A Beginners Guide to RSS Feeds
One of the first things you will notice if you are starting out in the online industry is that you have a constant and always expanding need for fresh content on your websites. The more sites you own, the more content you need. While many people think about “videos” and “pics” when they hear the word content, search engines value text and links with much more weight than any images.
One way to maximize your content is through syndication some of them to your other websites. The concept is dominated by very similar to the time when newspapers before the Internet existed - if a good writer would sell an article to many publishers, each of which would be strongly in many different newspapers across the country. Syndication allows you to write less new content and reuse some of the best content on more than one site.
Have been used involving search engine traffic and links to many sites repeat the word a major negative impact, but such algorithms allow "the contents of excerpts," appears in many places there is no harm as long as the overall content of each site are still very different from any other website. It is very important to point out that the original content is absolutely, no doubt, always far more than syndicated content, you have a better use of this or other options.
Create your own syndication system requires the establishment of an RSS feed. You probably have heard before, the term RSS, it stands for
Its core, RSS as HTML source code using the same number of elements of programming. Administrator with a strong grasp of HTML may be able to reverse engineer its own information from the existing examples is easy. However, the webmaster's less code, and skills as the center, but there are some alternatives to the work of the same. For example, WordPress.com and other construction-yourself blog site offers RSS generator, including free services to help website publishers access to syndicated content.
Pre-fabricated Blog sites do allow basic RSS feeds to be generated with a just a few clicks, but as with any other aspect of website publishing, you can always do more when you are the one hosting and customizing your own content to suit your own needs.
Cause of RSS is to get a bit tricky, RSS feeds need to coordinate the work of markup and code to work with both databases, you are drafting the information and readers to send content to another site or browser. For experienced encoder, RSS may stand "really simple syndication," but for beginners to deal with all this, RSS can also be seen as "real Sucky aggregation" as well.
There are many trustworthy sites with “How To” RSS tutorials, which give a more in-depth set of instructions and examples along with advanced feed tips for webmasters seeking to educate themselves. One of the best starting points is SearchEngineWatch.com, which offers useful basic information and links to more in-depth examples.
Once you believe your RSS Feed is properly constructed, you can also visit a Feed Validator site like: http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html to check the feed and make sure it is at least minimally compatible with basic RSS standards.
Many website owners have already started a subsidiary to provide more sophisticated use of RSS sources, in view of growing demand and competition. If you recall, I mentioned earlier, the duplicate content is a powerful search engine optimization disadvantages. Thus, in one case is a big sponsor of the text block is being made available to the majority of subsidiaries, in the amount of cross-site duplication of information dissemination is increasingly significant.
Web site a way to handle problems with the duplication is to create "deformed" feed. These advanced RSS source, re-word or sentence in order to replace an entry for each species has been delegated to a user, so that each feed has become fodder for at least a few different times, all the other versions by other site administrators. Although the distortion of information to provide partial answers to the problem of duplicate content, they often failed to generate the text, and mankind will enjoy the fun of reading.
The simplest way to make an RSS Feed is of course to hire someone. Competent third party coders charge $100 or less to create a feed for you and any coder you hire should be able to easily explain what they have done so that you can create additional feeds or amend existing ones on your own. With an ever-growing need for content and a very small expense to have your RSS Feed generated correctly by a professional programmer, it really is the simplest way to get your sites syndicated.
Posted in: html tutorial| Tags: Online guide search word site content rss feeds syndication beginnersHow You Can Instantly Tap Into an Unlimited Source of Content, for Free!
Are you looking for dynamic, automatically refreshing, sticky content to spice up your website?
If you are a webmaster, you will know how difficult it is to attract new content to your subscribers and create new traffic to your website. Paying freelance writers can cost you a fortune if you are just at the beginning and not site revenue to finance the cost of writing the article itself is far too much time and takes you away from other important tasks (like actually running the place and make sales can happen).
Luckily, there's a little-known but extremely easy tool that you can use to instantly jazz up your website and provide your traffic with valuable information. In fact, you might have heard of this tool before. Headline syndication, aggregators, XML format?
Sound familiar?
Yup, I'm talking about RSS Feeds.
If you haven't heard about RSS Feeds, or what they are, I strongly urge you to print out this article, go to a quiet corner where you won't be disturbed and literally devour every word of the rest of this article. Not only will it probably save your business, but it will revolutionize the way you think about the Internet.
And if you've come across RSS feeds before or used them, then skim through the next section to refresh your memory (seriously, there is a lot of useful information that you might be missing out on) and then dive into the meat of this article, which will show you how to set up RSS feeds on your website to display dynamic, self-updating content with very little effort.
What Is RSS?
RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary", although other terms such as "RDF Site Summary" (which emphasizes the file format) and "Really Simple Syndication" (which highlights the main selling point of RSS) are also useful in defining RSS by the book. However, bookish definitions don't always explain things very well. What really is RSS?
RSS is a platform over which a webmaster can instantly deliver summarized information about the latest / most important content on his website. This summary is usually a list of headlines and snippets - the headline will instantly inform the reader of what this new article or page contains and the snippet (usually the first few lines of the article) is to further entice the reader into visiting the website, or to simply give the reader more information. RSS has evolved into a commonly accepted XML standard, and many websites now use RSS Feeds (XML files containing the summaries) to publish "updates" about themselves.
Viewed from the perspective of a webmaster, an RSS feed is meant the visitors and participants to enable an easy way to keep abreast of fresh content on their site (without being on the website first). Additionally, an RSS feed that allows the reader to
Using An RSS Feed
As an internet entrepreneur can, one of your main tools will be an RSS reader. This is basically an aggregator - a collection of RSS feeds (you can add or remove) from different sites you are interested in. A typical RSS reader, would contain RSS feeds from news sites, sports facilities, and perhaps a few niche sites (such as SEO forums, blogs about SEO, etc.). The main aim of this software, inform you about the latest news and content on web pages you are interested in.
If you have used My Yahoo!(my.yahoo.com) or Bloglines(www.bloglines.com), you've probably used RSS Feeds already. These are online RSS aggregators - you get to choose from numerous websites and within minutes you can have your own launch-pad for knowing everything that's happening in your niche, in the world, or in sports.
As a first step to understanding how RSS Feeds work, I'd suggest that you use at least one RSS Aggregator - either an online RSS tool or RSS reading software like SharpReader(www.SharpReader.net) - and subscribe to a few RSS Feeds to learn how it works from a user's perspective.
Marketing and RSS
Using RSS Feeds, websites can:
? Attract more customers / visitors. ? Keep subscribers informed of new developments ? Allow subscribers to instantly learn of new articles, content and products on their website. ? Reduce the load on the subscriber's inbox by reserving newsletters for important news, special product offers, etc.
As a webmaster, you can use RSS Feeds to your advantage. Since blogging became insanely popular over two years ago, RSS Feeds have become mainstream. In other words, no matter what your niche, there's a good chance that you'll be able to find a few authority sites that publish RSS Feeds, thus syndicating their latest headlines.
How can you use this?
By providing your visitors relevant, self-refreshing content in the shape of the "latest news" by using RSS feeds from niche-relevant websites.
Now I'm not saying that you should cover your whole website (or even one whole page) with RSS Feeds. Such practice is frowned upon by search engines and will actually get your website banned from every single search engine index! RSS Feeds are meant for headline syndication, not for content scrapping.
Instead, you could use headlines from the top 3 forums in the weight loss niche to show the latest discussion threads on one side of the "News" page of your own weight loss website. The rest of the page would, of course, be covered with information (i.e. latest news) about your own website.
Or you could put a news ticker on your politics blog to not only give your blog a look of "being updated" but to also provide your readers with relevant, useful information.
If you sell sports goods and own an online store, you could run a "sports news" feed on your main page to attract the attention of your visitors and give your website a more authentic look and feel. There are many different ways you can use RSS Feeds to add value to your website. Make sure though, that you are merely using these Feeds as "icing on the cake", and not as the whole cake itself.
Finding RSS Feeds
Finding RSS Feeds is easy; there are several RSS-specific directories and niche search engines for you to browse through. However, the surge of blogging in the last two years has meant that any RSS search tool is inundated with blog spam. This makes it a bit harder to find RSS Feeds that you can actually use.
I've listed a few resources below that can help you get started in your search for finding relevant RSS Feeds.
? Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) ? BlogPulse (www.blogpulse.com) ? Daypop (www.daypop.com) ? Feedster (www.feedster.com) ? Findory Blogory (findory.com/blogs) ? Gigablast Blog Search (blogs.gigablast.com) ? IceRocket Blog Search (www.icerocket.com/?tab=blog) ? PubSub (www.pubsub.com) ? Technorati (www.technorati.com)
Once you've found the RSS Feeds of your choice, it's time to find out how to set them up on your website.
Setting up an RSS Feed to Display on your Website
Internet Marketers are a particular breed; we're always looking for an "easier" or "quicker" way of doing things; not necessarily shortcuts, but just ways to work smarter. It's the same with RSS. When I first came across it, I immediately went to Google and not only picked out a tool that could help me syndicate my own website (so I wouldn't have to spend time learning XML), but I also found several tools that I could use to display RSS Feeds from other websites onto mine! These tools are ridiculously simple, and I'd fully suggest that you try them before venturing into learning how to display RSS Feeds on your webpages through code.
If your website is in PHP, you can use the following software:
CaRP (www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/)
This software also has a free version, which displays a simple ad in the middle of the news display saying something like "these news headlines brought to you by CaRP". Try it out; it's easy to use, and will teach a lot about managing RSS Feeds.
There are JavaScript alternatives available as well (in case your website uses plain HTML).
Jawfish (www.geckotribe.com/rss/jawfish/)
Like CaRP, Jawfish also has a free trial, which is once again easy to setup if you can follow step-by-step instructions.
FeedRoll (www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/)
Another JavaScript alternative is FeedRoll - this is perhaps the easiest to use of the three mentioned here, but it offers less flexibility and choice of feeds compared to the others.
Of course, if you want more options (or have ASP or something on your website), go to your search engine of choice and type in "How to display RSS Feeds on my website" to get a quick listing of articles, tutorials and more tools to help you out.
More RSS
RSS is an amazingly versatile platform that can be used from anything as simple as running a news ticker to something as topical and time-sensitive as providing weather alerts to affected areas. In fact, any information that is:
? regularly updated ? time sensitive ? new
can be a good candidate for an RSS Feed. The key here is to remember that there are always new uses for information and technology... it's just a matter of pinning them down.
Brad Callen SEOElite http://www.seoelite.com
If you liked the lesson and want to learn more about SEO, visit http://www.seoelite.com/7DaysToMassiveWebsiteTraffic.htm and get your free copy of "7 Days To Massive Website Traffic!" right now!
Brad Callen SEO Elite http://www.seoelite.co
Posted in: javascript tutorial| Tags: Traffic Website Information article tool content rss feeds instantly unlimitedHow You Can Instantly Tap Into an Unlimited Source of Content, for Free!
Are you looking for dynamic, automatically refreshing, sticky content to spice up your website? If you are a webmaster, you’ll know how difficult it is to create fresh content to attract your subscribers and new visitors to your website. Paying freelance writers can cost you a fortune when you are just starting out and don’t have site revenues to fund expenses, and writing the articles yourself takes way too much time and takes you away from other important tasks (like actually running the site and making sales happen). Luckily, there’s a little-known but extremely easy tool that you can use to instantly jazz up your website and provide your traffic with valuable information. In fact, you might have heard of this tool before. Headline syndication, aggregators, XML format? Sound familiar? Yup, I’m talking about RSS Feeds.
If you haven’t heard about RSS Feeds, or what they are, I strongly urge you to print out this article, go to a quiet corner where you won’t be disturbed and literally devour every word of the rest of this article. Not only will it probably save your business, but it will revolutionize the way you think about the Internet. And if you’ve come across RSS feeds before or used them, then skim through the next section to refresh your memory (seriously, there is a lot of useful information that you might be missing out on) and then dive into the meat of this article, which will show you how to set up RSS feeds on your website to display dynamic, self-updating content with very little effort.
What Is RSS?
RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary”, although other terms such as “RDF Site Summary” (which emphasizes the file format) and “Really Simple Syndication” (which highlights the main selling point of RSS) are also useful in defining RSS by the book. However, bookish definitions don’t always explain things very well. What really is RSS? RSS is a platform over which a webmaster can instantly deliver summarized information about the latest / most important content on his website. This summary is usually a list of headlines and snippets – the headline will instantly inform the reader of what this new article or page contains and the snippet (usually the first few lines of the article) is to further entice the reader into visiting the website, or to simply give the reader more information. RSS has evolved into a commonly accepted XML standard, and many websites now use RSS Feeds (XML files containing the summaries) to publish “updates” about themselves. From the webmaster’s point of view, an RSS feed is meant to allow visitors and subscribers an easy way to keep themselves abreast of fresh content on their website (without having them visit the website first). Additionally, an RSS Feed also allows the reader to “preview” this fresh content, thus letting them decide immediately if the new article / content is interesting to them or not. All in all, RSS Feeds have the main purpose of enhancing user experience. Keep that last point as we go through the rest of this article – it is an underlying mindset to making RSS Feeds work effectively.
Using A RSS Feed
As an Internet entrepreneur, one of your most valuable tools can be a RSS Reader. This is essentially an aggregator – a collection of RSS Feeds (that you can add or remove) from different websites that you are interested in. A typical RSS Reader would include RSS Feeds from news sites, sports sites, and perhaps a few niche sites (such as SEO forums, blogs on SEO, etc.). The main purpose of this software is to keep you informed of the latest news and content on websites that you are interested in. If you have used My Yahoo! or Bloglines , you’ve probably used RSS Feeds already. These are online RSS aggregators – you get to choose from numerous websites and within minutes you can have your own launch-pad for knowing everything that’s happening in your niche, in the world, or in sports. As a first step to understanding how RSS Feeds work, I’d suggest that you use at least one RSS Aggregator – either an online RSS tool or RSS reading software like SharpReader – and subscribe to a few RSS Feeds to learn how it works from a user’s perspective.
Marketing and RSS
Using RSS Feeds, websites can:
* Attract more customers / visitors.
* Keep subscribers informed of new developments
* Allow subscribers to instantly learn of new articles, content and products on their website.
* Reduce the load on the subscriber’s inbox by reserving newsletters for important news, special product offers, etc.
As a webmaster, you can use RSS Feeds to your advantage. Since blogging became insanely popular over two years ago, RSS Feeds have become mainstream. In other words, no matter what your niche, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to find a few authority sites that publish RSS Feeds, thus syndicating their latest headlines. How can you use this? By providing your visitors relevant, self-refreshing content in the shape of the “latest news” by using RSS feeds from niche-relevant websites. Now I’m not saying that you should cover your whole website (or even one whole page) with RSS Feeds. Such practice is frowned upon by search engines and will actually get your website banned from every single search engine index! RSS Feeds are meant for headline syndication, not for content scrapping. Instead, you could use headlines from the top 3 forums in the weight loss niche to show the latest discussion threads on one side of the “News” page of your own weight loss website. The rest of the page would, of course, be covered with information (i.e. latest news) about your own website. Or you could put a news ticker on your politics blog to not only give your blog a look of “being updated” but to also provide your readers with relevant, useful information. If you sell sports goods and own an online store, you could run a “sports news” feed on your main page to attract the attention of your visitors and give your website a more authentic look and feel. There are many different ways you can use RSS Feeds to add value to your website. Make sure though, that you are merely using these Feeds as “icing on the cake”, and not as the whole cake itself.
Finding RSS Feeds
RSS is easy to find the source, there are several RSS-specific directories, and your niche search engine to browse. However, in the blog surge in the past two years, which means that any RSS search tools and blog spam flood. This makes it difficult to find RSS sources that some can actually use. We have listed below can help you in your search to find relevant RSS subscription started a few.
* Bloglines
* BlogPulse
* Daypop
* Feedster
* Findory Blogory
* Gigablast Blog Search
* IceRocket Blog Search
* PubSub
* Technorati
Once you’ve found the RSS Feeds of your choice, it’s time to find out how to set them up on your website.
Setting up a RSS Feed to Display on your Website
Internet Marketers are a particular breed; we’re always looking for an “easier” or “quicker” way of doing things; not necessarily shortcuts, but just ways to work smarter. It’s the same with RSS. When I first came across it, I immediately went to Google and not only picked out a tool that could help me syndicate my own website (so I wouldn’t have to spend time learning XML), but I also found several tools that I could use to display RSS Feeds from other websites onto mine! These tools are ridiculously simple, and I’d fully suggest that you try them before venturing into learning how to display RSS Feeds on your webpages through code.
If your website is in PHP, you can use the following software:
- Carp: This software is also brought to you carp
There JavaScript options, and (if your site uses just HTML). BUT, using javascript kind would defeat the purpose of using an RSS feed, such as search engines can not read javascript. It seems completely invisible to them.
- Jawfish: Like CaRP, Jawfish also has a free trial, which is once again easy to setup if you can follow step-by-step instructions.
- FeedRoll: Another JavaScript alternative is FeedRoll – this is perhaps the easiest to use of the three mentioned here, but it offers less flexibility and choice of feeds compared to the others.
Of course, if other options (or if, ASP or something on your website), select the type of search engine
RSS is a remarkably versatile platform from which everything that can go as simple as a News Ticker to be something used to date and time-sensitive as the provision of weather warnings in the affected areas. In fact, all information that is:
* regularly updated
* time sensitive
* new
can be a good candidate for a RSS Feed.? The key here is to remember that there are always new uses for information and technology… it’s just a matter of pinning them down.