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.