Downloads:

simple-pie-example

Script:

Nick: Welcome SEO Video Blog – RSS Aggregators (PHP) My Top 3 and Simple Pie Tutorial.

James: If you have a blog installed on your website, its good from both a usability and SEO point of view to have your latest news aggregating on your HP.

Nick: Our last post shows how to burn your feed using feedburner, I would recommend that you use your feedburner feed URL where possible as it speeds up loading time.

James: Most aggregators allow you to display the title, date, description, author and thumbnails. It is an excellent way of showing google and other search engines you are adding to your searchable index and providing fresh dynamic content to your website.

Nick: My top 3 recommendations for aggregators are:
1.) : Simple Pie - www.simplepie.org
2.) Magpie RSS - http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/
3.) RSS Aggregator - www.rss-aggregator.com

Tutorial on how to set simple pie up…

James: Nick is going to show an example of using an aggregator:
http://www.crearesites.co.uk/simplepie

Nick: I have chosen to show simplepie as it is the simplest to use and set, up I have set up an environment at http://www.crearesites.co.uk/simplepie and the files will be available to download on the creare communications blog.

So starting at simplepie.org or The Creare Communications Blog download the files needed, unzip and just removed the simplepie.inc and index.php page as these are the only 2 files you need.

Open the index.php in your file editor or ftp client (dreamweaver), change the feed url so http://feeds.feedburner.com/crearesearchengineoptimisationblog and then ensure that it links to the .inc correctly.

Upload see feed displaying…

You can then edit your feed to display how you like, using CSS.

You can place this feed in your footer, sidebar or where ever your design permits.

Nick and James explain the benefits of using a .htaccess file and Mod Re-writes to generate SEO friendly URLs.

.htaccess code:

RewriteEngineOn

RewriteCond %{HTTP HOST}!^www.domain.co.uk$[NC]

RewriteRule^(.*)$http://www.domain.co.uk/$1[R,L]

Options+FollowSymLinks

RewriteCond %{THE REQUEST}^.*/index.php

RewriteRule^(.*)index.php$http://www.domain.co.uk/$1[R=301,L]

Other .htacess commands for Apache PHP servers:
http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/mod_rewrite-tips-and-tricks.html

Script:

Nick: Hi and welcome to our SEO video blog, we’re Nick and James from the Creare group.

To day we are going to go through the Mod Re-write function for Apache PHP servers and how to create SEO friendly URL’s.

James: So this is how you want your domain to display:

http://www.domain.co.uk/

There are variations that can get cached by the search engine bots for example:

http://domain.co.uk
http://www.domain.co.uk/index.php

Nick: So we do this to stop the search engines treating the same content as the 2 different pages. I have seen index pages and defaults pages that have picked up different PR (Page Ranks) to the root directory. This isn’t good practice and it also mean that any incoming links are re-directed back to the root directory.

James: So in order to use the Mod Re-Write settings, you need to ensure that your server has mod re-write enabled. We use one and one and fasthosts, both their re-seller packages and dedicated servers which are supported on their.

What you have to do to use the mod re-write settings is to create a .htaccess file, which is uploaded to the remote view.

Nick: There are 2 write conditions, the first re-directs back to www.domain.co.uk/ and the other re-directs away from /index.php.

I will show you a quick example of this now on Creare Communications. If we have a look at creare communications and remove the www. press enter we can see that it re-directs back to www.crearecommunications.co.uk and if we add index.php on the end it also re-directs back to the root.

James: Thanks Nick, the code that we used for that example is available on the blog post and can be copied and posted.

Most of us use some kind of blogging software on our websites, these create a lovely RSS feed which users can subscribe too. I have had problems in aggregating  my feeds from my blog onto my homepage or other pages and found that some feeders don’t work on various versions of PHP.

The use of an RSS aggregator will essencially pull your news / blog feed onto your PHP page and display the headings, dates, content, author, what ever you like really. Aggregators also have a very positive effect in terms of SEO. They will show the major search engines that your are adding fresh dynamic content to your site, providing the user with a better and more unique experience. It also means that search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN can index any new content more quickly.

My top 3 PHP RSS aggregators

1.) Simple Pie - www.simplepie.org
“SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, that puts the ’simple’ back into ‘really simple syndication’.” - Quote from simplepie.org

Simple pie is an excellent aggregator that includes just a single .inc file, this means it is pretty straight forward. It aggregates all variables within your RSS feed and is relativly easy to manipulate the way it looks on your page. I would say that using the online documentation is a must if you are a novice, as the zipped versions readme file isn’t great.

2.) Magpie RSS - http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/
“MagpieRSS is compatible with RSS 0.9 through RSS 1.0. Also parses RSS 1.0’s modules, RSS 2.0, and Atom. (with a few exceptions)” - Quote from magpierss.sourceforge.net/

This is the first aggregator that i came across after installing the blog, it requires a few more files, i tend to stick them in a folder called ‘rss’ of whatever really. The feed works well, there is a delay with the updating the news, but only by an hour or so. Supports pretty good online.

3.) RSS Aggregator - www.rss-aggregator.com
“RSS-aggregator is a tool, for Webmaster, allowing to display several feeds RSS on a single page.” - Quote from rss-aggregator.com

The RSS aggregator uses magpie software, buy does so in a much more friendly way. If you are having trouble with simplepie or magipie then use RSS aggregator. It also makes aggregating multiple feeds easier.

If you have a blog attached to the back of a website i would recommend to source the feed on the homepage both for your users and search engines.