Importance of Blogging/RSS to Your Home Business
by: Stephen Wright
Copyright 2005 Stephen WrightIn the 'good old days' (which now was only about three years ago!!) you used to keep in-touch with your customers using phone calls, email messages and face to face meetings. Nowadays the world has changed. People expect even more frequent updates, yet it's nearly impossible to meet with every business contact on a regular basis.Thankfully, blogging has come to the rescue. Setting up a blog on your web site - and having an associated RSS feed - means you can keep in constant touch with your clients and potential customers.Plus you don't have to email them and they can get your latest news without having to visit your web site. All this without the normal or typical cost of autoresponders and expensive email programs. So how does this all work?A blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated regularly. It's nothing special. There are several methods of writing 'blogs', but they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page. Far and away the easiest way to start a blog is with a website called blogger.com.However, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple. Syndication. What this means is that your blog can be automatically delivered to people who want to read it - you don't have to send it to them and neither do they have to come and collect it. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the job for them. There are several RSS readers available and new web browsers incorporate the ability to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.Whenever you add new content to your blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone's Reader program or web browser. That means you are guaranteed to be able to keep in touch with clients and prospects. You don't have to do anything other than produce the content. Equally, you don't face the problems of email filters and anti-spam programs blocking your email. Furthermore, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them whereas they tend to ignore non urgent emails.As you can see, there are several advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. But it doesn't stop there. Search engines love them. All the big search engines (such as Google) are including RSS/Blog content as bonus items in their scoring formulas these days. That's because blogs provide fresh and new content - precisely what searchers are looking for. Hence the search engines are actively pushing blogs higher up the search engine ranking. This means if you don't have a blog for your business, you are seriously reducing your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.So, blogging (and RSS feed) is essential. Not only does it improve your web presence, it also means you can keep in touch with clients and prospects more easily. And all the marketing research you can find will tell you that keeping in regular touch with your customers is an important component in gaining new business. So get blogging I say!
Copyright 2005 Stephen WrightIn the 'good old days' (which now was only about three years ago!!) you used to keep in-touch with your customers using phone calls, email messages and face to face meetings. Nowadays the world has changed. People expect even more frequent updates, yet it's nearly impossible to meet with every business contact on a regular basis.Thankfully, blogging has come to the rescue. Setting up a blog on your web site - and having an associated RSS feed - means you can keep in constant touch with your clients and potential customers.Plus you don't have to email them and they can get your latest news without having to visit your web site. All this without the normal or typical cost of autoresponders and expensive email programs. So how does this all work?A blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated regularly. It's nothing special. There are several methods of writing 'blogs', but they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page. Far and away the easiest way to start a blog is with a website called blogger.com.However, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple. Syndication. What this means is that your blog can be automatically delivered to people who want to read it - you don't have to send it to them and neither do they have to come and collect it. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the job for them. There are several RSS readers available and new web browsers incorporate the ability to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.Whenever you add new content to your blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone's Reader program or web browser. That means you are guaranteed to be able to keep in touch with clients and prospects. You don't have to do anything other than produce the content. Equally, you don't face the problems of email filters and anti-spam programs blocking your email. Furthermore, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them whereas they tend to ignore non urgent emails.As you can see, there are several advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. But it doesn't stop there. Search engines love them. All the big search engines (such as Google) are including RSS/Blog content as bonus items in their scoring formulas these days. That's because blogs provide fresh and new content - precisely what searchers are looking for. Hence the search engines are actively pushing blogs higher up the search engine ranking. This means if you don't have a blog for your business, you are seriously reducing your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.So, blogging (and RSS feed) is essential. Not only does it improve your web presence, it also means you can keep in touch with clients and prospects more easily. And all the marketing research you can find will tell you that keeping in regular touch with your customers is an important component in gaining new business. So get blogging I say!
Huge Content Rich Websites for Profit
by: Robert Rogers
Here is the bare bone - no hype information and a link to the website I built using these techniques. So I not going to lie to you about how much money you can make or how much I made. Simply put, people are making money with these kinds of sites, I just want a piece of the action. This article assumes you have a basic knowledge of HTML, Google Adsense, and Affiliate Advertising.We've all heard the phrases "Content is King" and "If content is King, then relevance is Queen!". So I'm going to share with you how to build a site based on these principles for profit! I built a 1000+ page content rich website in about 2 days. Check it out at http://articleupdates.comWebsite Building tools: I used DreamWeaver as my html editor. Any good html editor will work such as Frontpage. Go to download.com and search for "html editor". Coffeecup is a very popular free editor. Basically you need a good editor that will update links site wide automatically. Give you reports on broken links, and do search and replace site wide, file specific, and etc... Also very important is a good table building capability.For the content I pulled articles from various free content sites. As long as you adhere to the terms of fair use, you will have access to thousands of content rich articles that you can put in your own website.Get a simple clipart cd with 150,000 royalty free images from Bestbuy for $20.Then plug in your affiliate codes for google adsense, clickbank, and commission junction.You don't have to be an html expert. Just having some basic programming knowlege is enough. For example, understanding head, body, and building tables. Inserting variables and doing global changes. Any good html editor will help with that. You really need to become an expert at building tables. They are fast loading and can really make an impact on a site. If you are into css, even better!Key Features for SEO: Keyword Rich and Relevant! Building with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind. Use these techniques when building your site! Niche Site: Pick a very specific topic. I chose "Making Money Online with Content Rich Sites" for this example.Use a simple structure. Index page to "Index of Articles". Then "Index of Articles" to each individual article page. Two levels, easy to manage, easy to spider!Make your site surfer friendly: No hidden pages, re-directs, pop-ups, spyware, java, or scripts. Just use ".html" files with text links to full text content rich pages which are also easily spidered with useful relevant information for the visitor. Include lots of articles including a few unique pages that you have written yourself.Now start building your basic template for all the pages on your site. How you build your template will greatly depend on what editor and tools you'll be using. For example: most times you'll do something like Huge Content Rich Websites for Profit. When you go to build your 1000+ page site, the editor will replace the title tag with the appropriate text dynamically.Title Tag and Description Tags and all other meta tags should be relevant and keyword rich. Page Title - Use relevant keywords on each index page to the articles- Use the article title which will have additional relevant keywords for each article page.H1 Tags - Keyword rich and relevant ex: "Make Money Online", "Home Based Business"H2 Tags - Use the article title in the article pages. ex: "10 Ways To Make Money Online"robot.txt file for spiders - just a simple two line file in your root directoryUser-agent: *Disallow:Body text - Use content rich articles. Also use high color contrast between the text and the background so the search engine doesn't think your trying to hide anything and penalize you. Plus it's just plain easier to read. Use arial or verdana font.URLs, File Names, and Directories - use the article title ex: http://articleupdates.com/i-home-business/five-ways-to-increase-your-affiliate-sales.htmlInbound links: Set up link partners. If you can, have them place the link to your site using a keyword instead of the domain name itself. ex: Make Money Online Click Here.Outbound links: Do the same for your link partners. Set up links using text that is relevant to their topic which should be relevant to your site but not competing if possible. If you sell computers, link to a company that sells computer desks.Make same site links with relevant text. ex: "make money at home" will link to a page within your own site.Make Image alt text use primary keywords. ex: "money online"Add HTML comment tags that use primary keywords. These are not seen buy the surfer, but can be seen by search engine spiders. No one has proven this helps, but it doesn't hurt!Now add money making adsense and affiliate links on every page. Put them top center between the article title and article content. Adjust the colors so that is blends in with your web page content.Google adsense will pick up the page title, h1 and h2 tags to target the ad. When someone clicks on it, you get paid!.Once you have these basic things set up in your template, you need to use a powerful tool called Article Equalizer. With a little practice, you'll be able to build 1000+ page websites in just a day or two. The link to Article Equalizer is http://hop.clickbank.net/?mark6188/articleeqAnother important thing you can do: Add dynamic RSS content by keyword. I'll follow up on this in my next article.Sincerely - Robert Rogers P.S. - If you make a site using the techniques above - I'd love to see it! Put your link at http://deja.us. I check it regularly.
Here is the bare bone - no hype information and a link to the website I built using these techniques. So I not going to lie to you about how much money you can make or how much I made. Simply put, people are making money with these kinds of sites, I just want a piece of the action. This article assumes you have a basic knowledge of HTML, Google Adsense, and Affiliate Advertising.We've all heard the phrases "Content is King" and "If content is King, then relevance is Queen!". So I'm going to share with you how to build a site based on these principles for profit! I built a 1000+ page content rich website in about 2 days. Check it out at http://articleupdates.comWebsite Building tools: I used DreamWeaver as my html editor. Any good html editor will work such as Frontpage. Go to download.com and search for "html editor". Coffeecup is a very popular free editor. Basically you need a good editor that will update links site wide automatically. Give you reports on broken links, and do search and replace site wide, file specific, and etc... Also very important is a good table building capability.For the content I pulled articles from various free content sites. As long as you adhere to the terms of fair use, you will have access to thousands of content rich articles that you can put in your own website.Get a simple clipart cd with 150,000 royalty free images from Bestbuy for $20.Then plug in your affiliate codes for google adsense, clickbank, and commission junction.You don't have to be an html expert. Just having some basic programming knowlege is enough. For example, understanding head, body, and building tables. Inserting variables and doing global changes. Any good html editor will help with that. You really need to become an expert at building tables. They are fast loading and can really make an impact on a site. If you are into css, even better!Key Features for SEO: Keyword Rich and Relevant! Building with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind. Use these techniques when building your site! Niche Site: Pick a very specific topic. I chose "Making Money Online with Content Rich Sites" for this example.Use a simple structure. Index page to "Index of Articles". Then "Index of Articles" to each individual article page. Two levels, easy to manage, easy to spider!Make your site surfer friendly: No hidden pages, re-directs, pop-ups, spyware, java, or scripts. Just use ".html" files with text links to full text content rich pages which are also easily spidered with useful relevant information for the visitor. Include lots of articles including a few unique pages that you have written yourself.Now start building your basic template for all the pages on your site. How you build your template will greatly depend on what editor and tools you'll be using. For example: most times you'll do something like Huge Content Rich Websites for Profit. When you go to build your 1000+ page site, the editor will replace the title tag with the appropriate text dynamically.Title Tag and Description Tags and all other meta tags should be relevant and keyword rich. Page Title - Use relevant keywords on each index page to the articles- Use the article title which will have additional relevant keywords for each article page.H1 Tags - Keyword rich and relevant ex: "Make Money Online", "Home Based Business"H2 Tags - Use the article title in the article pages. ex: "10 Ways To Make Money Online"robot.txt file for spiders - just a simple two line file in your root directoryUser-agent: *Disallow:Body text - Use content rich articles. Also use high color contrast between the text and the background so the search engine doesn't think your trying to hide anything and penalize you. Plus it's just plain easier to read. Use arial or verdana font.URLs, File Names, and Directories - use the article title ex: http://articleupdates.com/i-home-business/five-ways-to-increase-your-affiliate-sales.htmlInbound links: Set up link partners. If you can, have them place the link to your site using a keyword instead of the domain name itself. ex: Make Money Online Click Here.Outbound links: Do the same for your link partners. Set up links using text that is relevant to their topic which should be relevant to your site but not competing if possible. If you sell computers, link to a company that sells computer desks.Make same site links with relevant text. ex: "make money at home" will link to a page within your own site.Make Image alt text use primary keywords. ex: "money online"Add HTML comment tags that use primary keywords. These are not seen buy the surfer, but can be seen by search engine spiders. No one has proven this helps, but it doesn't hurt!Now add money making adsense and affiliate links on every page. Put them top center between the article title and article content. Adjust the colors so that is blends in with your web page content.Google adsense will pick up the page title, h1 and h2 tags to target the ad. When someone clicks on it, you get paid!.Once you have these basic things set up in your template, you need to use a powerful tool called Article Equalizer. With a little practice, you'll be able to build 1000+ page websites in just a day or two. The link to Article Equalizer is http://hop.clickbank.net/?mark6188/articleeqAnother important thing you can do: Add dynamic RSS content by keyword. I'll follow up on this in my next article.Sincerely - Robert Rogers P.S. - If you make a site using the techniques above - I'd love to see it! Put your link at http://deja.us. I check it regularly.
Here's 4 Quick and EASY Steps To Getting Your Website IN Through Googles 'Back Door'
by: Cory Threlfall
Copyright 2005 The IWE, LLC. All Rights Reserved.Google... one of the Internets MOST powerful search engines recently announced a new FREE service that makes it easier for you to improve your websites coverage within Googles index through its NEW collaborative crawling system.On the down side though, Google does not 'Guarantee' immediate inclusion, But, is still good news for those of you who have just finished building a website and are ready to submit to the top search engines.So, what's this NEW service called that Google just released?It's called "Google Sitemaps".The real cool thing about "Google Sitemaps" IS it accepts RSS(Real Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds with the .XML extension as one of the accepted formats for submitting your websites Sitemap for inclusion in Googles index.This is just one of the four formats Google accepts and is the one that I'm going to use for the rest of this article to show you how to generate your own .XML sitemap of your website for inclusion in Google.It's real easy to do so don't worry about it being to complicated.So, with that said, lets go to Step #1.Step #1. Sign up for "Google Sitemaps".This step is easy, simply follow the link provide below and sign up for a Free account. It should only take you a few minutes to do, then once your done, come back here and go to Step #2.Go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/loginStep #2. Generate your .XML sitemap.In this step your going to generate a .XML sitemap for your website using a Free online sitemap generator.This Free online generator will build you a sitemap up to 500 pages. If you have a larger website with thousands of webpages you'll have to use a paid service and/or software to generate yours.Go to: http://www.xml-sitemaps.comEnter your required information on the form provided.Step #3. Upload your generated .XML sitemap to your server.Once your generated sitemap is finished(your generated .XML file should be called site.xml.gz) it's now time to upload it to your server using your FTP(File Transfer Protocol) program.This is very important that you do this before submitting it to Google Sitemaps for inclusion.Step #4. Submit your NEW .XML sitemap to "Google Sitemaps".Now that you have generated your "Sitemap" for your website and uploaded it to your server all you have to do now is to go to "Google Sitemaps" and submit your sitemap URL.(ex. http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.gz)That's it.Now, depending on Google, your sitemap should get downloaded within the next 24 hours, so be sure to check and see that it did and that there wasn't any problems or errors.Also, your going to want to be able to track your indexed webpages within the search engines, especially Google, so you can see how things are going, so I'll leave you with one last resource that will do this for you.Go to: http://www.uptimebot.comAll you have to do is enter your URL and click "GO".The results page will list the results from Google and 9 other popular search engines.Well, there you have it... "4 Quick and EASY Steps To Getting Your Website IN Through Googles 'Back Door'".
Copyright 2005 The IWE, LLC. All Rights Reserved.Google... one of the Internets MOST powerful search engines recently announced a new FREE service that makes it easier for you to improve your websites coverage within Googles index through its NEW collaborative crawling system.On the down side though, Google does not 'Guarantee' immediate inclusion, But, is still good news for those of you who have just finished building a website and are ready to submit to the top search engines.So, what's this NEW service called that Google just released?It's called "Google Sitemaps".The real cool thing about "Google Sitemaps" IS it accepts RSS(Real Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds with the .XML extension as one of the accepted formats for submitting your websites Sitemap for inclusion in Googles index.This is just one of the four formats Google accepts and is the one that I'm going to use for the rest of this article to show you how to generate your own .XML sitemap of your website for inclusion in Google.It's real easy to do so don't worry about it being to complicated.So, with that said, lets go to Step #1.Step #1. Sign up for "Google Sitemaps".This step is easy, simply follow the link provide below and sign up for a Free account. It should only take you a few minutes to do, then once your done, come back here and go to Step #2.Go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/loginStep #2. Generate your .XML sitemap.In this step your going to generate a .XML sitemap for your website using a Free online sitemap generator.This Free online generator will build you a sitemap up to 500 pages. If you have a larger website with thousands of webpages you'll have to use a paid service and/or software to generate yours.Go to: http://www.xml-sitemaps.comEnter your required information on the form provided.Step #3. Upload your generated .XML sitemap to your server.Once your generated sitemap is finished(your generated .XML file should be called site.xml.gz) it's now time to upload it to your server using your FTP(File Transfer Protocol) program.This is very important that you do this before submitting it to Google Sitemaps for inclusion.Step #4. Submit your NEW .XML sitemap to "Google Sitemaps".Now that you have generated your "Sitemap" for your website and uploaded it to your server all you have to do now is to go to "Google Sitemaps" and submit your sitemap URL.(ex. http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.gz)That's it.Now, depending on Google, your sitemap should get downloaded within the next 24 hours, so be sure to check and see that it did and that there wasn't any problems or errors.Also, your going to want to be able to track your indexed webpages within the search engines, especially Google, so you can see how things are going, so I'll leave you with one last resource that will do this for you.Go to: http://www.uptimebot.comAll you have to do is enter your URL and click "GO".The results page will list the results from Google and 9 other popular search engines.Well, there you have it... "4 Quick and EASY Steps To Getting Your Website IN Through Googles 'Back Door'".
Microsoft and Google Show It's Time for RSS Marketing
by: Rok Hrastnik
Copyright 2005 Rok HrastnikMany internet marketers are still wondering whether to start marketing with RSS or not. It seems that not even all the case studies, hard metrics and benefits available can’t convince them, or everyone would be jumping on the RSS wagon by now.Just as an overview, here are some of the benefits marketers are missing out on by not marketing with RSS:A] 100% delivery of their marketing, relationship building and educational messages to their subscribers, customers, prospects and partners. E-mail isn’t getting delivered, but with RSS you will achieve 100% delivery.B] Increased search engine rankings and quick content indexing, and increased traffic from other RSS-enabled online sources.C] Getting your internet content published on other websites.D] Generating new subscribers more easily and quickly.E] And much much more …Even if you don’t believe that RSS is being used by enough people right now, that’s still no excuse to not start using it as a vehicle to generate more traffic to your sites.But, soon all of this will change, too.As it was widely predicted, Microsoft is integrating RSS support in the next version of its Internet Explorer, and perhaps even more important, it's making it an integral part of its long-awaited Longhorn operating system.What does this mean for marketers?A] By being integrated in IE and other Microsoft software, RSS will achieve mass penetration. For marketers this means that RSS will finally become one of the standard tools of mass communication and content delivery. Furthermore, internet users will start to expect RSS from marketers, probably even more so than e-mail newsletters.B] Marketers will no longer (eventually, of course, when most of the world starts using the latest software versions) need to explain how to get an RSS reader, but will be able to focus only on presenting their business and benefits to the end-user.C] Broader RSS integration in Microsoft's tools will enable for additional RSS uses, far beyond basic content delivery in the form of stories, podcasts and products. Marketers and developers will be able to deploy rich interaction applications to make communication and business/personal interaction more fluent, easier and more effective. In essence, for many advanced marketers the capability of marketing with RSS will mean their either “in” or “out” of the game.D] This is now official. Marketers need to start taking the lead and implementing RSS feeds accross all their communicational innitiatives, from PR to direct marketing and sales.And to top all of this, Google just recently started serving Google AdSense ads in RSS feeds as well. The deeper meaning behind this is four-fold:A] The new "program" is the perfect opportunity for RSS publishers to monetize their RSS feeds. With inclussion in Google's standard "runnings" of AdSense ads, publishers can expect to monetize on RSS immediately.B] This is yet another reason for publishers to start publishing their content via RSS, especially since it won't cost them anything or very little, but will provide them with an additional source of revenues. With the low-cost aspect of RSS, we can expect a flood of new publishers to set-up RSS feeds of their content to generate additional AdSense clicks.C] With RSS ads included in feeds, more advertisers will become aware of RSS and its marketing potential.D] Using RSS advertising publishers are now not only creating an additional revenues source, but are in fact making sure they don't lose ad revenue opportunities.We used to refer to RSS as the future. Well, that future is now. If you’re not ready to start marketing with RSS, time just might run you over. As well as your competitors …
Copyright 2005 Rok HrastnikMany internet marketers are still wondering whether to start marketing with RSS or not. It seems that not even all the case studies, hard metrics and benefits available can’t convince them, or everyone would be jumping on the RSS wagon by now.Just as an overview, here are some of the benefits marketers are missing out on by not marketing with RSS:A] 100% delivery of their marketing, relationship building and educational messages to their subscribers, customers, prospects and partners. E-mail isn’t getting delivered, but with RSS you will achieve 100% delivery.B] Increased search engine rankings and quick content indexing, and increased traffic from other RSS-enabled online sources.C] Getting your internet content published on other websites.D] Generating new subscribers more easily and quickly.E] And much much more …Even if you don’t believe that RSS is being used by enough people right now, that’s still no excuse to not start using it as a vehicle to generate more traffic to your sites.But, soon all of this will change, too.As it was widely predicted, Microsoft is integrating RSS support in the next version of its Internet Explorer, and perhaps even more important, it's making it an integral part of its long-awaited Longhorn operating system.What does this mean for marketers?A] By being integrated in IE and other Microsoft software, RSS will achieve mass penetration. For marketers this means that RSS will finally become one of the standard tools of mass communication and content delivery. Furthermore, internet users will start to expect RSS from marketers, probably even more so than e-mail newsletters.B] Marketers will no longer (eventually, of course, when most of the world starts using the latest software versions) need to explain how to get an RSS reader, but will be able to focus only on presenting their business and benefits to the end-user.C] Broader RSS integration in Microsoft's tools will enable for additional RSS uses, far beyond basic content delivery in the form of stories, podcasts and products. Marketers and developers will be able to deploy rich interaction applications to make communication and business/personal interaction more fluent, easier and more effective. In essence, for many advanced marketers the capability of marketing with RSS will mean their either “in” or “out” of the game.D] This is now official. Marketers need to start taking the lead and implementing RSS feeds accross all their communicational innitiatives, from PR to direct marketing and sales.And to top all of this, Google just recently started serving Google AdSense ads in RSS feeds as well. The deeper meaning behind this is four-fold:A] The new "program" is the perfect opportunity for RSS publishers to monetize their RSS feeds. With inclussion in Google's standard "runnings" of AdSense ads, publishers can expect to monetize on RSS immediately.B] This is yet another reason for publishers to start publishing their content via RSS, especially since it won't cost them anything or very little, but will provide them with an additional source of revenues. With the low-cost aspect of RSS, we can expect a flood of new publishers to set-up RSS feeds of their content to generate additional AdSense clicks.C] With RSS ads included in feeds, more advertisers will become aware of RSS and its marketing potential.D] Using RSS advertising publishers are now not only creating an additional revenues source, but are in fact making sure they don't lose ad revenue opportunities.We used to refer to RSS as the future. Well, that future is now. If you’re not ready to start marketing with RSS, time just might run you over. As well as your competitors …
Where's Your Content?
by: Richard Keir
Copyright 2005 Richard KeirOnce again, it's being made clear that the old isn't old at all. Google's latest update seems to make it clearer than ever that actual website content continues to be a vital element in creating a successful website. Of course, there's lots more to it, but what we do know is that all search engines like content, especially when it's new, different and unique. Static sites where new content is not being added on a regular basis, become stale and their rankings often drop.Solutions that involve large amounts of content from RSS feeds or search engine results are now looking like a good method to get you dropped from Google. Scraping is illegal. While imitation may be a form of flattery, stealing the full content from a site or blog is just criminal. If this seems even slightly tempting, forget it. You won't last long and the consequences aren't worth it.So where is your content? The absolute best source of content remains articles you write yourself. Why? First, they're unique. Second, you can submit them to article directories for links and wider distribution. Third, branding. The people who write and publish good quality information become known.The downside? It all takes time and you have to do your research. Few people can write quality niche content without doing at least some research. However, if your plan involves a long-term business in a niche, it's well worth it. While all the information you use in your articles might be easily found with a little searching, the reality is that very few people will do that simple search. By doing it for them and creating articles and content based on your research, you become an expert. Your time investment can pay off in a major way as you become an acknowledged expert in your niche. Your site becomes an authority site. It doesn't get a whole lot better than that.No magic, no instant solution. We keep buying books and tools that promise quick easy solutions. But a little thought should tell you that if they existed, the owner certainly wouldn't be selling (or at least not until they stopped working well). Everything requires learning, testing, modifying and just plain hard work to get the best results. No matter how you go about it, you need to invest time, and writing articles is a great investment for long-term success.If it seems impossible, start with the simplest kind of article. Gather tips, hints or tricks about a niche subject. Write each one as a separate paragraph. Write a short introduction - a paragraph explaining the subject and the type of hints or tips in the article. That's your first paragraph. Next come the tip paragraphs. If you need to, add linking or bridging sentences like: "Here's another way to improve your whatever-it-is." This kind of article is meant to be simple, clear and easy to understand. Nothing fancy required, just plain straightforward text. Use a spelling checker, use a grammar checker. Hey, if you need to, use a speech to text processor, just get that first one done and submit it. Believe me, it gets a lot easier after the first time.It's a rare marketer who can write enough articles to provide the full content of a new site. Over time, however, more and more of the site's content could come from your own unique articles. Meanwhile where else can you look for high quality content?PD (Public Domain) materials offer great possibilities. Sure, you have to make certain that the content really is in the public domain and it may involve scanning, editing and proofing, breaking the materials down to suitable size and then making the appropriate pages and articles. Still, depending on your niche, you could find unique PD content that has never appeared in the SEs and which will be highly attractive to your site visitors. Aside from using it to create pages, you can create articles, viral PDFs or eBooks, products to sell, autoresponder series, newsletter content -- you are really only limited by your imagination.Membership sites offering private label products are also a valuable source of content. With this sort of content, you'll probably want to do some rewriting and rearranging, adding some new content of your own and so on. Naturally, the more you modify the content, the more unique it will be. Since the rights to different products may vary, make sure you understand what you can and can't do with any particular item before you begin working on it.Other sites offer packages of ghost-written private label articles. Some you might use as articles pages, others you might rewrite and submit as well as put them on your site. Again, check your rights to be clear on what is permitted (or required).Another alternative is to hire ghost writers to produce content specifically for you. A great deal of the information on a lot of sites and in a lot of info-products has been ghost-written. Content produced exclusively for you should definitely be unique. This may be more costly than other alternatives, but you are paying for the time saved, the uniqueness and for full rights to the content produced.Third-party articles are another source for added content. By including your own introductions before and/or comments after each article, you can differentiate your site from any other publishing the same article.Use a mix of the ideas in this article, and you're on your way to creating a valuable and sticky site that visitors will find useful and want to return to. And your site will be attractive to the search engines. Keep in mind that this is on-going process. Don't stop. Adding new and unique content regularly is one of the very best methods of guaranteeing a successful and long-lived web site.
Copyright 2005 Richard KeirOnce again, it's being made clear that the old isn't old at all. Google's latest update seems to make it clearer than ever that actual website content continues to be a vital element in creating a successful website. Of course, there's lots more to it, but what we do know is that all search engines like content, especially when it's new, different and unique. Static sites where new content is not being added on a regular basis, become stale and their rankings often drop.Solutions that involve large amounts of content from RSS feeds or search engine results are now looking like a good method to get you dropped from Google. Scraping is illegal. While imitation may be a form of flattery, stealing the full content from a site or blog is just criminal. If this seems even slightly tempting, forget it. You won't last long and the consequences aren't worth it.So where is your content? The absolute best source of content remains articles you write yourself. Why? First, they're unique. Second, you can submit them to article directories for links and wider distribution. Third, branding. The people who write and publish good quality information become known.The downside? It all takes time and you have to do your research. Few people can write quality niche content without doing at least some research. However, if your plan involves a long-term business in a niche, it's well worth it. While all the information you use in your articles might be easily found with a little searching, the reality is that very few people will do that simple search. By doing it for them and creating articles and content based on your research, you become an expert. Your time investment can pay off in a major way as you become an acknowledged expert in your niche. Your site becomes an authority site. It doesn't get a whole lot better than that.No magic, no instant solution. We keep buying books and tools that promise quick easy solutions. But a little thought should tell you that if they existed, the owner certainly wouldn't be selling (or at least not until they stopped working well). Everything requires learning, testing, modifying and just plain hard work to get the best results. No matter how you go about it, you need to invest time, and writing articles is a great investment for long-term success.If it seems impossible, start with the simplest kind of article. Gather tips, hints or tricks about a niche subject. Write each one as a separate paragraph. Write a short introduction - a paragraph explaining the subject and the type of hints or tips in the article. That's your first paragraph. Next come the tip paragraphs. If you need to, add linking or bridging sentences like: "Here's another way to improve your whatever-it-is." This kind of article is meant to be simple, clear and easy to understand. Nothing fancy required, just plain straightforward text. Use a spelling checker, use a grammar checker. Hey, if you need to, use a speech to text processor, just get that first one done and submit it. Believe me, it gets a lot easier after the first time.It's a rare marketer who can write enough articles to provide the full content of a new site. Over time, however, more and more of the site's content could come from your own unique articles. Meanwhile where else can you look for high quality content?PD (Public Domain) materials offer great possibilities. Sure, you have to make certain that the content really is in the public domain and it may involve scanning, editing and proofing, breaking the materials down to suitable size and then making the appropriate pages and articles. Still, depending on your niche, you could find unique PD content that has never appeared in the SEs and which will be highly attractive to your site visitors. Aside from using it to create pages, you can create articles, viral PDFs or eBooks, products to sell, autoresponder series, newsletter content -- you are really only limited by your imagination.Membership sites offering private label products are also a valuable source of content. With this sort of content, you'll probably want to do some rewriting and rearranging, adding some new content of your own and so on. Naturally, the more you modify the content, the more unique it will be. Since the rights to different products may vary, make sure you understand what you can and can't do with any particular item before you begin working on it.Other sites offer packages of ghost-written private label articles. Some you might use as articles pages, others you might rewrite and submit as well as put them on your site. Again, check your rights to be clear on what is permitted (or required).Another alternative is to hire ghost writers to produce content specifically for you. A great deal of the information on a lot of sites and in a lot of info-products has been ghost-written. Content produced exclusively for you should definitely be unique. This may be more costly than other alternatives, but you are paying for the time saved, the uniqueness and for full rights to the content produced.Third-party articles are another source for added content. By including your own introductions before and/or comments after each article, you can differentiate your site from any other publishing the same article.Use a mix of the ideas in this article, and you're on your way to creating a valuable and sticky site that visitors will find useful and want to return to. And your site will be attractive to the search engines. Keep in mind that this is on-going process. Don't stop. Adding new and unique content regularly is one of the very best methods of guaranteeing a successful and long-lived web site.
Webmaster Tools and Resources
by: Sharon Housley
Copyright 2005 Sharon HousleyWith new technologies, algorithms and sources emerging on a daily basis, webmasters are constantly struggling to stay informed. The quality of content on the web and the number of products available to webmasters can seem overwhelming. The goal of creating a site that can be quickly found can be a struggle. Unless webmasters have a well-established brand, a great domain name and a huge marketing budget, it is important that they appear in search engines via specific keywords. With this in mind, we have compiled a list of resources and products that will benefit webmasters in their efforts to be found. 1.) Webmaster Articles & Tutorials -The Internet is rich with resources for webmasters who are developing and optimizing web content. The web hosts a vast variety of web design tutorials and articles. For the novice, sifting through these resources can be daunting and overwhelming. Site Point - New Articles, Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Designers - With a vast variety of web design tutorials and articles coupled with a vibrant and well informed community, SitePoint is the natural place to go to grow your online business.http://www.sitepoint.com/WebProNews - WebProNews is an article portal for Internet and Technology professionals and has thousands of articles on web design and development. The articles are from iEntry's network of expert writers through hundreds of relationships with authors around the world. http://www.webpronews.com/2.) Webmaster Forums - Not only can participating in various forums and posting your various views and ideas potentially bring new growth and life to your online business, it can help you stay informed about industry news or changes. This is particularly important when working in a new, quickly advancing industry like web design and search engine optimization. The following forums are great places for webmasters to participate and monitor.ThreadWatch - ThreadWatch is a nifty tool. The concept of Threadwatch is very simple: finding the signal amongst the noise of internet marketing media takes too much of what we all value most, time. Threadwatch.org cuts through the chatter and produces a clear signal for the time-starved professional Internet marketer. http://www.threadwatch.orgWebmaster-Talk - The WebmasterTalk forum covers material related to Web Design, PHP Help, Coding, Hosting, Domain Names, graphic optimization and related webmaster topics. The forum is extremely popular and generally, posts will receive almost instant responses from knowledgeable professionals. Of course, like any forum, there are bound to be opposing views ensuring that all sides of every issue are raised. http://www.webmaster-talk.com3.) Website Submission Tools - According to research more then 90% of Internet traffic is generated by search engines. Submitting your website to all major search engines is the most effective way of promoting your website on the Internet. In order for web surfers to locate your site you must be included in all the major search engines. There are a number of tools available to assist with the submission process. Internet Business Promoter - Internet Business Promoter is a suite of 10 professional web promotion tools in one software application. All of the tools are designed to assist web developers with all aspects of web site promotion and search engine optimization. We found that IBP's strength was in the website submission options. Once a site is created it must be submitted to search engines and directories. IBP streamlines and simplifies the submission process, saving significant amounts of time. http://www.axandra.com/ibpFreeWebSubmission.com - Free Web Submission is the source for free search engine submission. They provide webmasters and site owners with free manual and auto submission to the highest-rated, free internet search engines and directories. http://www.freewebsubmission.com/AddMe - AddMe is a leading resource for webmasters and small-business owners specialized in website submission and promotion in the search engines. AddMe offers free online website submission to 14 major search engines in exchange for a reciprocal link. AddMe is well known and respected in the industry. http://www.addme.com/Many of the online submissions require an e-mail address. In order to limit excessive unwanted e-mail many webmasters will use a "throw-away" e-mail address that would allow them to initially receive notification that the site is submitted but is ultimately an e-mail account they can discontinue after the submission process. This practice is suggested for anyone using a free service for site submissions.4.) Online Tools - A number of resource sites are available on the web to assist webmasters. The resources are generally free and contain useful analytical tools. DigitalPoint - The DigitalPoint site contains a variety of tools specifically for webmasters. The tools are a collection of useful online tools, from a Google AdSense Sandbox that shows which Google AdSense ads will be displayed for any webpage on the Internet, to web ranking tools that track Yahoo's web rank.http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/SEO Survey - Tools to help SEO specialists and webmasters automate some of the important tasks involved in the routine of optimization. http://www.socengine.com/seo/tools.html5.) Webmaster Software - The aim of many applications is to save time, money or productivity. Webmsters can often use software to replace a task they do manually, freeing up their time to pursue other tasks. FeedForAll - FeedForAll creates, edits, manages and publishes RSS feeds. As webmasters realize the benefits to RSS, software related to RSS is becoming an instrumental tool in their arsenal. http://www.feedforall.comTNT Screen Capture - TNT captures everything with only 3 simple capture modes, from application windows to controls, to menus and popup windows. Many integrated unique features like shadow options, transparency, quick scaling and individual shapes make it quick and simple to create stunning screenshots at a mouse-click.http://www.ec-software.com/tnt.htm 6.) Free Content - Free content comes in all shapes and sizes. Understanding who your target customer is and what appeals to them will go a long way in finding content that will increase your site's value. GoArticles - Providing a fresh stream of content-specific articles is a great way to encourage visitors to return to your website on a regular basis. GoArticles is a directory of quality articles that is searchable based on keywords.http://www.goarticles.com Small Business Software - Collection of small business and marketing-related articles available for republishing.Articles - http://www.small-business-software/free-website-content.htmFreeSticky - FreeSticky provides a directory of content available to webmasters free of charge. The available content is a variety of items including syndicated cartoons, games, horoscopes, photographs, forums and articles. The supplemental content is designed to encourage visitors to return to your website.http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/RSS - RSS stands for really simple syndication, RSS feeds generally contain content available for syndication. Meaning that you can often publish content contained in an RSS feeds to provide fresh website content. FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm has a free PHP script available to display RSS feeds. Additional resources to learn more about using RSS as web content can be found at http://www.rss-specifications.com and http://www.rss-syndication.com7.) Alerts - Using web alerts is becoming increasingly useful to webmasters interested in tracking their search engine position, trademarked terms, to monitor competitors and stay abreast of online occurrences. Google Alerts - Google Alerts is a solution for monitoring your professional interests online. Track the entire web for your personalized topics and receive new results by daily e-mail. There are two companies doing this: Google Alerts, http://www.googlealert.com and http://www.google.com/alerts PubSub - PubSub is a matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription. Using a proprietary Matching Engine, PubSub is able to read millions of data sources on your behalf and notify you instantly whenever a match is made. http://www.pubsub.comTools for Online Tracking Alerts - Article detailing additional tools available for online tracking and alerts. http://www.small-business-software.net/tools-for-online-tracking.htm 8.) Blacklist Checkers - E-mail delivery problems often occur when an IP address or domain is black-listed. The following tools will ensure that your IP address and domain will not have delivery issues.DNS Stuff - DNSstuff: Free fast, advanced and comprehensive web-based DNS tools, going beyond just ping, tracert/traceroute, WHOIS and DNS lookups.http://www.dnsstuff.com/SpamNews - spamNEWS is a concise aggregation of vital information relevant to professionals in the anti-spam sector: Up-to-the-minute press coverage and topical editorials about e-mail abuse, related online security matters, legal and political issues, as well as articles on Internet marketing and privacy. http://www.spamnews.com/9.) Keyword Tools - Keywords to improve search engine placement and ranking. Finding top Internet marketing keywords is critical in the quest to be found. Choosing the right Internet marketing keywords will help your search engine placement and ranking. A little keyword research goes a long way in the search to be found.WordTracker - WordTracker helps you choose the right Internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use WordTracker for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper Internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site promotion information!http://www.wordtracker.com10.) Newsletters - Email newsletters continue to be one of the most important ways to communicate and find information on the Internet. The following e-mail newsletters contain great information for webmasters.SitePronews - A free newsletter and webmaster resource site for Webmasters focusing on web site promotion, submission, positioning, design and marketing. The newsletters and websites contain articles by noted web experts. The SiteProNews site was the first of more than 12 web sites that focused on niche areas of particular interest to webmasters, marketers, newsletter publishers, authors and entrepreneurs.http://www.sitepronews.com/iEntry - The iEntry network has a really great collection of useful newsletters. iEntry publishes over 50 targeted e-mail newsletters that cover various aspects of the IT and Business industries. http://www.ientry.com/ Like most of the copious amounts of information on the Internet, it is a matter of sifting through to find relevant, accurate, helpful information. Occasionally we stumble across some little-known gems. As a result, we have compiled these webmaster tools.
Copyright 2005 Sharon HousleyWith new technologies, algorithms and sources emerging on a daily basis, webmasters are constantly struggling to stay informed. The quality of content on the web and the number of products available to webmasters can seem overwhelming. The goal of creating a site that can be quickly found can be a struggle. Unless webmasters have a well-established brand, a great domain name and a huge marketing budget, it is important that they appear in search engines via specific keywords. With this in mind, we have compiled a list of resources and products that will benefit webmasters in their efforts to be found. 1.) Webmaster Articles & Tutorials -The Internet is rich with resources for webmasters who are developing and optimizing web content. The web hosts a vast variety of web design tutorials and articles. For the novice, sifting through these resources can be daunting and overwhelming. Site Point - New Articles, Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Designers - With a vast variety of web design tutorials and articles coupled with a vibrant and well informed community, SitePoint is the natural place to go to grow your online business.http://www.sitepoint.com/WebProNews - WebProNews is an article portal for Internet and Technology professionals and has thousands of articles on web design and development. The articles are from iEntry's network of expert writers through hundreds of relationships with authors around the world. http://www.webpronews.com/2.) Webmaster Forums - Not only can participating in various forums and posting your various views and ideas potentially bring new growth and life to your online business, it can help you stay informed about industry news or changes. This is particularly important when working in a new, quickly advancing industry like web design and search engine optimization. The following forums are great places for webmasters to participate and monitor.ThreadWatch - ThreadWatch is a nifty tool. The concept of Threadwatch is very simple: finding the signal amongst the noise of internet marketing media takes too much of what we all value most, time. Threadwatch.org cuts through the chatter and produces a clear signal for the time-starved professional Internet marketer. http://www.threadwatch.orgWebmaster-Talk - The WebmasterTalk forum covers material related to Web Design, PHP Help, Coding, Hosting, Domain Names, graphic optimization and related webmaster topics. The forum is extremely popular and generally, posts will receive almost instant responses from knowledgeable professionals. Of course, like any forum, there are bound to be opposing views ensuring that all sides of every issue are raised. http://www.webmaster-talk.com3.) Website Submission Tools - According to research more then 90% of Internet traffic is generated by search engines. Submitting your website to all major search engines is the most effective way of promoting your website on the Internet. In order for web surfers to locate your site you must be included in all the major search engines. There are a number of tools available to assist with the submission process. Internet Business Promoter - Internet Business Promoter is a suite of 10 professional web promotion tools in one software application. All of the tools are designed to assist web developers with all aspects of web site promotion and search engine optimization. We found that IBP's strength was in the website submission options. Once a site is created it must be submitted to search engines and directories. IBP streamlines and simplifies the submission process, saving significant amounts of time. http://www.axandra.com/ibpFreeWebSubmission.com - Free Web Submission is the source for free search engine submission. They provide webmasters and site owners with free manual and auto submission to the highest-rated, free internet search engines and directories. http://www.freewebsubmission.com/AddMe - AddMe is a leading resource for webmasters and small-business owners specialized in website submission and promotion in the search engines. AddMe offers free online website submission to 14 major search engines in exchange for a reciprocal link. AddMe is well known and respected in the industry. http://www.addme.com/Many of the online submissions require an e-mail address. In order to limit excessive unwanted e-mail many webmasters will use a "throw-away" e-mail address that would allow them to initially receive notification that the site is submitted but is ultimately an e-mail account they can discontinue after the submission process. This practice is suggested for anyone using a free service for site submissions.4.) Online Tools - A number of resource sites are available on the web to assist webmasters. The resources are generally free and contain useful analytical tools. DigitalPoint - The DigitalPoint site contains a variety of tools specifically for webmasters. The tools are a collection of useful online tools, from a Google AdSense Sandbox that shows which Google AdSense ads will be displayed for any webpage on the Internet, to web ranking tools that track Yahoo's web rank.http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/SEO Survey - Tools to help SEO specialists and webmasters automate some of the important tasks involved in the routine of optimization. http://www.socengine.com/seo/tools.html5.) Webmaster Software - The aim of many applications is to save time, money or productivity. Webmsters can often use software to replace a task they do manually, freeing up their time to pursue other tasks. FeedForAll - FeedForAll creates, edits, manages and publishes RSS feeds. As webmasters realize the benefits to RSS, software related to RSS is becoming an instrumental tool in their arsenal. http://www.feedforall.comTNT Screen Capture - TNT captures everything with only 3 simple capture modes, from application windows to controls, to menus and popup windows. Many integrated unique features like shadow options, transparency, quick scaling and individual shapes make it quick and simple to create stunning screenshots at a mouse-click.http://www.ec-software.com/tnt.htm 6.) Free Content - Free content comes in all shapes and sizes. Understanding who your target customer is and what appeals to them will go a long way in finding content that will increase your site's value. GoArticles - Providing a fresh stream of content-specific articles is a great way to encourage visitors to return to your website on a regular basis. GoArticles is a directory of quality articles that is searchable based on keywords.http://www.goarticles.com Small Business Software - Collection of small business and marketing-related articles available for republishing.Articles - http://www.small-business-software/free-website-content.htmFreeSticky - FreeSticky provides a directory of content available to webmasters free of charge. The available content is a variety of items including syndicated cartoons, games, horoscopes, photographs, forums and articles. The supplemental content is designed to encourage visitors to return to your website.http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/RSS - RSS stands for really simple syndication, RSS feeds generally contain content available for syndication. Meaning that you can often publish content contained in an RSS feeds to provide fresh website content. FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm has a free PHP script available to display RSS feeds. Additional resources to learn more about using RSS as web content can be found at http://www.rss-specifications.com and http://www.rss-syndication.com7.) Alerts - Using web alerts is becoming increasingly useful to webmasters interested in tracking their search engine position, trademarked terms, to monitor competitors and stay abreast of online occurrences. Google Alerts - Google Alerts is a solution for monitoring your professional interests online. Track the entire web for your personalized topics and receive new results by daily e-mail. There are two companies doing this: Google Alerts, http://www.googlealert.com and http://www.google.com/alerts PubSub - PubSub is a matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription. Using a proprietary Matching Engine, PubSub is able to read millions of data sources on your behalf and notify you instantly whenever a match is made. http://www.pubsub.comTools for Online Tracking Alerts - Article detailing additional tools available for online tracking and alerts. http://www.small-business-software.net/tools-for-online-tracking.htm 8.) Blacklist Checkers - E-mail delivery problems often occur when an IP address or domain is black-listed. The following tools will ensure that your IP address and domain will not have delivery issues.DNS Stuff - DNSstuff: Free fast, advanced and comprehensive web-based DNS tools, going beyond just ping, tracert/traceroute, WHOIS and DNS lookups.http://www.dnsstuff.com/SpamNews - spamNEWS is a concise aggregation of vital information relevant to professionals in the anti-spam sector: Up-to-the-minute press coverage and topical editorials about e-mail abuse, related online security matters, legal and political issues, as well as articles on Internet marketing and privacy. http://www.spamnews.com/9.) Keyword Tools - Keywords to improve search engine placement and ranking. Finding top Internet marketing keywords is critical in the quest to be found. Choosing the right Internet marketing keywords will help your search engine placement and ranking. A little keyword research goes a long way in the search to be found.WordTracker - WordTracker helps you choose the right Internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use WordTracker for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper Internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site promotion information!http://www.wordtracker.com10.) Newsletters - Email newsletters continue to be one of the most important ways to communicate and find information on the Internet. The following e-mail newsletters contain great information for webmasters.SitePronews - A free newsletter and webmaster resource site for Webmasters focusing on web site promotion, submission, positioning, design and marketing. The newsletters and websites contain articles by noted web experts. The SiteProNews site was the first of more than 12 web sites that focused on niche areas of particular interest to webmasters, marketers, newsletter publishers, authors and entrepreneurs.http://www.sitepronews.com/iEntry - The iEntry network has a really great collection of useful newsletters. iEntry publishes over 50 targeted e-mail newsletters that cover various aspects of the IT and Business industries. http://www.ientry.com/ Like most of the copious amounts of information on the Internet, it is a matter of sifting through to find relevant, accurate, helpful information. Occasionally we stumble across some little-known gems. As a result, we have compiled these webmaster tools.
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