Article printed from SiteProNews: August 2, 2006

Feature Article By Kim Roach (c) 2006

According to DoubleClick, one of the nations largest email
marketing companies, the average open rate for an electronic
newsletter is 27.5%, while the average click-through rate is
7.2%.
Email is not the dependable content delivery mechanism that it
once was. Spam filters, blacklists and content overload have
plummeted email delivery rates. Chances are that more than half
of your email subscribers aren't reading your messages. In fact,
your message may not even make it to their inbox.
What is a web master to do? Well, email is still the primary
content delivery standard for most Internet users. However, you
can start complementing your email marketing with other content
delivery channels to increase your delivery rate. RSS is one
such mechanism.
When LockerGnome.com began to promote their own RSS feeds, they
began seeing 5 times the number of RSS subscribers against email
subscribers. Even more interesting, they also began receiving a
500% better clickthrough ratio with RSS than with traditional
email.
You can add RSS to your marketing mix in order to increase your
readership, increase the response to your marketing messages, and
improve your search engine placement.
What is Possible
There are so many options when it comes to content delivery with
RSS. Many web masters online today are limiting themselves merely
to what they've seen others do. However, the possibilities extend
much further.
One of the basic uses of RSS is to deliver content updates. Your
RSS subscribers can receive updates that you have made to your
website, including new articles, downloads, coupons, etc. This
was not possible with email because most subscribers would go
hysterical if they found 5 emails in their inbox one day talking
about the different updates to your site.
RSS solves this problem, enabling people to use aggregators to
access information at their convenience. You can also use RSS to
deliver news updates, quick tips, quotes, new coupons, job
listings, classifieds, real estate listings, and new forum
posts.
RSS Marketing Techniques - From Basic to Advanced
Once you have created your RSS feed, it's time to start marketing
it. Marketing your RSS feed is completely different from
marketing an email-based newsletter. However, similar to
newsletter promotion, promoting your RSS feed begins on your web
site and with your existing audience.
To let people know that you are offering an RSS feed, you will
need to display an RSS image on a high-profile space of your web
site. Your visitors will be much more likely to see your RSS
image if you use one of the well-known buttons to represent your
feed. You should place this button towards the top of your page
for best exposure.
To see some good examples of web sites that are promoting their
RSS feeds, go to http://www.sitepoint.com and
http://www.lockergnome.com
Just like your ezine subscription box, your RSS feed should be
noticeable and available from every page of your web site.
RSS Presentation Page
You must also have a page on your web site that explains exactly
what RSS is. Many of your visitors may not know about this new
technology. This is especially true if your website does not
pertain to internet marketing or some other tech field.
Take your visitors step-by-step through the process of locating,
subscribing and reading an RSS feed. By doing this, you are
informing your website visitors and helping to promote the use of
your own RSS feed.
To see a really good example of this, go to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3223484.stm
If you have different categories of RSS feeds, Provide a link to
each of these feeds right next to the content category to which
it belongs. For example, you could create a different RSS feed
for different categorical topics. Not only does this provide more
options for your visitors, but it also provides additional
marketing opportunities.
Auto-Discovery
If you have an RSS feed, then you should definitely enable
Auto-Discovery aggregation. Some RSS aggregators have the
capability of quickly finding an RSS feed on your web site if
you have placed a simple piece of code in the head section of
your html.
Here's the code:

link title="RSS" href="ENTER-RSS-URL" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate"

Simply replace the RSS feed URL and place the above code between
the head tags on each page of your web site.
Submit Your RSS Feed to Search Engines and Directories
Having an RSS feed opens up entirely new marketing possibilities.
You can now submit your RSS feeds to a variety of specialized
search engines and directories. For a complete list, go to
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Syndicating Rich Media Content
RSS is not just about text. You can also use it to syndicate
audio and video content. For example, you can now submit media
RSS feeds to Yahoo. They are using these feeds to make it easier
for visitors to find rich media content at Yahoo search.
(http://search.yahoo.com/)
To get started, go to the Media RSS feed submission page.
(http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/submit)
Exchanging RSS Feeds
As you know, link exchanges have lost much of their ranking
power. However, there is an advanced form of link exchange that
everyone can take advantage of.
This is the RSS feed exchange. By exchanging feeds with other
quality sites in your industry, you gain additional content,
about 5 incoming links, and some direct traffic as well.
Link directories are not beneficial to either partner. Each
partner should put each other's content in a high-traffic area on
their site. This allows both partners to increase their web site
exposure, which is much more effective than a link exchange that
is often buried on unknown pages.
Customized RSS Aggregators
Another advanced RSS marketing strategy is to offer your own
customized RSS aggregator to your web site visitors. This will
allow you to enforce your brand and provide an additional point
of contact with your subscribers.
Hotmail did the same thing with email. Unfortunately, that kind
of opportunity is long gone. RSS, on the other hand, is still a
fairly new technology that you can use to create an effective
viral marketing campaign.
If you have a large enough audience, you could certainly
encourage them to start using your RSS aggregator. If executed
correctly, your name could soon be branded all over the
Internet because of this new communication model.
To start creating your own branded RSS aggregator, go to
http://www.deskshare.com/awrc.aspx or http://www.customreader.com.
Get Your Blog in the News
If your blog reports on the latest news in your industry, then
you may be the perfect candidate for news sites. If you're not
reporting on the latest news in your industry, then I strongly
suggest that you start. News is one of the hottest topics on the
Internet.
By delivering the latest news to your visitors, you can submit
your site for inclusion in large online news sites such as
NewsNow. Once you have become a publisher in their news network,
your articles will be exposed to an audience of more than 750,000
monthly visitors.
If you think your site could make the cut, go to
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/publishers/site-submission-intro.html .
One of the most exciting developments in the blogoshpere is
the release of a new service for bloggers at BlogBurst.com.
BlogBurst is the industry's first blog syndication network,
delivering content to several newspaper sites, including SF
Gate (http://www.sfgate.com), the Washington Post
(http://www.washingtonpost.com), and the Houston Chronicle
(http://www.chron.com).
To be accepted into the BlogBurst network, you must have a full
text syndication feed in RSS or Atom, make weekly posts, and
have good writing style.
If you think your web site could benefit from some increased
news exposure, check out http://www.blogburst.com.
To be truly successful with your marketing campaigns, start
combining your contact methods. By using RSS in addition to
email marketing, you will reach a much larger audience.

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I think that we all know now how important backlinks are for
the search engine ranking success of our web site. I also think
that we all know now that one way to get these backlinks is by
doing link exchanges with other sites. (For the uninitiated,
backlinks are links on other web sites that point to ours.)

But do we know that there are various things we need to check
before agreeing to exchanging links with another web site?
After all, the whole point of exchanging links with others is
to benefit from the ranking of their web sites. It is therefore
imperative that we investigate ahead of time as to whether
exchanging links with another site is to our advantage or not.

I have thought about this whole idea of link exchange
preparation and came up with a 3-step process that involves an
analysis of 3 pages of the web site we want to exchange links
with. The 3 pages are:

- the home page where we will need to check 7 things about that
page,

- the directory page: this is the page that contains a list of
categories that the site has put together in a bid to organize
its link exchanges. We need to check 7 things here,

- the backlink page: this is the page that will contain our
backlink. We also need to check 7 things here.

Note that in some cases, the 'target' web site will not have a
directory page. In that case, our analysis will be a 2-step one
rather than a 3-step one.

In this first article, of maybe 2 or 3, we shall look at the 7
things (organized in 2 groups) we should check about the home
page of the target web site.

1. We need to check what Google thinks of the site. This is
done by looking at some things that Google is happy to report
about a site. The idea here is to see if there are any problems
with the site, from Google's point of view, that would cause us
to decide not to exchange links with them.

I suggest that you look at:

a) how many pages the site has indexed? This can be done
by using 'site:www.site.com' in the Google search box,

b) how many backlinks does Google report for the site? This can
be done by using 'link:www.site.com' in the Google search box,

c) is the site listed in Google's index? This can be done by
using 'http://www.site.com' in the Google search box,

d) what is the Page Rank of the site/home page? There are
several ways of doing this. One way is to get the Google
toolbar and visit the web site to see its PR. Another way is to
use one of the many web sites on the Internet that enables us to
find the PR of any web site. And still another way is to look
for software that will tell you the PR of any web site.

Although you will generally need to look at these 4 things
together in a sort of table in order to decide whether the
target site passes the first step or not, there are definite
results that would cause me to decide straight away not to
exchange links with a site:

- if the PR of the site is zero,

- if the site is not listed in the Google index,

- if the site does not have any pages indexed by Google.

You will note here that I am using Google as the first step in
the preparation. In fact, we can use any search engine if we
want to but given that Google is more fussy than others when it
comes to backlinks, I would suggest using Google in the above
first step.

2. I would then suggest that you look at 3 tags of the home page
of the target site, in a bid to determine if the site has a
theme compatible with yours:

a) Its title tag,

b) Its description tag,

c) Its keywords tag.

There are several ways of checking the content of a web page's
tags. If your browser, such as MSIE, allows you to view the
content of a web page, then you will need to visit the home
page and click on the right menu command to view the content
of the page. Then you will need to scroll to the top of the
page to view the content of its tags. The alternative is to
look for web sites on the Internet that enable you to view the
content of the tags of any web pages. There are many such web
sites on the net.

The reason for this step is that Google takes into account the
theme of web sites when looking at backlinks. This means that
backlinks from a site that has a theme compatible with yours
will be of higher value than one that comes from a site that
has nothing to do with what your site is about.

As mentioned above, this preparation is for the home page of the
target web site and is only the first step. There are 2 more
steps: one for the directory page and one for the backlink page.

It is only when the target web site passes the 3 steps that you
should feel confident about exchanging links with them in that
the link exchange will be to your advantage. Needless to say
that the target web site will also need to conduct a similar
3-step analysis of your site prior to wanting to exchange links
with you.

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Go ahead and click on the logo above and get started. After you do, leave me a comment or two to let me know what you think of the system. Thanks for looking,

-Anthony

Here is a photo of My wife Shana and I.