RSS is the latest craze in online publishing. But what exactly is RSS?
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RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format similar to XML, and is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be universally understood.
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RSS allows publishers to “syndicate” their content through the distribution of lists of hyperlinks.
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It has actually been around for a while, but with the advent of spam filters and online blogging, it is fast becoming the choice of ezine publishers who want to get their message across to their subscribers.
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However, not much attention has been given to the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization.
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Why Search Engines Love RSS
Many SEO experts believe that sites optimized around themes, or niches, where all pages correspond to a particular subject or set of keywords, rank better in the search engines.
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For example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets.
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Search engines like Google seem to prefer tightly-themed pages.
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But where does RSS figure in all this?
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RSS feeds, usually sourced from news feeds or blogs, often correspond to a particular theme or niche.
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By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can enhance your site’s content without having to write a single line on your own.
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It’s like having your own content writer - writing theme-based articles for you - for free!
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How can RSS improve my Search Engine Rankings?
There are three powerful reasons why content from RSS Feeds is irresistible bait for search engine spiders.
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1. RSS Feeds Provide Instant Themed Content
There are several publishers of RSS feeds that are specific to a particular theme.
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Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for.
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Adding these keywords to your pages helps Google tag your site as one with relevant content.
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2. RSS Feeds Provide Fresh, Updated Content
RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific intervals. When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped.
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These changes are immediately effected on your pages with the RSS feed as well. So you have fresh relevant content for your visitors every hour or day.
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3. RSS Feeds Result in More Frequent Spidering
One thing I never anticipated would happen as a result of adding an RSS feed to my site was that the GoogleBot visited my site almost daily. To the GoogleBot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily.
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What this means to you, is that you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the GoogleBot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.
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How does this benefit you as a marketer?
Well, for example, let’s says a top Internet Marketer comes out with a new product that you review and write up a little article on, and that your competitors do the same.
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Google generally tends to index pages at the start of the month and if you miss that update, you will probably need to wait till the next month to even see your entry in.
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But, since your site has RSS feeds, it gets indexed more frequently. So the chances of getting your page indexed quickly are much higher.
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This gives you an advantage over the competition, as your review will show up sooner in the search results than theirs.
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Imagine what an entire month’s advantage could do to your affiliate sales!
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Why JavaScript Feeds Are Not Effective
Some sites offer JavaScript code that generates content sourced from RSS feeds for your site.
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These are of absolutely no value in terms of search engine rankings, as the GoogleBot cannot read JavaScript and the content is not interpreted as part of your page.
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What you need is code that parses the RSS feed and renders the feed as html content that’s part of your page.
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This is achieved using server side scripting languages like PHP or ASP.
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A good free ASP script is available from Kattanweb.
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An equally good PHP script is CARP.
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But, if you’re looking for an easier solution, you should check out Express RSS.
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So in conclusion, besides optimizing on page and off page factors, adding RSS feeds to your pages should be an important part of your strategy to boost your search engine rankings.

By Satyajeet Hattangadi

Yahoo has announced its new pay-per-click product: Yahoo Search Marketing (SM). This product was formerly known as Overture, but you may also recognize it as Goto.com, the name it went under prior to 2001. In our experience, advertising with Google AdWords has resulted in higher conversion rates than with Yahoo Search Marketing (SM). However, both programs have advantages and disadvantages. How does Yahoo SM compare with Google’s AdWords? Let’s start by looking at how they differ (all amounts are in USD).
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Bidding
Yahoo SM

• Yahoo places your bid at 1 penny over your next lowest competitor. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per-click, and the next highest bid is $1.95 per-click, you will only pay $1.96 per-click.
• Yahoo allows you to see who you are bidding against and what they are bidding, so you know exactly where you will rank, and how much you will pay.
• Yahoo’s maximum bid is $999.99
• Yahoo’s minimum bid is $0.10

Google AdWords

• Google doesn’t tell you how much you will pay-per-click. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per-click, you will pay anywhere from $0.05 to $3.00 per-click.
• Google does not allow you to know how much your competitors are bidding per-click.
• An advantage with Google is that you will rank higher if your click-through rate (CT rate) is better (a CT rate is the ratio of clicks on your ad to the number of times your ad is shown). Thus, you may have a better rank than your competitor, even if he or she bids more than you (because of your CT rate).
• Google’s maximum bid is $100.00
• Google’s minimum bid is $0.05

Low CT Rate Dropping
Yahoo SM

• Yahoo will drop your keyphrase if the CT rate is ranked very low for a significant period of time. In actuality, this rarely happens. Your keyphrase has to perform quite dismally for it to get dropped.

Google AdWords

• Google drops keyphrases with POTENTIALLY low CT rates. If Google deems that your keyphrase has done poorly for other customers, then your keyphrase won’t even get the chance to make a single (first!) impression. This can be very frustrating when your keyphrases are very relevant, but Google won’t even let them see the light of day. The flip side, of course, is that if your keyphrase’s CT rate is good, you will get a higher ranking (even if you bid lower than your competition).

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Showing Ads by Country and Language
Google AdWords

• Google allows you to choose your country and language by selecting them in a dropdown box. Very simple, very efficient, and very effective.
• The language is based on the language setting of the visitor’s computer. For example, if you are targeting Spanish Americans, than you will want to target the Spanish AND English languages because many Spanish Americans use English computers. Just make sure that you choose Spanish-only keyphrases.

Yahoo SM

• Yahoo’s system for countries and languages is downright miserable. You have to re-register for every country (and only twenty countries are available).
• Worse, you have to re-submit all your keyphrases and reset all your bids.
• What’s more, each country has different criteria for submission. This means you have to rebuild your campaign for the USA, UK, and Australia. Canada is there, but you are not allowed to submit English keyphrases (?!?), only French (FYI: Canada’s workforce is 73% English, 22% French). In Switzerland, you can submit in Italian, German and French; there is no language differentiation.
• Notable missing countries: Mexico, China, English Canada (which is grouped with the USA), South Korea, India, Russia…

Reports
Yahoo SM

• Yahoo offers many useful reports. And while you can find just about everything you might need, it’s left up to you to figure out which report contains the information you were looking for.

Google AdWords

• Google offers customizable reports. You can ask for anything you want, and you will get it.
• They also offer to email you your customized report on a regular basis.

Keyphrase Comparison
I have bid on some keyphrases from February 1st to April 30th, and held them in similar positions during that time. These numbers are for search related impressions only. These campaigns were not involved in content advertising.
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“Okeeffe print(s)” - #3 position
Yahoo:? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Google:
1 click? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 63 clicks
8 impressions? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1,642 impressions
12.5% CT rate? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3.8% CT rate
$0.10 cost-per-click? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? $0.13 cost-per-click
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“Ansel Adams photo(s)” - #5-6 position
Yahoo:? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Google:
20 clicks? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 25 clicks
2,401 impressions? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2,529 impressions
0.8% CT rate? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1.0% CT rate
$0.05 cost-per-click? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? $0.06 cost-per-click
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Conversions
Our client February Point counted emails + contact forms as conversions. Below is a comparison from February 1st to April 30th.
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“Real estate Bahamas” - #3 position
Yahoo:? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Google:
1,037 clicks? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1,557 clicks
19,879 impressions? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 35,348 impressions
5.2% CT rate? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4.4% CT rate
$0.34 cost-per-click? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? $0.45 cost-per-click
3 conversions? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 13 conversions
0.30% conversion rate? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 0.84% conversion rate
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Clearly then, Google AdWords is a better choice if you are interested in clicks, impressions, and conversions. If you want the lower cost-per-click for the same position, it would seem that Yahoo is the better choice (though conversions are lower).
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Competition
- FindWhat is possibly the third biggest pay-per-click (PPC) search engine, although there are a few that might be its equal: Kanoodle, GoClick, 7Search, Search123.
- E-spotting is very big in the UK, and competes heavily with Google and Yahoo in the PPC marketplace.
- MSN is getting ready to launch its own PPC engine to compete with Google and Yahoo (MSN currently uses Yahoo SM on its site). No date yet, but watch out for it.
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Overall
To sum up, you will definitely have more control over your money with Yahoo’s system. It is more open and honest, and you will pay less per-click than with Google’s system. Google does not tell you why you are paying what you are paying, but it does have the added bonus of rewarding you with rank for a better converting ad.
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Of course, Google does get more traffic and it converts better than Yahoo, and in the end, isn’t that what we’re all looking for? Thus, Google should be the winning choice for anyone that is looking to convert clickers into buyers. Because after all, who doesn’t want to increase their sales?

By Shawn Campbell

By about 2pm everyday, each of my team members has spoken to a good handful of clients and potential clients who have been speaking with other SEO firms. This is an absolutely wonderful thing to see, as in the past in our industry, not enough of our consumers were questioning what they were purchasing. It is a sign that accountability will come and the bad guys will be weeded out.

While this is a good sign, it’s the cause of my having to answer the same questions over and over. The consumers in the SEO world are being fed out and out lies by some of the people who call themselves experts in the area of Search Engine Optimization. They hear these lies and while comparing prices, contact us at Abalone Designs. They then proceed to tell me everything that all of these other companies promised them and I am utterly astonished. Below are some of the most asinine claims I hear through the grapevine.

“We Can Guarantee Your Rankings”
Don’t be fooled! Ask the company what you will be ranking for, immediately! 9 times out of 10, a company that guarantees you rankings is guaranteeing that you will rank for your own company name, which means people on Google or MSN or Yahoo! would have to know your company name before searching. How does this produce new customers and visitors to your site? Chances are, as soon as these search engines index your site, you will rank within the top ten for your company name, if not first, because it is unique. Why bother paying someone for something that is already going to happen, anyway?

Guaranteeing rankings is highly unethical. It is impossible to guarantee rankings unless you have access to Google’s database itself, and even then I’m not sure it’s possible. Keep in mind, we are working with a 3rd party. A highly guarded 3rd party that doesn’t, under any circumstances, reveal it’s secrets. No one outside of the companies that run these search engines knows what it is exactly that makes search engines rank sites high. Especially due to the fact that these search engines and the rigorous ranking filters they use to spit out search results change almost monthly. Even a former Google employee doesn’t know how to guarantee rankings! If someone is telling you they’ll guarantee top rankings, run fast! Those are some shady, shady claims. Google themselves have said:

“No one can guarantee a -#1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEO’s that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a “special relationship” with Google, or that claim to have a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is by using the page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.” - http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

An ethical SEO company will not guarantee rankings. They will guarantee that their methods follow search engine guidelines, and they will guarantee customer satisfaction, but at no point in time will any SEO company with a conscience guarantee your rankings.

“Your Site Needs to Be Continually Resubmitted to Get On and Stay On the Search Engines”
When will I see the end of this one? How old is this method now? 5 years? 10 years? We’re talking about the days when WebCrawler was the biggest search engine and all computers were beige! This claim is so fully untrue, had Pinocchio uttered it, his nose would have stretched from Rome to Poughkeepsie. And the good folks at Google will once again back me up on this one:

“Submission is not necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it’s likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. We DO NOT add all submitted URLs to our index, and cannot predict when or if they will appear.” - http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/1.html#A2

“Meta Tags Are Not Important Anymore”
Sure they aren’t. If you don’t want a decent ranking on MSN. The new MSN search places a lot of value on the keywords and description meta tags. Without these tags in your site’s code, your ranking on MSN will suffer. Just as importantly, if your keywords and description meta tags don’t use proper language, your rankings will suffer. The description tag is also what MSN uses as the visible description for a site in the search results. And of course, to prove ? I’m not the one blowing hot air, this is what MSN themselves say about it:

“Site descriptions are extracted from the content of your page each time MSNBot crawls your site and indexes its pages…

…the best way to affect your site description is to ensure that your web pages effectively deliver the information you want to see in search results.

“Your Web Site Has Been Sabotaged”
This one is truly unreal. I can’t believe it’s even been used as an excuse for why an SEO company hasn’t achieved decent rankings for you. But alas, more than one SEO company has told potential clients of ours that the reason they are not ranking well, or why their search engine optimization campaign is not effective, is because someone else has been sabotaging the site. Some of the clients who have been told this are small businesses, like bed and breakfasts or pet sitters. We always explain to these potential clients that the likelihood of someone even having the initial idea to sabotage a web site, the site in question would have to be a fairly large one, and the target of a lot of hatred. Why? Because sabotaging a web site’s rankings takes a massive amount of time and energy. We’re talking months, maybe even years of hard, hard work. Why would anyone devote months or years of their life to taking down a pet sitting site? Or a bed and breakfast?

Once again, these are some hefty claims and it is a clear sign that the company who is running your SEO campaign is unwilling to be held accountable for their actions or lack thereof.

Don’t Put Up With It
The bottom line is, your search engine optimization company works for you. You are paying them. Hold them accountable as you would any other vendor. Keep reading these articles, read info at the search engines, educate yourself and if something your SEO says smells a little rotten, don’t be afraid to call them on it.

Is being screwed an inevitability in the SEO world? Damn near. But thanks to the increasing interest of our consumers in self-education and their increased questioning, our industry will slowly climb out of the gutter and someday down the line, send this article into antiquity. In spite of my pride, I’d be overjoyed to see that day come.

By Courtney Heard