Make the most of your news feed and see the benefits for your SEO.

Really simple syndication (RSS) allows you to receive regular updates from sites you are interested in. This means instead of you having to bookmark your favorite sites and remembering to check them, subscribing to a blog allows you to fine tune your online experiences. From a user perspective this means you can keep up to date with local news, track prices on Amazon, discover new recipes from your favorite chef, whatever you are interested in there is someone out there willing to expand your knowledge on the subject.

How does this relate to SEO?

There are numerous factors that influence your search engine rankings. Among these, regularly updated relevant content, time spent on site, number of backlinks, and amount of search engine traffic your site receives will positively influence your rankings. A news feed will help tick all the above boxes. RSS feeds more likely to be indexed faster, as Google will realise it contains consistent relevant content.

You might wonder why this is important… It gives you a clear advantage over your competitors, for example if you were a plumber at the time of the government announced its boiler scrappage scheme, and your site is regularly updated and therefore indexed first (unlike the rest that are still being indexed monthly), it doesn’t take a genius to work out who takes advantage of the first listings.

Last week I mentioned that 1/5 internet users are uncomfortable buying online, building a ‘relationship’ with clients and suppliers will install that trust to buy. From an SEO perspective using RSS feed as a communication method we are able to generate keyword-rich content and support those all important long-tail keywords, at the same time allowing for on going communication with clients and suppliers, this in turn builds trust and an established reputation.

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.

The importance of Social Media Networks ( Twitter, Myspace.com, Facebook, Stumble Upon Mixx, Delicious) as a platform to promote interesting and engaging business reviews is fast becoming a valuable tool in a link building campaign for SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Even though this idea has been around for years what has changed recently is the way that business blog reviews are becoming less annoying and more interesting and engaging.

The growth of social media networks means that (for example, Facebook, continued its seven-month rule as the number-one online destination among social networks, with 144.3 million unique visitors and the other networks catching up fast) many businesses are looking to promote their products via ‘adds’ or other methods with keyword rich links to this vast potential market.  A strategy that is sometimes overlooked by promoters is the effectiveness of social media sites and the potential of business blogging.

The value of business blogs is without doubt a huge asset and resource tool in a marketing campaign.  With a potential market of millions conversation rates for any product or service could be quite substantial.
Blogging can create a strong engaging presence to a product raising visibility to a brand and increasing value to that site.  It would of course depend on how engaging the blog is and how keyword rich it is. .  The importance of promoting a business by this method depends firstly on the strength of the content and secondly on the back- link.  Content should be original, unique, useful, accessible and if commercial subtle in its sales pitch if its going to be successful.
Social bookmarking sites can make a site visible not only to an audience but also for search engine web crawlers or spiders to find that business and thus increase the page rank.  Many businesses understand the values of promotion from localised ‘traditional methods’ newspapers, magazines ads yet fail to understand the potential market from social media world audiences.  The days are gone when we think of business markets from one particular area, or even one country.

StoryRank is a theoretical algorithum designed for Google’s news service. Google news is an automated news aggregator, The initial idea was created by Krishna Bharat in 2001 with the principle of using various high quality news services to publish relevant content via its news service. You can submit you own website to Google’s news service to basically be asked to be aggregated into their news functionality. http://www.google.com/support/newspub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40787.

StoryRank basically is the value and strenght of an article which may feature on your website / RSS feed and be accepted into Google news.

With technology moving so quickly it doesn’t take a lot to fall behind in understanding the latest products, services or tools used to promote a business. Of course it technology that people are using to search for products and services and it is companies who are looking for new business marketing techniques to stay a float within this economic downturn.

When choosing a company to promote your business it can sometimes be complex to understand the technological jargon that is being spoken. Sometimes it is easier to ignore what is being said so long as your site is performing and creating new business for you.

So what are Meta tags, RSS and other terms that you are being told is improving your SEO?

Meta Tags; This may be a term that you as a customer hears a lot. “Were looking at your meta tags”, or “ We’re improving your meta tags”. This in lamest terms is a piece of coding that is hidden internally behind your web site. The user does not see it, however search engines such as Google does and picks up on this and displays this in your SERP (search engine result position).

Blog; Many people have heard of these ‘blogs’  but may not necessarily know what it does. A blog is shortened from web blog and is a form on Internet communication to inform browsers of new updates or information via an RSS feed. This improves SEO by showing search engine that your site is being updated with fresh regular content.

RSS; Really. Simple. Syndication.  This is an ideal XML format to share news updates and other web content. It saves building new pages to accommodate text and displays it all in one place. Ideal for companies that have a lot of new products or services they want to promote them to their users regularly.

Caching: You consultant may have told you they are waiting till your site is cached before they will know if their amendments have made any improvement. Basically caching is a computer process that stores you web files to you computer for later access. So if changes are made, the next time it is cached the search engines will make notice and possibly re rank your site. The cached version of your site shows the last time a search engine indexed your site.

There are many other terms that are thrown around within an SEO department and all of them, fortunately, make sense to the consultants working to improve your web site. It can be frustrating to not understand some jargon that has become everyday language at The Creare Group, however we are more than happy to explain terminology and the ways in which this is beneficial to getting you to that all important top spot.