Raise Your Website Traffic with RSS - Blogs and YAHOO! Part 2. by
Kamau Austin
In our first part of this article, we raised the question of whether blogging
and its distribution tool, RSS feeds, are really useful for Internet and Search
Engine Promotion. Are RSS feeds and blogs really the next big thing in web
marketing, distribution, and content creation--or are they just hype?
There is a lot of hype around RSS, blogs, and derivative technologies like
podcasting. But are they really useful to the serious Internet marketer or are
they just the subjects used by marketers looking to create new products to grab
our hard-earned marketing dollars.
We also covered the objections and reservations from some Internet marketers
about the usefulness of RSS feeds and blogs to the bottom-line of their
ebusinesses. This can be contrasted to our discovery of people like Willie
Crawford and companies like Weblogs, which generate 6- and 7-figure incomes
from blogs, RSS, and related technologies with Google Adsense.
To illustrate if the typical Internet marketers--not just web gurus--can
benefit from blogs and RSS feeds, I promised to share my experiences with my
new sites not yet optimized for the search engines.
With virgin websites, I could observe the traffic pulling power of blogging,
pinging, and RSS. If you would like to read or familiarize yourself with Part 1
of this article, you can read it at...
http://www.searchengineplan.com/articles/feb06-rss-prt1.htm
To test the effectiveness of the ability of RSS feeds and blogs to attract and
drive traffic to my web properties, I did some quick and insightful research on
the topic. Brandon Hong's Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS was the resource
best enabled me to understand the techno-jargon associated with blogs and RSS
feeds. Believe me, I have a 10-year background in information technology, and I
can't make heads or tails out of the alphabet soup served up by tech geeks on
blog and RSS media.
Plus, I run a very busy SEO consultancy and virtual real estate (VRE AdsenseT
and Affiliate Sites) side business, so I don't have the time to muck around in
nebulous articles on these topics.
If you even remotely feel like me about the complexity of blogs or RSS, do
yourself a favor and obtain Brandon Hong's multimedia ebook of screen-capture
videos.
You can read a full review of the book at...
http://www.searchengineplan.com/articles/hongrss.htm
I have been blogging for almost 3 years, but RSS feeds have been harder to
grasp in terms of development and marketing. The easiest way to start blogging
is to setup an account with www.Blogger.com or www.Bloglines.com. Blogger will
actually walk you through the process.
Experienced web designers should not have a problem setting up a
www.Blogger.com account. Blogger.com is actually a good initial choice because
it provides an easy setup for RSS feeds. The setup can be done by going to the
Settings Tab in Blogger, clicking the site feed link, and filling out the
forms.
The next issue to consider is the complex RSS compatibility issue. You can
sidestep the decision about whether to go with RSS version 2.0 or Google's Atom
standard by "burning your RSS feed" or making them more compatible with all
popular RSS formats with a third party service like Feedburner.com.
After creating your RSS feed in Blogger, you should have it burned in the
Feedburner.com service; it will guide you through the process. The optimized
Feedburner.com RSS feed is then ready to be submitted to the major RSS
directories.
I would suggest creating a few descriptions of your blog and then submitting
both your blog and RSS URLs to the appropriate RSS and blog directories. My
firm fast-tracks blog and RSS feed promotion by submitting them to about 90
directories that specialize in this type of media--including Yahoo! and MSN RSS
content services.
Both the Blogger.com service and, more extensively, Feedburner.com can be
configured to ping the major RSS and blog directories. This means they signal
or alert these directories whenever you update posts on your blog in real time.
Perhaps most importantly, you get traffic statistics about your RSS subscribers
and readers.
The results of my RSS and blog traffic research over the last 3 months are
amazing! I have been totally blown away by the research. I am excited about RSS
and blog usage, despite the good and bad news: The bad news: According to a
White paper on blogging, sponsored in part by Yahoo!, 88% of Internet users
don't know what RSS technology is and 96% of Internet users stated they do not
use it!
The good news: 27% of Internet users experience RSS feed content on their My
Yahoo and MSN web accounts, although they don't realize it! Moreover, 4% of
Internet users actively use RSS feeds. This means 31%, or almost one-third
(1/3), of Internet users in the U.S. read RSS feeds.
With almost 150 million U.S. Internet users and 600 million net users
worldwide, you do the math on the large numbers of people reading RSS feeds
(even if unwittingly).
More positive stats on RSS and blog usage, according to the Pew Internet &
American life project: - (1) Fully 19% of online Americans ages 18-29 have
created blogs - (2) 11 million American adults say they have created blogs -
(3) 27% of Internet users reported in November that they read blogs This
translates into 32 million American adults who read blogs This information
shows that RSS and blogs are growing technologies for serious Internet business
people to adapt into their marketing mix.
My personal research over three months showed that when I regularly updated my
blog sites, burned RSS feeds pinging the major directories increased my traffic
a whopping 25%!
Blogs, RSS feeds, and articles distributed regularly to major host sites and
distribution services actually rivaled the traffic of my highly optimized
top-ranking SEO and VRE sites. More importantly, traffic from blog, RSS, and
article-driven traffic actually made twice as much income in sales and AdsenseT
revenue than my traditional SEO sites.
Needless to say, once a skeptic, I am now a big believer in the power of RSS
feeds and blogs to boost my bottom-line. I will leave you with a controversial
statement for a SEO and Searchpreneur.
Dr. Jakob Nielsen recently referred to search engines as "the leeches on the
Internet." He feels "Search engines extract too much of the Web's value,
leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content.
Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites
and software vendors."
With Yahoo! and MSN soon to enforce email postage, according to a recent
article by the New York Times, RSS and blogging may become the best and latest
arsenal for small business to continue to survive and thrive in the Internet
economy.
To stay informed on the latest blogging, RSS, and SEO developments, visit
www.searchengineplan.com/blogs/seoblog.htm. Kamau Austin is publisher of
www.eInfoNEWS.com and runs www.SearchEnginePlan.com. He is author of Always On
Top -- How to Get the Highest Search Engine Ranking for your Website. See more
about his strategies at www.AlwaysOnToptheBook.com.
About the Author
Kamau Austin is Owner of AMS Publishing and is a business and fitness wellness
advocate. See more of his health and fitness tips at
www.HealthandFitnessVitality.com or get Internet marketing solutions at
www.SearchEnginePlan.com
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