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Achieve Higher Search Engine Rankings by Using RSS

RSS is quickly becoming the driver behind online publishing. But what is RSS? And what can it do for your site?

RSS stands for Reall Simple Syndication. It is simply an extension or standardized format of XML. It is used by publishers/bloggers to make their content available to others in a format that can be universally consumed and understood. Basically for each new posting/story/release/etc, a new 'link' is appended to the XML file with the title, excerpt, link, date and author of the content. The XML file is the grabbed and presented by the client's RSS reader.

RSS has been around for years, but blogging is actually the force behind popularizing the technology. It allows them to quickly get their message past spam filters to their subscribers.

Why RSS Works Well for Search Engine Rankings

SEO gurus know that sites built around central themes/niches - where most or all pages relate to a particular subject or set of keywords - rank higher in the search engines. Search engines prefer tightly-themed sites & pages, as they are generally considered more authoritative.

RSS feeds from news sites or blogs, often can be narrowed to a particular theme or niche. By using highly targeted or specific RSS feeds, you can enhance your site's content on a constant basis without having to write as much yourself. The feed may even contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for, and now you'll have more of these keywords on your pages!

The feeds will be updated constantly and regularly. Therefore you'll have fresh, relevant content for your visitors, possibly even every hour or day, depending on how many feeds you subscribe to.

An additional benefit is more frequent spider visits. The Googlebot now sees that your site is updated daily, and will consequently visit/spider daily, so any new pages/content that you add to your site (manually) will be indexed much faster than your competitors. Therefore any new content you write will show up sooner/higher in SERPs, and you'll get more traffic than your less frequently indexed competition.

So to sum it all up, here's the equation to remember:
RSS = more fresh & relevant content = more frequent indexing = more traffic = more money!!!

Why Your Email Open Rates are Low

If you have noticed any sort of decline in open rates for your marketing emails, you should give attention to these four problem areas:

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

So you've built your site. It's a beautiful template. It's a great idea. It's useful content.

But no one comes. The 'build it and they will come' mantra just isn't working. Here are some fundamental SEO tips to raise your site in the search results, and get some qualified traffic.

More Email Means More Money, Right? Wrong...

Simply put, email as a marketing channel produces the highest ROI (Return on Investment), period. Not only is it cheap, but it's highly measurable. We can easily measure that when we send 1000 emails monthly, 100 people click through, and 20 people convert/purchase. Therefore the simple math and logic seems to indicate that emailing weekly should quadruple our sales. But this is not necessarily the case, as more than math is involved.

Using Transactional Emails as Marketing Tools

Transactional emails have incredibly high deliverable, open and click rates. People want them, people expect them. However, they do not want them to be marketing or promotion oriented, so we have to be careful when designing transactional emails with cross-selling or promotion in mind.

Your Web Design Ideas Might be Ruining Your Site

Web design and usability methodologies and best practices are maturing. Unfortunately, many web designers are not. Too often people go with what their gut tells them is a good design idea, at the cost of a good user experience. Here are some common mistake people keep making, as well as the reasons why.

Monitor Your "Reply-To" Inbox

This one definitely falls under the "dirty job but somebody's gotta do it" category. For each mailing you send, you may be receiving hundreds to thousands of replies to the 'reply-to' address on your marketing email. These need to be monitored for unsubscribes, out-of-office, changes-of-address, challenge-response requests, bounces and blocks. Otherwise, you could seriously damage your deliverability.

How do I create an email address that forwards to another?

To create an email forwarded:

1. login to your control panel (yourdomain.com/cpanel)
2. click Mail
3. Click Forwarders
4. Click Add Forwarder
5. Fill in the address, select the domain, enter the address to forward to, and you're done!