I'm here to teach
you about how RSS Feeds can boost traffic for your
website. You may have heard of it, but I guarantee you
are not harnessing the full power of the tool. RSS Feeds
are very hot, and the marketing pro's are getting their
websites listed in Google within 2 to 3 days.
What is an RSS
Feed?
RSS stands for
"Really Simple Syndication." Think of RSS
this way: Whenever a writer who belongs to a syndicate
writes a column, they don't just write it for their local
paper, every article goes up on the newswire and any paper
who belongs to the syndicate can reprint it.
First, you have
to download an RSS Reader, a program that combines
all the news online in one place. You can download a reader
for free at www.RssReader.com. Once you've downloaded
a reader, you can click any topic that suits your need,
and only those topics will be delivered right to you..
Why would I put RSS on my website?
An RSS feed can
be thought of like this. Let's take five news sources
(Yahoo, MSN, CNN, ESPN, FOX). An RSS reader would scan
all five news sources and take each headline and create
a summary of the article. Now, you can actually sort the
news stories and have only the ones you are interested
in delivered right to your website from all five news
sources. Search Engines are crawling websites and looking
for fresh content. If you have an RSS Feed, you are getting
up to the minute news stories. These constantly change
whenever a new story comes out. The Search Engines will
give you a higher Page Rank because it thinks your page
is updated on a regular basis.
How do I add one
to my website?
I tried an RSS Feed
for the first time, and it took less than five minutes.
Here's what it looks like:
Bush Celebrates Shuttle's
Launch (AP) NASA sends shuttle back into space after long
pause (Reuters) Shuttle Discovery Blasts Into Orbit (AP)
NASA's aging workhorse returns to space (AFP) NASA Returns
to Flight as Discovery Reaches Orbit (SPACE.com / LiveScience.com)
As you can see,
this is my very first RSS Feed. All the news stories within
the last hour regarding the shuttle launch are now listed
for me and my visitors to read. Guess what? It took less
than 5 minutes, and I instantly have an RSS Feed. Why
do I need one?
Search Engines
are crawling your site and if you are not providing quality,
up to the minute content then you are getting placed further
down the rankings. Your competition who has this information
is getting FREE advertising from the Search Engines who
are placing their page 1st or 2nd when users search for
a particular keyword.
How do I put an
RSS Feed on my site?
You can now place
an RSS Feed on your website in THREE easy steps.
* Step 1:
Search for topics that you are currently interested in
(use Yahoo).
When you see an orange
RSS or XML box like the one above, you know that article
is compatible with a feed. Copy the URL of the webpage.
* Step 2:
Go to http://www.feeddigest.com
and paste the URL in the digest for them to create a two
line code for your webpage. You can also copy and paste
the long page of code if you understand programming.
* Step 3:
In Frontpage, Go to Insert - a web component - html markup
and paste the two or three line script that RSS Digest
gave you. Check it out! Your first RSS Feed! Try it yourself
right now, create your first RSS feed in under five minutes,
FREE! The only way you can truly learn about them is for
you to JUMP in FEET FIRST!
