Create your Business Online

About RSS Feeds: IS YOUR CONTENT READY FOR IT?

In today’s fast paced world, everything changes by the blink of the eye. People are constantly working on coping with change. The time is always “now”. Every second is precious. And those that value time are the ultimate winners of today. Providing information to people in the simplest form and in the fastest manner has become the order of the day. RSS feeds certainly help do the same!

Gone are those days where one has to spend hours looking for information one needs. Today, information-seekers have the luxury of automatically receiving information that they want on their computers without any effort! When you subscribe to an RSS feed, the aggregator (software) automatically detects latest updates in the links you’ve subscribed to, and downloads them. So you are notified almost instantly! There is no need to wait for newsletters in the form of email anymore.

Any list-oriented information on website that viewers might be interested in tracking or reusing will qualify for a feed. News headlines, document listings, search results, bookmarks, calendars, announcements, mailing lists databases etc. are some examples of feeds. So anytime any of the above content is modified or updated, the aggregator captures the same and intimates you.

Since RSS feeds almost completely decide the traffic on your site, it must be ensured that the content is perfectly feed-worthy. In order to make RSS feeds an effective marketing tool, the content provided by them should be presented in a concise, attractive manner such that the user returns back to the page in future for more.

One of the basic requirements is a catchy headline for the feed! An unattractive headline can lead to completely ignoring the site whilst an attractive one can draw traffic in unimaginable numbers! Hence, it is wise to spend a lot of time on getting an appropriate headline such that it captivates the reader to probe in further. Teasers are most effective traffic pullers, example: headlines that leave an element of suspense in it, that it draws a reader to find out more. Some people look for headlines that clearly convey the essence of the article. However, an element of curiosity must be maintained in the headline. So firstly, list out the various options for headlines. Evaluate each of them and eliminate the not-so attractive ones. Seek opinion of two or more people in selecting the best headline.

An attractive headline but a poor content in the article will drive the reader away and will not come back in future. It is important to have a very informative article that adds value to his /her existing knowledge, after reading it. The content must be good enough for people to want to come back in future or subscribe to mailing lists. Mailing list contacts are the biggest assets for a webmaster or blog owner as it gives him access to prospective customers. Hence, information that is well presented and difficult to find anywhere must be provided. It must be presented in simple language without any jargons. The regular user should be able to understand the content without having to read it twice. Content should be well formatted and validated before it is presented. It must also be updated from time to time because obsolete information is equivalent to junk.

Make sure that the aggregators can tell your entries apart from the rest of the ones. The entries should be made unique and easily traceable. Avoid including HTML markups in a feed as they may not display correctly and the possibility of error increases. Make your feed cache-friendly. Use a ‘feed-validator’ to check for problems in the feed.

Once you ensure that the above is taken care of, your content is certainly ready for an RSS Feed. Apart from the master feed, have corresponding feeds for those areas of your site that features a changing list of information. Go ahead and publish it! And watch the traffic flow in!

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What is an RSS Feed, How is it important for my site?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This is the latest buzz word in internet marketing. RSS is a text based tool used for communicating to visitors about news, new content and blog updates. It is a very important and latest communication tool used by web publishers who need to quickly inform readers so as to stay ahead in the race. The best part of RSS is that it is really simple to integrate with any website or blog. No special codes are required and programmers can easily build it within software so that bloggers can make use of it. Hence bloggers don’t need special training for the same.

RSS uses XML (extensible markup language) codes to communicate the text news to readers. RSS come in to versions RSS 1.0 found in older websites and RSS 2.0 found in new websites and blogs. This type of communication does not use large files (like video, graphics etc) and is thus readable on most computers with low bandwidth. There is a generic data format and this gets read by the reader program which interprets the XML language and displays the same to the website’s user.

Why is RSS important to a website/blog?

RSS is a great alternative to email newsletters. It is spam-free, and ‘up to date’ or sometimes ‘up to minute’. Publishers also need not maintain a strict privacy guideline; the content here is fully in control of the user. RSS is thus a very innovative tool and can deliver content such as news headlines, blog updates, website updates and new product offerings in different ways. It also has content summaries beside the headlines to offer the reader just enough insight on the topic. Reader is then pulled in by this and clicks into the link to read more. Another interesting aspect of RSS is that it aggregates the news and the reader can browse through the latest.

The news information is always related to what the user is currently interested in. It picks up cues from the website or the search item and displays relevant information. If the quality of content is not up to the mark, the user can remove it from the RSS reader and no further updates from this source will be available. Thus the opt-in content allows full control of information that the person views on the website, making it even more interesting and user friendly. It thus enables good websites to establish relationship and build trust and weed out the average and bad ones.

In this age where communication matters, being ahead in the race depends on your product and how quickly you can get the customer before your competitor does. Keeping all this in mind an innovative and effective communication tool like this can do wonders for your business. RSS as a marketing tool can bring in trust and traffic, the two important T’s in the web world.

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Effective promotional articles for your website/blog

You have great website/blog, but its not clicking well with the visitors. To sky rocket your clicks, use promotional articles to get the desired traffic on your website. This is the new way of marketing your website and building trust amongst your customers/visitors. You have content depth and ideas galore, and promotional articles can be the right tool for you to pull the crowd. And it pulls the right crowd to your website that can earn your lots through sales conversions.

How do you go about producing and using effective promotional articles to push your website?

Firstly, it is important to choose relevant and current hot topics. The users get attracted to this very quickly. Your article content must be new and not rehash of old articles. This will create mistrust in visitors. Have fresh topic or an old topic with current perspective and careful tag along your website/blog’s name and link. Research the topic well and concentrate on the content. Well written articles will attract the visitor and soon he would be clicking at your website to get more updates on the topic. Your aim of using these articles is to promote your name/your website’s name. Image creation is very important and new businesses and websites can expect great results out of great promotional articles.

Use simple and general topics to lure the casual visitor. You must have all types of article that relate to your core of the website. Example, if your website deals with fashion wear, you can have general articles on health and lifestyle. These articles draw in casual visitors who get new tips and get impressed with you/your website. They then learn more about your fashionable products and this might just reflect in your sales. With these articles you can include offers on your products. This is one way of advertising. So with promotional communication and offer you bring in new customers and building an image for yourself.

You are now ready with the content and design of your articles. Get them edited well as it makes a lot of difference. Errors of any sort would irritate the reader and also reflect on your professionalism. Get the edited with a good editor. You may convert them into ebooks or as audio books too. You may even convert the content into a video if necessary. Hosting either or all of these has become very simple. However, ebooks are the most easiest to distribute. Webmasters can distribute these easily to their traffic. It is advisable to distribute your articles to a few high traffic websites. Make sure these sites are relevant to your niche as you target the relevant traffic. You may also provide these articles as emails for those who subscribe to it. This way you ensure there is regular visit from these subscribers. This way you capture a share of the traffic to your website through your updated promotional articles.

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Blog Marketing Strategy: Reputation building

Reputation is the most important part of Blog Marketing. Whether the reputation is positive or negative, it works towards popularizing it. Yes, many blogs have become notoriously famous. How do you build reputation? By doing what you’ve set out for – BLOGGING!

Reputation here is nothing but the identity or the image one creates of one’s self in the blog world. The kind of reputation or identity that you create can to take you to amazing heights. In fact there are so many websites that have some sort of identity to them that make them famous. The identity one creates, sticks to the viewer’s/customer’s mind in no time. What sort of image/identity do you build? It depends on your judgment. If your product is serious and requires you to be very accurate, provide dependable and tangible value to the customer etc (eg. Financial product) then you must build a positive trust worthy image. Create the most appropriate identity for the product that you are trying to sell.

If your product is creative, one of a kind and needs the attention of your customers, you could also build a slight notorious image to your blog. This pulls in the customers to see what the controversy is all about. Sometimes this sort of identity catapults them to newer heights. Some bloggers topple existing top bloggers by openly disagreeing with them and challenging them by providing new, creative content that pushes down the existing product. Blog is one place where you can openly disagree and let people around know about it. What you should be careful is that in such circumstances you must be able to convince people about your product dominating the existing one. If that doesn’t happen, then the negative identity can ruin your reputation for good. Many unknown bloggers have got overnight success with this strategy; however all depends on the product itself performing well in tandem with the strategy.

A still more negative image or the bad boy of bloggers can mean a fortune. You create this obnoxious, ‘don’t care’ identity amongst your blogger buddies and customers that they start believing in you for being open. You’re the sort of person on blogs who arrogantly contradicts other bloggers. Customers play down your arrogance, since you provide them with something that’s accurate and different from others. Your arrogance here is your confidence in the product. Sometimes this sort of strategy can be a killer and get you to the number one spot. Point to note here is that arrogance with a mediocre product can be a huge dent on your image. So if you decide on adopting this identity then make sure your product rocks! Choose the sort of identity you want to create carefully. This can make or break your product.

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Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used,
but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times
in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on
your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above
by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a
different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.

Simple steps to check the density:
· Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.
· Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the
page.
· Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with
the same word, so you don’t change the text.
· When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have
used the keyword in that page.
· Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

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