Using RSS Feeds, Blog Posting, and Web 2.0 to Improve Your Page Rank
Effective search engine optimization is not as complicated as the “professionals” would have you believe. Search engine page rank is calculated using formulas, or algorithms, that give weight to certain elements of your website or the sites connected to your website. Contrary to what you may have heard, the elements of these formulas are not all that mysterious. To those watching the industry, some factors have been fairly consistent over the past decade.
Content is one of those elements. Quality content carries major weight, and volume of content comes in a close second. If you are launching a web-based business in this era, you will need to have a large website content-wise if you want to compete in your niche market. Rest assured, those who have the same plan you do, and there are many, will be building their sites by adding additional pages regularly and by using the most effective tool there is for content creation, the blog.
Blogs, initially created as a way to express personal thoughts, have become an essential marketing tool for ecommerce sites and service providers on the internet. By scheduling regular posts to publish on a pre-determined cycle, you are in essence inviting search engine spiders to come and visit as often as possible. The more often your site is indexed, the higher your page rank will be for your industry keywords.
To add to the power of the blog, you can also set up an RSS feed. This is fairly easy to do. You can go to a site like Feedburner or one of the many other services that burn feeds and have one in just a few moments. Once you get it, make sure you get the code for one of those little orange chicklets and post it on your website. Subscriptions to your feed are wonderful for SEO marketing. They each show up as a link back to your site.
Finally, connect your feed to Twitter. Connect your Twitter feed to Facebook, Linked In, Digg and Technorati. Use your blog and write something once a day, anything related to your industry is fine, even a quick announcement. Connect the blog to your main site at least once per post using anchor text. If you don’t know what that is click one of the links on this post and you’ll understand. If you don’t have the time to write, hire a content writing service to write for you. There are many that offer both quality and affordability. The return, regardless of cost, will more than justify the expense.
