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Monday, March 15, 2010

All about RSS

What is RSS?
RSS is "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", it’s a method of distributing links to content in your web site that you'd like others to use. In other words RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works for example blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format.
Generally RSS feed is applied to those webpages whose content gets updated frequently, so that whenever there is a change in your website those who have subscribed to your rss feed will get to know.

How to manually create rss feed:
Start with creating a new xml file, now add new item in this file by following this architecture
Title
Description
Link

For example in your website you have an articles webpage which is constantly updated, then you can put rss feed for that page by constructing rss-feed.xml file.
Now in this file suppose you have 10 articles listed, in that the first article is on
Enhancing traffic to your website through Linkbaiting
Which is stored at the location
http://www.himshilp.com/seo-articles/linkbaiting.htm
and whose description is
Linkbating is a new concept, but is becoming an effective way to drive more traffic to your website. In simple words linkbaiting is nothing but encouraging others to link back to you...
In your xml file the first item could be added like this
 < item>
< title >Enhancing traffic to your website through Linkbaiting < /title>
< link >http://www.himshilp.com/seo-articles/linkbaiting.htm < /link>
< description > Linkbaiting is a new concept, but is becoming an effective way to drive more traffic to your website. In simple words linkbaiting is nothing but encouraging others to link back to you... < /description >
< /item >
Similarly the other items of that webpage (other 9 articles with short description and link) could be added as other items. For example if the second article is on search engine optimization, then it could be added as
< item>
< title> Search engine optimization < /title>
< link>http://www.himshilp.com/seo-article/search-engine-optimization.htm< /link>
< description> SEO is the process of analyzing a web site and modifying it to enable search engines to read, understand, and index it correctly. This dramatically increases the traffic to the web site... < /description>
< /item>
Similarly the other 8 items could be created. Since RSS is a dialect of XML. All RSS files must conform to the XML 1.0 specification, as published on the W3C website. We need to insert this code
< ?xml version="1.0"?>
In any RSS document at the top level, there should be a element, with a mandatory attribute named version which specifies the version of RSS that the document conforms to. Here we are using the version attribute 2.0.
< rss version="2.0">

Subordinate to the element is a single element, that contains information about the channel (metadata) and its contents.
< ?xml version="1.0"?>
< rss version="2.0">
< channel>
< item >
< title>Enhancing traffic to your website through Linkbaiting< /title>
< link>http://www.himshilp.com/seo-articles/linkbaiting.htm< /link>
< description>Linkbating is a new concept, but is becoming an effective way to drive more traffic to your website. In simple words linkbaiting is nothing but encouraging others to link back to you... < /description>
< /item>
< item>
< title> Search engine optimization < /title>
< link>http://www.himshilp.com/seo-article/search-engine-optimization.htm< /link>
< description> SEO is the process of analyzing a web site and modifying it to enable search engines to read, understand, and index it correctly. This dramatically increases the traffic to the web site... < /description>
< /item>
< /channel>
< /rss>
Notice that we have closed the channel and rss tags in the end.
As indicated before since its an xml file it has to be saved as rss-feed.xml.
After defining all the items i.e. all 10 articles in this case we have to define our webpage as a channel.
The same tags title, description and link of your webpage has to be inserted. Now the complete file will be like this

< ?xml version="1.0"?>
< rss version="2.0">
< channel>
< title>SEO Article, SEO Blog, SEM Tips, PPC Article, Blog, Internet Marketing< /title> < link>http://www.himshilp.com/seo-articles/seo-articles.htm< /link> < description>Himshilp: Best SEO Company in India. Learn more about ethical search engine optimization techniques from our SEO Article, PPC Blog & Internet Marketing Tips Section. Contact for further details.< /description>

< item>
< title>Enhancing traffic to your website through Linkbaiting< /title>
< link>http://www.himshilp.com/seo-articles/linkbaiting.htm< /link>
< description>Linkbating is a new concept, but is becoming an effective way to drive more traffic to your website. In simple words linkbaiting is nothing but encouraging others to link back to you... < /description>
< /item>
< item>
< title> Search engine optimization < /title>
< link>http://www.himshilp.com/seo-article/search-engine-optimization.htm< /link>
< description> SEO is the process of analyzing a web site and modifying it to enable search engines to read, understand, and index it correctly. This dramatically increases the traffic to the web site... < /description>
< /item>
< /channel>
< /rss>
After doing this make hyperlink (rss –feed) articles page and link that hyperlink to the xml file(rss-feed.xml).
Validating The File
Once you are done with this process, it’s the time to check whether your file is valid or not. Either you can use feed validator service or just type the url of this particular feed in the address box, if everything is fine you will get to see the xml file otherwise you have to fix the errors.
Now its time to get Syndicated
Since your file is validated you can now submit your feed to various rss directories to get your feed listed. Which will help you to get more leverage of your articles in this case.
Summary:
RSS Feed is one of the best ways to market the information on a website without putting much effort. So it could also be used as one of the internet marketing strategy. Once the feeds on your website are updated, every subscriber automatically gets the update of new information on the site.
Also with rss you can also circulate your content to your networks of social networking websites. Its works amazingly, as rss helps you generate traffic to your website, which in turn helps you getting good backlinks , which helps in getting good ranking in Search engines, which is the major aspect of SEO.

RSS feed is just a link created on any webpage whose content gets updated frequently, so that whosoever subscribed to your rss feed will get notified whenever there is a change in that particular webpage. So obviously by providing RSS feed in your webpage you are increasing your webpage's visibility among others and in turn traffic of your website which is the key aspect of any SEO program.
This is my take. what is yours feel free to share with us.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Future trends of Internet marketing

Future trends of Internet marketing


Today, over 75% of website traffic comes through organic search results and 85% of people trust search engines for fulfilling their primary business needs. Even though people are inclining towards social networking websites, but Social networking websites are more or less served as taking second opinion, feedback for the products. Search engines still rule the internet industry in terms of finding products and services to satisfy their business and personal needs. Let us find out what will be the future internet marketing trends.

Search engine optimization:


Websites with fresh content and relevant links will still rule the internet but the search results will get more personalized and area specific. Already search engines algorithms have started paying attention to the geo-location, publication-date, past behavior, mobile device browsers and media content. Google has already launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search. So publishers and brands are expected to deliver more personalized, most comprehensive, fresh and relevant content to get indexed in search engines.

So testing keywords, content and links in mobile websites, local content and social media is a wise move to generate leads in the internet marketing industry.

PPC / Paid search:

The motive behind paid search advertising is to get instant traffic to the website and first page visibility for selected keywords. As Search engines will remain primary mean of getting information people will click on the relevant ads. And the PPC costs will remain reasonable. Mobile technology could be used in PPC platforms as a massive advantage. Big players don’t mind paying money for running PPC campaign if they’ll get good returns, PPC investment is also a good decision but be wise while choosing your keywords since your money is directly involved in that. I suggest you to take the advice of PPC expert before investing.

Email marketing

The future of E-mail marketing is also bright as now email providers have started integrating social media along with email. Google buzz, which integrates videos, photos, link with real time communication, is already introduced. Google buzz which is an addition to social features in Gmail is creating buzz everywhere. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. It builds easy to use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately. So in the upcoming years try to invest in these newly integrated email applications to generate leads and recurring customers.


Social media networking:


Lots of eyeballs are fixed on social media networking nowadays, so investing wisely in social media would be a good decision. Google has already started paying attention to social networking websites like twitter, facebook, linkedin etc. by indexing them in search results. Social media networking is in its initial stage, it has yet to evolve, and many a things are yet to come like Social networking websites will give more importance to interactivity and features like (RSS,Wiki,...) to the users, with the help of Web2.0. So future of internet marketing is going to be effected mostly by social media networking. Brand your websites with the help of these social networking websites. Observe carefully your fan pages in facebook and find out the customers who are diligently following you. Try to use these social media websites to get repeated and referral business from your clients. Also social networking websites are an effective way to take feedback of your product or services.
In short the future of social media networking is very bright, it is upto you how do you use them in the interest of your business.

Mobile Marketing

According to Wikipedia Mobile Marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.
Nowadays many people are carry handsets like iPhone and the Google Android phone capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web. So the latest trend in internet marketing is shifted towards providing low-cost mobile marketing solutions like mobile websites, mobile email marketing, mobile text messaging, mobile application development and area specific marketing.
These smart phones are opening new channels like SMS, mobile pages, online sales collateral, and virtual couponing or money mobile technology, which will simplify the reach to the targeted audience/ customer.

Blogging:

Blogging will remain there as a good investment in the internet industry for the new bloggers as well as for the established bloggers. As search engines loves fresh content and blogging is a way to update your website periodically with fresh and unique content so blogging will help driving visitors to your website in the upcoming years also. So try to convert prospects into customers by writing quality content for your website. Even many good article submitting directories are encouraging their members to submit quality articles to their directories and in return they are rewarding the customer with increased traffic, improved credibility and additional sales, which is a great reward to bloggers.

Corporate Video:

It is said that a picture is worth than thousand words, now you can imagine the impact which a video creates as compared to simple text. The main advantage of using online video is that it is interactive, so creates more impact on the viewer and makes it easily memorable. It can be easily shared with anyone and it is not expensive also to create. All these features of corporate video make it widely accessible. As YouTube is becoming the easiest way to generate targeted and continuous traffic to your website, it is a good idea to invest some time in low cost video marketing in the upcoming years. But be wise to invest in video promotion as however effective be the video is, it takes time to get loaded on the system and you can’t scan the video whereas text can be easily scanned and converted into digital format to create webpages.

Summary:

There could be many other internet marketing trends which can develop in the upcoming years. I suggest you should give some time to consumers as they take time to get adjusted with new trends. Try to attract new customers and don’t forget to concentrate on the repeated customers as well. Try to improve your brand by listening to the customers and engage them by taking their constant feedback.

Social media could be used effectively to market your brand reputation, so monitor constantly the invaluable feedback gathered from the conversations based on social media. Google caffeine’s real time search is also something which one should consider with respect to social media marketing.
Inbound marketing through social networking websites is going to be an added value to your brand name, Invest your time wisely in sharing information via blogs, articles, and participating in discussions, answering questions, all these are the ways you can all add value to your social media profile.


Do you agree with my viewpoints? Do let me know about your viewpoints about
future internet marketing trends.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Will SMO take over SEO?

Nowadays there is a speculation in the internet industry that SEO is going to be dead and social networking websites will take over SEO.

Since inbound links are the main criteria to generate traffic to any website, and social networking websites are providing enough backlinks to increase the visibility of the website and helps achieving positioning in top 10 search results, So it is a common belief among the top internet marketers also that SEO is going to be dead.

But there is a problem with this method of gaining backlinks, any person can open an account in social media websites without doing any real investment and then gets the authority to give feedback about any product/ service, whether he has much knowledge in that particular domain or not. Even sometimes it happens so that brand names of big companies are misused by various people through social networking websites. So if search engine will start giving much importance to these types of posts then it will surely affect their search result and in turn the user satisfaction. This would not be desirable by the major search engines as Google and Microsoft earn quite a lot from providing significant results from these search engines, so they need to keep their algorithm up-to-date in-order to deliver the best quality results. So as long as Google and Microsoft like big players are in business, SMO will not have much impact on the search results and SEO will remain in the internet industry.

85% of people still use search engine to satisfy their primary business or personal need. Now let us imagine a situation in which someone is using social media to promote his website without optimizing his website. Surely no one would like to believe on that as Social media is generally used to take second opinion about the product/ service. So if your website is not optimized and you straightaway want to market it through social media then your efforts will go in vain.

With out SEO the internet will be full of spam. Can you imagine a situation in which search engine is replaced by some of the social networking website like twitter or facebook and people start getting the results on the bases of their total number of followers? So the brand which has the highest number of followers will get listed first in that social networking website. Then the whole creditability of search engine will be lost and people will have no faith in search engine. I think they will no longer use the search engines for any of their needs.

Social Media will surely affect Google's real-time search results but high Page Rank websites will dominate the search results.

We need to understand that the role of SEO is not restricted only to provide quality backlinks but also
  • SEO is used to promote websites in such a way that they can be easily understood by search engines.
  • SEO helps increasing the visibility of the website for the defined keywords
  • SEO also helps your website to achieve higher rank in the search engine.
So according to my experience, SEO is not going to die any time in near future, but its going to further evolve and provide us better results. Do let me know about your viewpoints related to this topic.