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Knowledge Base:

More Information on Blogs Blog-driven sites or a directory of your site, require attention. They are generally high-maintenance. In comparison, the RSS Feed does not come with a price tag, set up headaches, and is maintained at your leisure in a few minutes flat.

We have focused more on getting you set up with an RSS Feed in the member's area because (a) they have been incredibly successful driving targeted traffic, and (b) the information online about feeds has caused a lot of confusion for people. Our goal is to shorten your learning curve and give you the most up-to-date what-works-now material available on RSS Feeds. However should you desire more blog information, you'll find it below.

Easy Blog Setup:

If you're truly interested in getting a blog rolling quickly you might try www.blogger.com for quick set up and ease of use. This is not the 'blogging success expert's' top choice for traffic however.

Why? Blogger, like other blog software, automatically creates a feed based on blog posts. Which means your keyword rich content could become 'watered down'. Further, blogger generates an 'atom' feed (as opposed to RSS .91 or 2.0 ). Atom is not as widely supported in website programs that scrape feeds for relevant content. If you are not creating the most widely used type of RSS Feed, it only stands to reason that you will not be getting the optimum amount of traffic from it right?

Best Blogging Software:

If you really desire to write on a regular basis to a blog, I urge you to use WordPress. WordPress is easy to install (some geek knowledge is required), is donationware (pay as you can), and allows you to edit the generated RSS Feed. (No watered down content.) You can learn more about WordPress here: www.wordpress.org. Furthermore, although WordPress is the power users blog software of choice, many tweaks can and should be done to the standard install to get the most search engine mileage out of the program. The best advice, tools and template on optimizing a WP blog for the search engines can be picked up here ($) - although this is a paid resource it will shave hours off your time learning and optimizing WordPress.

Other trusted resources: 

My online buddy Jason Cain 'wrote the book' on blogging and has a lot of valuable information on his site. His book is currently in re-write, but his blog gives lots of valuable information on using blogs to make sales. Click here, use the search feature to find what you're looking for as you could get lost in content for days...
Already have a Blog by service? You may have access to a pre-written feed as a result! Blog interface providers such as MovableType, and TypePad offer RSS conversion within their services as standard fare. The content of your current blog may not be the content you want in your feed (that's completely up to you), but if it is you'll be in the feed business quickly (move right along to the Tools: Submission)!
On the same day you submit your site to yahoo, do this (this is also covered in the Submission page): Edit the tag below and place it between the <head> tags of your home page (or get your webmaster to do it).

By saying Edit I mean to change the text that says put-your-feed-url here.xml to the actual url of your new feed - use the full http://www.sitename.com/feedfilename.xml format.

<! -- RSS Autodiscovery -- >
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="put-your-feed-url here.xml"/>
Redirect script for affiliate links within your RSS Feed: We touched on this a little in the Stampede Secret's pdf. If you're planning on promoting an affiliate program or product within your RSS Feed, we suggest linking to an actual page on your website that sets the cookie and redirects the users, rather than placing the affiliate url directly into your feed. This way I gain maximum exposure for my domain and the affiliate cookie is certain not to get lost in the .xml file.

Here's all there is to this script - it's so easy that I bet you'll start using it for all your affiliate links!

  1. Copy and paste the code below into NotePad or any other text editor,
  2. Replace the text below (in two places) that say your-affiliate-link, with your affiliate link starting with http://
  3. Add a keyword rich descriptive title,
  4. Save the file with a .htm or .html extension.
  5. FTP the file to your server,
  6. And test it to ensure that it works!

Within your feed, link to this new file on your domain.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0;URL=your-affiliate-link">
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"><!--function redirect () { setTimeout("go_now()",0); } function go_now () { window.location.href = "your-affiliate-link"; } //--></SCRIPT>
<title>add keyword rich descriptive title here</title>
</HEAD>
<BODY onLoad="redirect()">
<BR>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Keyword Use in Your RSS Feed As in Search Engine Optimization, your list of keywords can make or break you. In the report we suggested signing up for the best keyword selection course available today offered by Trafficology (free).

For those of you who haven't investigated keyword selection in the past, the concept in itself is relatively simple (the free course expands on the concept). You target the keyword(s) that people are actually searching by performing some easy keyword research.

Note: Don't get caught in this trap! I once had a client who wanted to be #1 in the search engines for a certain keyword phrase. He was prepared to spend hundreds of dollars on being #1. The truth was, in an average month there were only 100 people typing that keyword into a search engine. Through some collaborative keyword research (and some arm-twisting) he learned to build his website around high profile keywords that suited his market and as a result enjoys a much busier website.

Generally speaking keywords that are being searched for in RSS Feed directories are the same keywords that are being entered in standard search engines. Knowing these best-bet keywords specific to your market will move your feed towards success! (These best-bet keywords aren't always the high-profile keywords, sometimes they are lesser known, but well searched for keywords, that your competitors aren't targeting! High-yield vs. low competition - Get the course for a more in-depth description.)
Special Characters in Your Feed If you need to include special characters such as the copyright symbol or quotes, you'll need to replace the special character with the code equivalent first. Here are some of the most common:
Description Character Code to Use
Acute Accent ´ &acute;
Ampersand & &amp;
Copyright Sign © &copy;
Degree Sign ° &deg;
Division Sign ÷ &divide;
Euro (Currency) € &euro;
Fraction One Quarter ¼ &frac14;
Fraction One Half ½ &frac12;
Fraction Three Quarters ¾ &frac34;
Greater Than Sign > &gt;
Less Than Sign < &lt;
Middle Dot · &middot;
Pound Sign £ &pound;
Quote " &quot;
Registered Sign ® &reg;
Right Angle Quote » &raquo;
Soft Hyphen ­ &shy;
Superscript 1 ¹ &sup1;
Superscript 2 ² &sup2;
Superscript 3 ³ &sup3;
Yen  ¥ &yen;
Read favorite feeds via Outlook Express www.newsgator.com - Free 14 day trial - $29 to purchase.
I love CODE! Where do I learn more about XML? I would start here: http://www.xml.com/ 
Update Your RSS Feed by email This free service is offered by iupload.com, I don't know how long it will remain free.

Here's how it works. You subscribe and receive a MailbyRSS account. When you want to publish a new article or item on your Feed you send an email to your account and MailbyRSS automatically creates or updates your RSS Feed.

Note: As RSS Feed technology and available services are all the rage right now, there is no telling which services will last, mutate or change to paid versions only. For this reason we suggest that if your RSS Feed is hosted on any location other than your own website you should always maintain a copy of it (either on your site or on your PC) just in case. 
Now that you have one feed up and running, what's next?

Once you begin to see the success you enjoy by having a feed, it's only natural to want more! That's right - I do suggest more even on the same site! As an example, at the moment (now that I can get back to my niche market), I am about to build a series of more specialized feeds (one for chickens, one for goats, one for homeschooling, etc.) Once you've built your first feed the rest are easy...and with more than one feed, you can cross promote them. Like a mini-net - you simply reference or link to your other feed's content.

You'll have to be somewhat organized to do this, keep all your feeds in one folder on your desktop perhaps, for easy access and updates. Or, if you're using the RSS Feed Software we suggest for creation and maintenance, your feeds will all be accessible with one click. Once you get a system rolling, and get past the learning curve of the first feed, you'll be on your way!
Easy Publish - use broadcast messages from your Auto-Responder account Are you a 'power user' with your auto responder account? A few easy steps in the GetResponse or Aweber control panel will automate feed creation and updates using the content from your Broadcast messages. (Broadcast messages are not the pre-loaded auto-response messages.)

The only drawback to this is that your new feed will be hosted on the GetResponse or Aweber server - and you have little control over the content (other than the message you send to your email list).

Even if you are not going to make this your 'main' feed, it won't hurt you to have a 'secondary' feed full of links to your website and containing your keyword rich sales copy. Just don't go to great extremes to promote it. Announce it in a few directories and let the search engines and your autoresponder host do the rest of the work for you.


  

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