15 experts on SEO tips for 2013

2012 was eventful to say the least. Last year I did an interview on SEO tips for 2012. This year is no different. I asked 15 trusted experts in the SEO community about the changes we saw last year and what we can expect in 2013. This is a must read for anyone working with SEO.

The experts :

• Joost de Valk (CEO, Yoast, WordPress SEO plugin author)
• Trond Lyngbø (Senior consultant and author, Metronet, Search Engine Land and SEOnomics)
• Geir Ellefsen (Senior consultant, Metronet, and Edgy SEO blog)
• Barry Schwartz (CEO, RustyBrick® Inc, Executive Editor at Search Engine Roundtable)
• Ross Hudgens (Founder, Siege Media)
• Jon Cooper (SEO consultant, Point Blank SEO)
• Neil Patel (Co-founder KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg, NeilPatel.com)
• Bas van den Beld (Founder, State of Search)
• Marcus Tandler (Partner at Tandler.Doerje.Partner and blogger)
• Jason Acidre (CEO of Xight Interactive and Marketing Consultant for Affilorama)
• Will Critchlow (Founder, Distilled)
• Aaron Wall (Founder, SEObook)
• Andrew Knibbe (CMO, Flippa.com)
• Scott Polk (VP of Internet Marketing, ObsidianEdge Marketing)
• AJ Kohn (Owner, Blind Five Year Old)

What do you think we as SEOs should focus on in 2013?

Joost de Valk

For a while, people seemed to think that :

• A) SEO could impact their bottom line within 2 weeks and
• B) they needn’t think of the results of their SEO campaigns in 2 years
  
  I hope that’s changed now. Your SEO campaign should focus on getting results in 1 or 2 years and take faster improvements as a bonus. On badly SEO’d websites a good SEO can still get tremendous results in a short period, and getting some nicely target links from high-profile sites can still boost rankings, so don’t stop doing that, just think about whether Google will still like what you’re doing in 2 years.

Good SEO always went hand-in-hand with good UX, great content and a good site structure, but many people took shortcuts to prevent having to work on that. Well, that time is over. SEO no longer stands for Seemingly Effortless Optimization, but for Seriously Effortful Optimization. Get to work. The first thing I’d do is look deeply at your site and get all the basics right again. Then see what you could do to make the site more worthwhile for your customers and prospective customers, while keeping SEO best practices in mind. Some SEO’s see that as giving in and agreeing that Google has won. I don’t care, I just want to help my clients make more money.

Trond Lynbø

The difficulty will be to keep the ‘main thing’ the MAIN thing! Many clients think SEO is only about higher rankings and greater search volumes. But from an SEO perspective, rankings are just a consequence, not a KPI. Obsessing over a symptom will misdiagnose the disease. 

Many site owners want to do the minimum possible, yet expect awesome results. But the days of ‘quick fix SEO’ are numbered, if not already over. It’s time to see SEO from a different angle, with broader, wider focus. To step back, rather than blindly rush to implement new tactics. To decide where you want to go, and act on a strategy-driven plan.

In 2013-2015, your strategy will be key to survive. Get help. Be ready to pay for this help. Remember, even excellent SEO cannot compensate for a poor product. You must set yourself apart from the crowd with a great offer that adds value to your target audience, both collectively and individually. Know your customers. Understand them well. Research and analyze their needs and problems. The better you can read your buyer’s mind, the greater your chance of success.

SEO itself will grow more complex in 2013, with more data to analyze, and changing usage patterns (e.g. mobile devices). That’s why my best tip is to step back, evaluate and analyze your business strategy, then figure out exactly where you’re headed.

Having relevant content alone won’t be enough in 2013. With an emphasis on ‘authorship’, Google has signaled its focus on identifying quality content. Semantic Search and the Knowledge Graph will be of paramount importance in the coming year.

Google is shifting tracks to become an “answer engine”. The strategic SEO train is leaving the station. Will you be on board? Be smart. Keep your focus. And dominate the SERPs in 2013 – and beyond!

Geir Ellefsen

I think it’s time to stop thinking small about SEO. SEOs need to look at the big picture. Don’t get stuck on small details. Build better web sites, get better at social and focus on content. Do remarkable stuff

Barry Schwartz

SEOs should continue to focus on building our unique quality content that naturally attracts links but should also spend more time focusing on social factors.  Obviously, Google+ is going to be big, it isn’t that big right now, but Google is betting a lot on it.  Facebook and Twitter are huge drivers of traffic and consider them to continue to grow in influence and thus search engines will consider them to be a growing factor of trust and relevance.

Ross Hudgens

I think we should learn how to be better content marketers. We were SEOs, now we have to be content marketers in order to survive. I don’t think we need to learn content strategy in most verticals, but we need to know how to apply content marketing to the content strategy being implemented by teams – without contradicting said strategy – to most effectively get movement in the search engines. And of course, conversions as well. If we solely focus on marketing content and do it well, tons of other stuff will take care of itself.

Jon Cooper

We should focus on identifying what we do that scales, assessing it’s legitimacy as a long-term tactic, and adjusting as needed. More & more algorithmic changes like Penguin will happen, and it’s up to us to not be on the bad end of the stick. Because algorithms detect patterns, and because patterns are usually from something repeatable (a la scalable), we have to focus on things that don’t leave footprints. That’s why “scale” is going to be less and less about tactics and more and more about process.

Neil Patel

In 2013 SEO won’t be about gaming Google, it will be about building a “real business”. If you can create a good product or service people love, write content that benefits others, and create a good user experience, you’re site is more likely to get rankings in the long run.

Bas van den Beld

In the next year this will be a trend which without a doubt will continue. Google will try to maintain and grow their grip and “SEO” will be much more about optimising in general than before. SEO’s should, as should other marketers, focus on integrating all the channels and trying to make a change within companies to not just think about SEO as a channel but as part of the integrated marketing campaigns. Again, something which has been going on for a while, but which should be done much more.

Marcus Tandler

Building up authority as an author and becoming a credible and competent source within your niche. Try to become an expert in your industry, share specialist advice and engage with your community. This will help a lot getting your own stuff in front of like-minded people and the linkerati within your industry. Share and you will get shared!

Jason Acidre

SEO, as a marketing practice, has grown bigger over the years, as the more it evolves, the more it involves different signals to achieve better search visibility.

Next year, it’s imperative for us SEOs to focus on a diversified approach for our campaigns, through appropriate integration of different inbound channels. All the signals generated through these efforts can help build a solid online brand presence (seeing that Google is favouring brands more and more).

And in turn, these actions (diversified approach to optimize for search, social, engagements, conversions, user-experience and brand recognition) can help improve search visibility and will allow the brand to compete for highly competitive keywords.

Applying the Pareto Principle (80% output from 20% input) on every aspect of implementation is also important. Make the most out of every implemented idea (ex: building evergreen content for links, social shares, traffic, lead generation, branding and eventually rankings).

The more we focus on quality (to achieve maximum results), the lesser tendencies of putting our campaigns at risk of spamming, over-optimizing and/or over-populating the web with crappy guest postings.

Basically, I recommend SEOs to focus on online brand marketing by being everywhere (particularly on the right distribution channels). I believe that search engines will put more weight on brand-related signals next year.

Will Critchlow

I really liked Dr. Pete’s answer to this which was diversification. I like this not only at a tactical level (reducing the reliance on a single traffic source or marketing method) but also at a strategic and personal level. I like it as a way of building a competitive moat and also as a means of personal development.

Aaron Wall

2013 will for many be a year where we end up having to focus on broader & more holistic marketing efforts that reach people at many points, rather than being so focused on just the search channel. It will also be a year in which some of the “can’t lose” platform plays begin to use their Google rankings to really push back at Google in ways that perhaps gives Google pause. For example, the biggest online retailer is now adding 3rd party brand controlled pages on their site & is running a distributed online ad network that is already above a billion Dollars per year in revenue run rate. Facebook and Twitter might also try to encroach on search too.

Andrew Knibbe

At Flippa, we expect 2013 to be more of the same with respect to back-link and content quality trumping all. SEOers would also be advised to see if the role of social media becomes a larger influencer of search engine results in 2013.

Scott Polk

In 2013 the focus should be on:

• Developing Content that attracts Relevant Organic Links
• Social Signals – Do not build your own Facebook, but use their technology to create your own micro-social communities
• More Authorship
• Build Engaging Content and ShareBait, then market the hell out of it

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RIP Google Reader

INTERNET GIANT Google's Reader is no more, with the firm having closed the doors on its popular RSS news reader on Monday.

We know, it's a tough day for all of us. As of today, 1 July, Google Reader has gone the way of services such as Google's Buzz and SMS services, and is no longer operating. Google announced the shutdown of Reader in March, saying it had seen a "deterioration of interest" in the service.

"We launched Google Reader in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites," Google SVP of Technical Infrastructure Urs Hölzle said at the time. "While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined."

The news of Google Reader's closure didn't go down well with the service's loyal following, with users flocking to the web to bemoan Google's decision to shut it down.

One Twitter user said, "Killing off Wave was merciful; but killing off Google Reader? Oh my aching old bones, what are they thinking?" Others said that Google should have shut off its not so popular social network Google+ instead.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel for loyal Google Reader users, though, as other firms have been quick to launch similar services to win over users with nowhere to read news.

AOL, for example, launched AOL Reader earlier this week, which makes its full debut today. Digg has also unveiled its own RSS reader service, and Facebook apparently is next in line to roll out a Google Reader alternative.

While you make up your mind about which one is for you, you can watch how Hitler reacted to the news of Google Reader closing. We all feel it.

  

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Google Webmaster Tools “Links To Your Site” Reporting Bug

Last week, we began seeing complaints of the Google Webmaster Tools “Links To Your Site” report showing 80% or less of the number of links that should be displayed. Yesterday, I noticed the issue myself, and today, Google confirmed this is a reporting bug.

In short, tons of webmasters who analyze their links using Google Webmaster Tools have noticed a huge drop in the number of reported links to their sites. For example, my site, Search Engine Roundtable, had 3.8 million links reported last week, then yesterday dropped to 2.1 million links and now it is reporting 1.3 million links.

 

 

Scary, but for those who are familiar with Google Webmaster Tools — they know there are frequent reporting glitches. In fact, a similar issue sprung up back in February.

Here is Google’s statement from today:

Some Webmaster Tools users have reported missing data in the “Links to your site” section. We are aware of this issue and are looking into it; you do not need to take any action. We hope to have the normal data shown again in the near future. The data shown there is informational and does not affect your site’s crawling, indexing or ranking.

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Penguin 2.0 rolled out today

We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.

This is the fourth Penguin-related launch Google has done, but because this is an updated algorithm (not just a data refresh), we’ve been referring to this change as Penguin 2.0 internally. For more information on what SEOs should expect in the coming months, see the video that we recently released.

Added: If there are spam sites that you’d like to report after Penguin, we made a special spam report form at http://bit.ly/penguinspamreport . Tell us about spam sites you see and we’ll check it out.

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10 SEO expectations for 2013, as told by Matt Cutts

Google’s Search Engineer Matt Cutts is in the game of informing webmasters, SEOs and marketers of future search signals that could impact companies’ bottom lines. Fortunately, he’s taken to video once again to cover 10 points every internet marketing professional should expect from Google in the coming months. This week’s primary question Cutts sought to answer: “What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?”

Brafton outlined the 10 points he touched on and put a content marketing spin on each.

1. Penguin 2.0 : Cutts recently noted that Penguin 2.0 is still weeks away, and he reiterated in the latest video that the refresh will have an even greater impact than the first version. SEOs must take a moment to evaluate their current backlink profiles to see where improvements can be made before Penguin 2.0 comes out.

2. No more ads, please : Google will also look to take a firmer stance against advertorials disguised as custom content. This threatens the black hat side of native advertising, but also encourages content writers and other marketers to dig deeper into their creative kits in order to generate compelling campaigns.

3. Say goodbye to spammy queries : Cutts also hinted that Google will eliminate spammy queries in general, like searches for “pay day loans” and other mature themes.

4. Next target: link networks : Google has already targeted websites with low-grad link portfolios, and it will continue its fight against bad links by going after wider networks. The search company engaged in this practice in the past, but it’s ongoing efforts remind SEOs to remain honest in their efforts to increase visibility in search.

5. Sophisticated link analysis : Google’s head of search noted that Google’s ability to identify weak links has advanced rapidly. Portent’s recent study also highlighted this trend, showing how Penguin has evolved over time to target sites with backlink woes.

6. Protection for hacked sites : Google is also working new features to detect when websites have been hacked. This should help business owners maintain their customers’ privacy, and perhaps limit events like Twitter’s recent White House debacle.

7. Brand authority : While Google won’t introduce Publishership for brands to help rank authority, it will look to push credible resources toward the top of search results. Content marketing remains the sure way to earn higher rankings in search.

8. Panda forgiveness : Cutts also suggested that the search engine company will soften Panda’s impact on websites that are on the cusp of ​avoiding potential search penalties.​​.  Businesses that suffered from initial updates may see their organic traffic rates rebound in the near future.

9. SERP clusters : Google will even the search playing field by removing site clusters from SERPs. Instead of seeing several links leading to one domain for a given keyword term, Google will bring unique web content to the front page of search.

10. Webmaster communication :  Cutts also emphasized Google’s ongoing push toward becoming more responsive to webmasters’ needs. The search engine company will improve their communication with these professionals.

Google has its sights set on a brighter search world in 2013, and Cutts shows the company’s goals clearly have end users in mind. Content marketing and SEO professionals must keep their practices honest in order to benefit from any new update by the engine, as one small slip could push online content further down in search engine results pages.

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SEO Experts in the USA

"We know what Internet search engines want, use, and seek"

When talking about the first page on Internet search engine results, we are talking about original and relevant content, adequate use of keywords, external links, constant updating, participation of others in content creation, adequate domain name, visitors, advanced computer programming and much more. In fact there are over 100 factors influencing your placement in search engines. All of this in one page is what our team of SEO experts in the USA by OMB100.com utilizes to place you high on Internet search engine results. Do not waste time and highlight your business right away. It is fast, affordable and functional.  

230,000 clients cannot be wrong!

Yes, we can create an optimized microblog for your business. This way, you can have a webpage with the perfect SEO to get more search results on Google! 

10 million webpages indexed on Google, thousands of keywords at the top of search results, two million hits per month, Top 4,000 Alexa rank... Well I guess you are on the right place. 

We create perfect webpages according to Google's ranking requirements and standards for your business to appear at the top of search results. 

How it works: You give us some basic information about your business, inform us about which keyword you would like to be found under, and within 48 hours you will have your optimized microblog created by SEO professionals with the best technology and an official report from the SEOmoz portal attesting to the perfection of the webpage created... In a few days you will begin to have organic results at the top of Google searches (results ahead of 99% of competitors guaranteed).  

Your optimized microblog is the bridge that brings the customer directly from Google to your website. 

Price: One-time payment of $100 + monthly fee of $20 for the hosting, maintenance and content updating performed by SEO professionals. We will work on your content weekly to ensure that you reach and stay on the first page!  

Testimonial: Safety Business LLC (Tax and Bookkeeping) 

"My name is Cristina; I am the managing member for Safety Business LLC. I contracted OMB100's services for the creation of an optimized microblog and I was surprised because in just two weeks my webpage became the first result on Google for the following Internet search: "Bookkeeping in Orlando" I remember that at the time I used to spend about $700 a month on a "pay-per-click" system, but now I have much more results, I have been on the first page for more than a year, and my cost is only $20 per month. The OMB100 system is really a "big deal" and I am extremely happy with the results obtained. I can highly recommend it!"

Who we are

Much more than a local business directory, OMB100.com is the first quick creative positioning tool for webpages in search engines. We understand the extreme necessity that businesses and professionals have in being well-placed in search engines and that is why we have created OMB100.com. We already help more than 100,000 businesses just like yours to be found on the very first page of Google, Bing, and others. With the best possible technology, original content, links and techniques, we offer you the best solution in SEO.

What we do: it's all about the first page of Google 

  

On the Internet we can find wonderful networking and marketing tools but the vast majority of them get you results only for your business name. In other words, you would only be found on Internet search engines if someone were to type in your business name in the search field. If somebody already knows your business name, they can go directly to your website! OMB100.com places your business in evidence on search engines, focusing on key words and key phrases, in other words, your OMB (optimized microblog) is found by the keywords for what your business does. 

This way, we reach those who do not know you, but need you! This means new clients and real results. Just the fact that your company reaches the first page of Google already brings value to your business as a whole, since everyday your web positioning on search engines reflects your relevance and leadership (or lack thereof) in the marketplace.  

How we do it :

OMB100.com will place you in the first results on search engines since we can develop a webpage that combines the best in SEO technologies, with original content, visits, links, backlinks, marketing and much more. We come in with the technology and you come in with the content. Together, we can create a page for your business with a host of tools and strategies that will result in an outstanding positioning for your business on Internet search engines. 

This page will bring all of your business' relevant information organized in the way that Internet search engines want. This way, we bring the user directly from Internet search engines straight to your website. After your OMB has been created, we will guide you on how you can update your webpage by yourself. You will be able to give even more strength and relevance to your webpage, which will lead to better results each day.  

Help Your Business: Create your optimized microblog (OMB) with a local SEO expert and reach the best results that the Internet can offer

Yes, it is all about the first page of Google. Nowadays, there is no other solution that is better for businesses, companies or service providers. Anyone who wishes to achieve the best results on the Internet must be on the first page of Google search results.

Q. But how do you position your company at the top of search engines when there are hundreds of other companies in your segment with the same goals? A. You simply need to have the best SEO team working for you.  

OMB100 was developed to create pages that are 100% friendly to "Web crawlers" (Internet search robots). Forget everything you know about spreading links, press releases, advertisements in directories, etc. None of this works anymore after the new algorithms from Google. Order your optimized microblog and you get into one of the largest portals in the world, a fully optimized landing page, with highly relevant and unique content, developed with the best SEO technology, and always updated with an SEO Expert working on your page periodically so that your results are the best possible. 

The search tools impose hundreds of criteria to display the results. OMB100 currently is the marketing tool that complies with the highest number of demands from the search engines and offers you the best and most affordable web marketing solution, directing all access from Google to your page (without competition within the system). 

The OMB100 portal now has more than 7 million pages indexed on Google, over 10,000 keywords on the first page of search results, 300 IBOs (Independent Business Owners) and 230,000 customers (and still counting)! Give your business a chance to actually appear on the Internet, contact a local SEO Expert and request the creation of your OPTIMIZED MICROBLOG before your competitor does. It is more quick, simple and affordable than you think!  

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What to expect in SEO in the coming months

We just recently taped a new round of webmaster videos, and I thought this video deserved a full-fledged blog post. This is my rough estimate (as of early May 2013) of what search engine optimizers (SEOs) and webmasters should expect in the next few months:

Bear in mind that this is a very rough estimate, because priorities, projects, and timing can change based on a lot of different factors. But I hope this gives folks a ballpark idea of what to expect in the coming months as far as what my team is working on.

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Google Continues To Experiment & Expand Authorship

If one theme was abundantly clear at SMX West in March, it was the question over the importance of authorship and how it might impact future rankings in Google.

During the “What’s Needed For SEO Success In 2013 & Beyond?” panel, I asked Matt Cutts if Google planned to expand authorship credit (and potentially the rich snippet) beyond just written content (like blog posts) and begin incorporating other content types.

In reality, content creators could truly author various types of content, including photos for photographers or video for videographers. Just because a piece of content isn’t part of the written medium doesn’t mean that content has no author.

Matt indicated that while the majority of content that Google sees on the Web is written, there are clearly other types of content Google indexes and wants to be able to understand authorship for.

Google is certainly doing its part to infer authorship of content, even when authorship markup has not been applied to a particular page. Over the past six months, there have been several examples of Google erroneously crediting the wrong authors with content, such as when a New York Times article credited Truman Capote with a new article, even though Capote has been deceased for nearly 30 years.

Google has even inferred authorship over other types of semantic markup on the page. On my own site, our archived webinar pages, which are coded with video schema and previously were displaying a video rich snippet, suddenly reverted to authorship instead, even though the page was not coded with author data:

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The Most Effective Way to Become an SEO Master

A couple of months ago a friend of mine asked my help with one of his websites. It is an online store that sells sports equipment, and he hired a local web agency to revamp the design and the site structure. 

Long story short the agency completely destroyed the optimization he had on his site, changing all permalinks, putting the same title tag on all pages of the site and so on. As a result the good rankings he had disappeared over night, and he was pretty pissed.

He set up a meeting with the agency to discuss the issue, and he asked me to go along with him to back him up and to give my take on the issue.  

After talking for 5 minutes with the guys who owned this web agency I realized they didn’t have a clue of what they were talking about. I pressed them a bit with some technical questions and one of them said:

“Hey man, I know this stuff, I am even doing the Google course!”.

To which I replied:

“What Google course? Google doesn’t offer any SEO course officially.”

The guy started mumbling and couldn’t explain what course he was talking about. Then I asked them:

“Okay forget about courses and books, just give me the URL of a couple of sites you managed to increase the search rankings and the traffic. And please show me the Google Analytics so I can see the organic traffic numbers.”

Silence…

In the end the guys admitted that they didn’t know much about SEO, and I gave them a to-do list of things they should do to fix my friend’s website.  

But my point is: there’s only one way to effectively learn and become good at SEO, and that is by getting your hands dirty and doing it. 

Sure, books and courses can help, and there are some good ones out there, but all the books and courses together represent only 10% of your learning curse. The rest will come from hands-on experience. From building 10 websites from scratch and failing with 9 of them, while making one to the top of the search rankings and seeing your organic traffic explode.  

Only when you try to do the stuff yourself you’ll understand and learn what works and what doesn’t, which methods are effective and which are not.

I was inspired to write this post after reading a similar post on Shoemoney’s blog: If You Are Such a Hotshot SEO, Why Are You Trolling For Clients?.

If you are starting to learn about SEO stay tuned for tomorrow’s post as well, when I’ll review a set of SEO tools that can get you going a lot faster.

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RSS Search Engine Optimization

Tips for Helping Your RSS Feed Perform! : In some ways RSS is very similar to HTML, the language commonly used to create websites. Just as with HTML, webmasters using traditional search engine optimization tactics when creating an RSS feed will find that their RSS feed receives additional exposure and interest.

Simple steps to optimize an RSS feed for search engines: 

1.) The title should contain important search terms : To state the obvious, the title should be relevant and not misleading, while still emphasizing keywords. Ultimately, the title should entice the reader to read on, not mislead them.

2.) Display RSS feeds : Most webmasters display their feeds as content on their website. When displaying a feed be sure to use PHP, ASP or HTML so that search engines will spider the contents of the feed displayed. If using a template to display feeds, use header tags to define the appearance of the Channel Title and Item Titles. Many search engines weight header tags with more importance. See Displaying RSS Feeds for additional information - http://www.small-business-software.net/display-rss.htm

3.) Internal & external Links : Within a feed you should always use the full path of any links, keeping in mind that other sites may syndicate the contents of the RSS feed. Links that are not local to the site should launch a new browser. While this is not specific to search engines it will help keep visitors on your site.

4.) Link text should emphasize keywords :It is no longer a deep, dark secret that the text used for incoming links will help a site contextually define the keywords that the site appears for in the search engines. Keeping that in mind, be sure to use keywords in any link text that points back to your website.

5.) My.Yahoo and My.MSN : This is surprisingly simple to do but often overlooked by publishers and webmasters. The fastest way to have an RSS feed spidered by Yahoo or MSN is to include the feed on a personal my.yahoo or my.msn home page. Simply create an account on the respective search engines and customize the home page to include your RSS feed. This is done by adding content and listing the URL to the RSS feed. Typically, within 24-48 hours the feed's contents will be spidered and indexed by Yahoo and MSN.

6.) Theme feeds : Feeds should be themed. This will help with themed links back to a publisher's website from anyone syndicating the feed's content.

7. ) Link popularity : Increase link popularity by submitting the RSS feed, blog or podcast to the appropriate directories. The following directories allow submissions of specific kinds of RSS feeds. Be sure to follow the guidelines of each site and choose categories wisely.

Submit Podcasts - http://www.podcasting-tools.com/submit-podcasts.htm
Submit RSS feeds - http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm
Submit Blogs - http://www.blog-connection.com/submit-blogs.htm

8.) RSS feed descriptions : RSS feed descriptions are generally summaries or introductions to other content. Often, feed creators will provide additional information on an HTML site, enticing the reader to click through for the full information if it is a topic that is of interest to them. Provide enough teaser copy that the reader can easily discern if the contents are something that is important to them.

9.) Subscribe to feeds : This might seem obvious, but a surprisingly large number of publishers do not subscribe to their own feed. This is a great way to visualize what your customers see, and experiment with formatting and integrating HTML into feeds.

10.) Image ads : Add your corporate logo to your RSS feed. Create a brand and enforce that brand by including the image in the RSS feed. The image will enhance your corporate identity and dress up the look of your feed by adding your corporate logo.

11.) Alphabetical rank : Many feed readers list feeds alphabetically in the reader. Feed channels that begin with A will naturally appear in the top of the feed list in most feed readers. If you wish to appear in the top of list of feeds that a reader has subscribed to, keep this tip in mind.

12.) Meaningful Links : Each item in your feed should contain a unique URL associated with it. This will direct users to associated information. Many find using target URLs with the "#" symbol in the link to identify specific content useful.

Most marketers have a love-hate relationship with search engines. Search engines have the abilitiy to make even the most confident webmaster feel powerless . Let’s face it - all of us have felt the wrath of the search engine powers-that-be at one time or another, and while it may be difficult to know what line was crossed or how we fell out of favor, following some basic guidelines will be helpful in optomizing feeds for search engines. 

 

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