RSS and FREE Traffic to Your Site

March 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Many internet marketing gurus have spoken and recommended the use of RSS to drive traffic to your site. It is said that RSS is a new technology that lets your readers ” subscribe” to your blog so that the receive information of your latest update right after you have posted it.

But what actually is RSS and how do we use to serve its purported purpose!

RSS (Rich Site Summary and/or Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. On many blogs, you’ll see an area with buttons that invite readers to subscribe to receive latest content to their preferred RSS Reader. Samples of Feeds Buttons are ;

You can create such Feeds icons for you blog in a couple of different ways; either let your blog software (such as Blogger or Typepad) or you can use the services like FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com)
RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Yahoo News.

However, you need a Feed Reader or News Aggregator software to allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows – integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader are popular web-based feed readers.

Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content and adding their RSS feed to the list of feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many sites display a small icon with the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available.

Clearly now, if you combine RSS with your blog, you would instantly have a powerful combination that can assist your blog to a higher position in the organic search engine ranking.

RSS is now fueling the trend towards personalized content on the web; evidenced by the use of RSS by all the major heavyweights, like Google (http://www.google.com/reader), Yahoo(http://my.yahoo.com), and MSN (http://my.msn.com) There’s also Blogline (http://www.bloglines.com) which caters for and dedicated to blog feeds.

So, how the can we use RSS to promote our blog? You need to :

• create your RSS feed; an RSS fed comes in the form of a unique URL that your readers can copy and paste into their prefered RSS reader to allow them to receive your content.
• promote your feed on your site.
• promote yourfeed on the by getting it listed in some of the many RSS online directories. Visit www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission fo links to the feed submission pages of web sites.

Hope you get the idea that RSS is a powerful tool you have available to promote your blog and blog feeds in directories and search engines for even more FREE traffic. Have them on your blog!

Meanwhile, there is a good write-up on how to use RSS  by Yaro Starak, a very successful internet marketer. Have a look at it at  http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/209/what-is-rss-syndication/

Humanise your business, boost your credibility and establish expertise.

March 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Today we will conclude our discussion on how to use our blog to generate traffic and sales for our online business.

Running an online business have many difficult challenges. One such challenge is that it has very little face-to-face contact with customers. A blog with its informal style, is a good way you can use to humanize your business,. You can in fact inject your own personality into it. Your blog also allows you to initiate and maintain a rapport-building dialogs with your audience.

Another move you can do is to boost your credibility and establish your expertise. You can achieve this by offering informative and relevant information to your target audience. Your credibility will be enhanced in the eyes of your readers, letting them see that there is a real person behind the web site on their computer screen.

Similarly, by talking knowlegebaly about your subject, you can build your reputation as an expert in your field. This can help you attract more customers and generate more sales.

The beauty of using a blog to promote your online business is that, as you add more and more posts, you are effectively creating a dynamic and consistently changing content.

Furthermore, if you include a lot of good and important keywords in the content, your blog will continually act as a magnet to attract traffic to your site through the search engines.

That’s it guys, I hope all the posts on this issue

Let’s Build a Community

March 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment

What else can you do with your blog to generate traffic and sales for your online business?

Ever consider building a community around your blog?

It does not matter what product you are selling. Your blog can be great for posting content like product reviews, tips and news that’s all aimed at your very specific target audience. For example, if you are retailing a few products and sell one item everyday at a special reduced or discounted price, you can use your blog as a content archive with details of all the previous items offered. Your content, however, should be keyword rich that will inevitably attract a lot of search engine traffic consisting of people who are looking for specific products online.

This way you will be able to build up a loyal community of bargain hunters who would access your web site each day to check out the day’s item for sale and normally would leave comments and provide feedbacks.

Such a community would encourage people to return again and again. You can even use the community created to assist you generate ideas for new products to offer. Furthermore, if you sell a product that is regularly updated, like softwares, you can use your blog to generate invaluable customer feedback as to how you can improve your product.

Try it out, you’ll be surprised with its impact !

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