Updated: 10 May 2005
By Dylan Downhill

This is a quick guide to displaying an RSS feed on your website. It is not meant to be extensive, it is meant to get your feet in the door of displaying content using RSS in the quickest time possible.

Displaying RSS Data

The two main ways to display RSS data on a website is either through client side javascript or through server side scripting. The advantage of client side javascript is it offloads the processing to the site visitor, the disadvantage is the search engines don’t run client side code and so all your syndicated RSS content will not be indexed.… Read the rest

This is a quick guide to publishing your web content through an RSS feed. It is not meant to be extensive, it is meant to get your feet in the door of publishing content using RSS in the quickest time possible.

RSS File Format

A RSS feed is simply an XML file containing information on pages within your site. The RSS file format is as follows:

<?xml version=”1.0″ ?>
<rss version=”2.0″>
<channel>
<title>Title Text </title>
<link>Link to site’s home page </link>
<description>Description of the feed</description>

<item>
<title>Page Title</title>
<description>Page Description</description>
<link>Page Link</link>
<author>Email to Contact You On</author>
<pubDate>Published Date</pubDate>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

Where the contents from <item> to </item> are repeated for all the content you want to publish through the RSS file.… Read the rest

Keywords are the words/phrases used by people searching on the internet.

They are very important as relevant, targeted keywords can help get you to the top of search engine rankings and help you attract visitors interested in your web site’s content and products.

Choosing keywords requires input from you as you have a deep understanding of your business and industry.

We start the analysis by looking at your current keywords, your page content, the keywords and content of high ranking competitors to get ideas for keywords. We use keyword popularity tools to get other ideas and options. We will then present this to you for your ideas and feedback.… Read the rest

HTML encoding errors will break search engine spiders. To understand why you need to think of the differences between browsers and spiders:

Browsers have been written to be backwardly compatible with widely used, badly formed HTML. This is due to user insistence that sites that work in one browser also work in another, no matter how buggy the code: if they didn’t then the user would swap to a browser that did ‘work’. Spiders do not have this requirement, if your site can’t be read then there will be others that can be.

Browsers have kept pace with the internet and have been developed and enhanced through the years.… Read the rest

As your company evolved its web presence did you have a clear picture of the market for your product? Or did you put up a web site and hope that the right people would somehow manage to find you? Did you develop your web presence around your potential customers? Or was it developed around your company and its products? It has become clear that a customer-focused web site that targets a distinct market offers you the most opportunity for growth. Perhaps it is time to re- evaluate your potential customer base.

Attracting and Keeping Visitors

The first step is to figure out what the target markets are for your product.… Read the rest

One Way Non-Reciprocated Linking

Or how to maximize your page rank and minimize your outlay

Linking is critical to a successful online marketing campaign. Gone are the days of getting great rankings purely because of the number of reciprocal links and rightly so. We followed the practice of creating lots of reciprocal links for our customers as it was a huge part of the strategy to get ranked in Google and it was necessary to ensure we were following what our clients competitors were doing. Things have calmed down considerably in this area and credit for links has reverted to good quality relevant links from on topic sites.… Read the rest

As a service to our customers we now offer FREE OF CHARGE web log file analysis using Urchin 5, one of the leading log file analysis tools available! This service includes the enhanced Urchin functionality of pay per click campaign tracking and goal tracking and eCommerce tracking.

This service is provided to help answer the questions:

• How are visitors getting to my site?
• How are they using my site?
• Are visitors converting into customers?
• Which marketing efforts are paying off?

Urchin answers all of these questions and many more with its detailed unique visitor reports. Urchin 5 is the only analytics product to use Adobe’s SVG technology to display stunning charts and graphs that load instantly.… Read the rest

General Tips

• Each page in your site should target just a few keywords to maximize the chance your site will appear in a search result.
• Ensure your pages have some text. Graphics, Flash, and Java look great, but the search engines can’t read them. If you want to put these features in place then ensure the text is repeated elsewhere for those people with scripts turned off, and the search engines can use that text.

Invisible Text

Invisible text is text that is not rendered by your browser. It is embedded, but does not show up on the screen. Invisible text includes such things as title, meta tags and Java.… Read the rest