10 Reasons to Put RSS on Your Site!

RSS and Blogs are the topics of the moment. Seems like everyone is talking about it. Granted, there is too much hype about RSS and Blogs.

But where there's hype - there's interest!

And with good reason - RSS is posed to be the break out technology of 2005. Those who don't take full advantage of it will be left behind.

If you need convincing - here are 10 reasons why you should put RSS on your site:

1. It's easy and fast! Not to mention Free! You can use a free service like eBlogger and publish your Blog and RSS feed within minutes. You can even place or publish your Blog/RSS Feed on your own site without knowing 'html' or 'xml'. It's all done for you!

Repeat - it's simple to use and very convenient. Publishing your blog is only a few clicks away. (If you need help - just use the link at the end of this article.)

2. Syndicate Your Content. RSS stands for 'really simple syndication' and it's just another way of passing along your information. With the popularity of 'MyYahoo' and the 'Firefox' browser (which has a built-in RSS feed reader) - syndicating your content has gotten even simpler.

The next version of Windows is reportly scheduled to have a RSS feature. If this happens - RSS will explode.

3. Get Your Content Indexed. Using blogs to publish your content is a neat way of side stepping the regular indexing procedure. It gets your content indexed very quickly in most of the search engines.

Search Engines are constantly on the lookout for 'fresh content' - these 'link rich' blogs are a good source of this content. Because blogs are on specific topics - they have a concentrated source of good quality informational material to serve up!

4. Instant Contact. Blogs give you instant contact with your readers or viewers. We live in an 'instant' society - we want everything five minutes ago. Blogs provide this instant gratification. Readers or viewers using MyYahoo have an instant link to your information or postings.

RSS Feeds will instantly spread your information to all interested parties - bringing in targeted traffic.

5. Building Your List. People who pick up your RSS feed or add you to their MyYahoo site - become your subscribers. You are really building your contact list. Have a popular blog or RSS Feed and you can build a large targeted contact list very quickly.

It might not replace your old opt-in email list - but it can be a lucrative addition to it! Take advantage of all those targeted contacts.

6. Link Building. Blogs are link heavens! Build your links thru blogs. All these links will boost your link popularity and increase your search engine rankings.

Plus, by giving viewers/readers a way of adding your RSS Feed creates targeted links to your site. This reason alone is why your site should have RSS!

7. Viewer/Subscriber Feedback. Instant feedback from your subscribers or viewers is easy with blogs. Creating trust and credibility is so much easier when there is immediate communication between the two parties.

8. Keyword Content Building. Blogs are especially good for building 'keyword targeted content' for your site. All these links will boost your keyword rankings in the search engines. Google places a high value on 'anchor text' and blogs are a good place to put all those links.

You can also start different blogs targeted at 'specific related keywords' covering the major topics of your site. Again, search engines love related keyword linking so you can boost your site's rankings by using blogs.

9. Monetize Your Content. Blogs are an excellent way of monetizing your content. Blog sites like Eblogger (owned by Google) even encourages you to use the 'adsense code' in your blogs. If you have a popular blog - this may bring in extra income.

Plus, publishing your ezine or newsletter in a blog can bring in revenue for months if not years to come. All those affiliate links and product promotions get indexed by the search engines and become accessible to a wider audience, i.e. market.

10. Because Everyone Else is Doing It! Might sound a bit 'Jonesish' but you do have to keep up with what other web sites are doing. To remain competitive - you MUST put RSS on your site.

Sites without the 'AddtoMyYahoo' link or the 'xml' button will be the exception rather than the rule in just a few years - if not months. It's simply another way of getting your information 'out there'. It's an opportunity and advantage that you cannot afford to miss.

Proceed without RSS at your own risk!

About the Author :- To add RSS to your Site within minutes - check out this simple RSS Report and Guide. Titus Hoskins of bizwaremagic.com. Visit http://www.bizwaremagic.com for more simple solutions to your online marketing tasks.

How To Add Random RSS Content To Your Site

Most savvy internet marketers will know how important it is to have fresh content added to their sites on a daily basis but the problem sometimes is to find the time and/or content. Adding an RSS feed is a good way to add fresh content to a site, but the problem again is that most of them only get updated on a weekly basis.

I have been wracking my brains trying to find a semi- automated way to do this to make my life a little bit easier. The search engines are always looking for fresh content - adding random RSS feeds seemed to be the answer!

So I did so some searches on the Internet to see what is available. A search for "add random content to site" sure enough brought up a bevy of links - most of which went to sites that wanted to sell me their products for hundreds of dollars!

Having been on the Internet for quite a while I know by now that most of the information that is on sale can most times be found with just a little bit of work. So I refined my searches somewhat and I found a gem that I would like to share with you for…. You guessed it - free! It will take a bit of work from your side to tweak the script a bit, but it's worth it, right?

First you will have to head over to: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex17/randomiframe.htm and copy the available java script. This displays a little content box 130x130. Go on, before they decide to start selling it!

Paste the script into your favourite editor and make the following changes:

To change it to display your content you will have to make the box a little bigger. To achieve that you have to change this piece of code:

width=130 height=130

I have mine set to width=500 height=800 but you should change it to fit your content. Play around with it a bit and change the width or height where necessary. If you do not want a frame around your content, change this piece of code:

frameborder="1" to frameborder="0

To display your content, you will have to create html pages for it. For now, just create a blank html page, I will show you later where to get the content for it.

As you can see, the script calls the pages like this:

randomcontent[0]="random1.htm" - change the "random" to whatever you want to call your created html page - e.g. successstory1.htm.

You can basically display unlimited pages with this script. To add more pages to display, just add:

e.g. randomcontent[4]="random5.htm", randomcontent[5]="random6.htm " etc.

You can now add the script to any page that you want to display random content on.

To get free rss content to rotate, head on over to http://www.goarticles.com They also have literally thousands of free articles that you can use for fresh content on your site. Add the code for the rss scripts to the blank html pages that you have created (or an article if you so prefer) then upload all your pages to your server.

Make sure that the page that you are calling them from (the page with the randomizer java script) and your content pages are in the same directory, otherwise you will have to change the path to the pages in the java script code!

If you would like to get more rss feeds, just do a search for "free rss feeds" on any of the search engines.

So, there you have it. Randomized rss content for your site without having to pay a cent.

Enjoy your fresh content and the increased traffic!

About the Author :- Joan Masterson is the owner of http://www.womenatwork.co.za - a site that offers free work at home resources and information

How to Use an RSS Feed to Provide Content for Your Website

Search engines love websites that are continuously updated with fresh content. As a website owner, if you want to achieve or maintain a good search engine ranking, then your goal should be to continually provide updated keyword–based content on a regular basis to your website. Naturally, if you're providing the content yourself, this takes a lot of work. Let me show you how you can get fresh, keyword-based content updated on your site on a daily basis with no work on your part using RSS feeds and PHP, and most of all, the search engines will love it!

RSS is an acronym that is short for Really Simple Syndication. It's a type of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that is used for syndicating content. XML is used to describe data and is basically a markup language – like HTML.

Before I go into the list of items that are needed to make all of this work, I will mention that the details outlined in this article apply to websites that support PHP. PHP is a popular server-side scripting language that is used to create dynamic website content. If your website is running on a Unix-based operating system (like Linux), chances are your web server supports the PHP scripting language. Check with your web host to be sure.

Now, I can make this a long drawn out article on the technical details behind RSS, XML and PHP, but that would result in a boring article that hardly anyone would read! Instead, I'll just layout the necessary details for an entrepreneurial minded individual to setup a website using these technologies in a quick and least confusing fashion, I hope.

Task: Let's say we run a website on gardening and we want to use an RSS feed to add changing content to our site on a regular basis without us having to do any work.

Our goal is to make this new content readable by the search engine spiders. In order to do that, the content needs to be returned via server-side scripting – not client-side scripting (i.e. JavaScript). This is a mistake that a lot of websites that use RSS make.

You see, JavaScript is executed by the client; PHP is executed on the web server. When a search engine spider comes across a JavaScript 'script' tag, it stops spidering until it moves beyond the closing 'script' tag. On the other hand, PHP converts the script to HTML on the web server and sends the results back to the client (browser). So when a search engine spider comes across a web page that uses RSS with PHP, the spider only 'sees' the returned HTML – as if the PHP script were never there. So, PHP with RSS is definitely the route to take for SEO conscious website owners.

Here's what we need to accomplish our task:
1) An RSS feed link
2) An RSS Tool (PHP script) that can convert an RSS feed into HTML
3) An HTML output-template

Getting an RSS feed link...

A good place to start looking for an RSS feed is 2rrs.com, where you can execute an 'RSS Search' for the keyword 'gardening'. You'll likely see a bunch of results. Click on any of them. You'll now find an RSS2HTML link under the 'Details' section - which is your RSS feed link. Copy the full HTTP path to this link; we will need it for configuration in later steps.

Now we need to get an RSS Tool (PHP script) that can convert an RSS feed into HTML, and we also need an HTML output-template…

So, we need a method to take our RSS feed and convert it into HTML so we can insert it into our web page. The best way to do this is to use an awesome little PHP script called rss2html.php.

You can download this script here: http://www.feedforall.com/more-php.htm (Choose Option two -> Download)

Unzip the download file and you'll find a sample HTML output-template file called sample-template.html and an rss2html.php file. These files will eventually need to be moved to your web server, but before you do that, let's configure everything...

The PHP file is the work horse and does the RSS XML to HTML conversion, so there are some configuration settings within this file that need to be set. Open the file in a regular text editor (like Word Pad) and make the following 3 configuration changes:

Configuration change #1:
Find the following line of code: $XMLfilename = "sample.xml"; Change it to: $XMLfilename = "Your-RSS-Feed-Link";

The above line of code tells the PHP script where to get your RSS XML feed (file). Remember, the RSS XML feed contains the content which you are trying to add to your website. The website that you get your RSS feed from will update this feed as new content becomes available from the website. (Note: be sure not to download the XML file and specify a local path to it – this will result in your website always using the same XML file – which means your website will not be updated with new content from the RSS XML source.)

Configuration change #2:
Find the following line of code: $TEMPLATEfilename = "sample-template.html"; Insert your HTML output-template name in place of sample-template.html.

The rss2html.zip that you downloaded from the feedforall link above comes with a sample-template.html that you can use. However, the template from feedforall encompasses the entire HTML code for the entire webpage (from the opening 'html' tag to the closing 'html' tag). If you're inserting this content into your pre-existing webpage, then you'll likely only want to use the HTML code between the opening 'table' tag and the closing 'table' tag. This will allow you to insert a table into your webpage where each row represents an article from your RSS XML feed source.

Configuration change #3:
Find the following line of code: $FeedMaxItems = 10000;

The number '10000' above represents the number of items that you want to retrieve from the RSS feed – which works out to be the number of rows in your HTML table from the previous step. You can leave this setting as is, or you can change it to any positive number your like. For example, if you change it to 5, then the PHP script will display the top 5 RSS feed articles from your RSS feed source.

When you're done with these configuration settings you can upload these files to your scripts directory on your web server and add the following line of code to your website's HTML file where you would like the RSS feed content to appear:

include ('path_to_scripts_directory/rss2html.php');

Make sure to prefix the above line of code with a 'less-than' symbol followed by a question mark, as well as, postfix it with a question mark followed by a 'greater-than' symbol. Also, remember, if your webpage was initially an html file (i.e. filename.html) then you will want to change it to filename.php in order for the web server to know how to handle the above PHP script.

There you go... an easy way to add changing content to your website without any extra work on your part.

About the Author :- Michael Ellis is an Internet technology expert that specializes in marketing products and services online. Be sure to visit Michael's website http://www.VictoryKey.com for FREE Internet Marketing articles, tips and discussion forums . Want a quality website critique? Simply post a request in Michael's Internet Marketing Forum to get a valuable review of your website.

Newsletters VS RSS Feeds

Effective direct-to-desktop publishing requires a major shift in how you look at the purpose of your newsletter

It is my contention that some publishers, and most especially email publishers, are marketers first and publishers second. That means they see making sales as the primary purpose of publishing an ezine or newsletter. We all hope that our publications will achieve that goal, but it should not be the primary purpose of your publication. Instead, your publication should focus on providing content of the highest quality that establishes your credibility. You do that by showing your readers that you know your stuff, that you are, dare I use the word, an expert - a real expert - in your field.

This means you need to do as much writing of your own as possible. Yes, I realize that writing articles is hard work and time-consuming. That is why we publishers use third-party articles. but don't just run any article that you receive. Use some discrimination. Use only articles that complement your own content, that are appropriate to the focus of your own newsletter. And, whatever you do, do not just publish the article as is. Write a short introduction that gives your readers your own thoughts on the article. Remember, you want to establish your reputation, your credibility, not someone else's.

The received wisdom is that newsletters should be used to promote your own products and services. If you look at the vast majority of email newsletters, that is exactly what the publishers seem to think is the purpose of their newsletter. In most, including a lot of the most-well known, newsletters, you can hardly find the content among all the advertising. these publishers seem to feel the need to shove their advertising in your face. However, let's look at what should serve as a model for all online publishers: your local newspaper. Most newspapers do not cram every page of their publications with so many ads that you cannot find the articles. Most of the good ones tend to have a separate section for advertising. And what ads do appear in the content sections are presented in such a way that they do not interfere with the presentation of the news. How long do you think your local paper would keep its subscribers if they overloaded the news pages with ads? It's time we online publishers changed the way we think. We need to get away from the newsletter-as-vehicle-for-advertising model and switch to a newsletter-as-vehicle-for-quality-content model. Effective direct-to-desktop publishing requires a major shift in how you look at the design of your newsletter.

Email publishers tend to publish discrete issues of their newsletters on a regular schedule. The most common schedule is once a week. Each issue contains all the information that publisher wants to communicate to his or her subscribers for that week. There are a couple of drawbacks to that format, beyond the basic problem that this publisher is using email as her delivery system.
The first drawback is the length. With a couple of articles and a half dozen or so classified ads, along with the regular information like the welcome, the disclaimers required with email, the unsubscribe information, etc., that makes for a fairly long message. Most Internet users just don't read messages of that length.

Yes, you could send out more frequent shorter messages, but that only compounds the problems associated with email delivery exponentially. The more often you email your subscribers, the more likely you are of getting shut down because of a spam complaint.
By using a weblog type of format, you do not do discrete issues. Rather you post an article or your advertising or an editorial on any given day. Let's say on Monday, you post an article about RSS publishing, then on Tuesday you publish an editorial about the upcoming election, on Wednesday, you publish a couple of classifieds, on Thursday you publish an article on holiday advertising and on Friday you publish a few more ads. Let's say this is the same content you would have published in a discrete issue, except for the disclaimers and the mast head - the stuff at the top that identifies your newsletter, You do not need to publish the mast head because it is always there on your blog. You do not need to include all the email disclaimers because you are not using email. Things like advertising disclaimers and welcome messages can be integrated into the overall design of your weblog as a sidebar, so they are always there. Anyone going to your blog page will see them every time they visit.

Yes, even though you are using RSS as your delivery system for your newsletter, your newsletter will have an HTML page as well that your readers will visit whenever they read an entire item in your newsletter.

You see, the RSS feed will only carry the title as a link and the first paragraph or two of your item, say the article about RSS publishing. Each item will be listed separately in the same format. The RSS feed will hold up to fifteen items, the last fifteen items you posted. Any good RSS publishing system will set all this up for you and do all the necessary coding changes. Usually you post your item in HTML and the publishing system converts it to XML for you. Doing it all manually is not effective or efficient, so I suggest you not do that! The idea is to use RSS to make your life easier not harder. More on these systems later on.
With the better publishing systems you do not even have to know a lot of HTML because they will allow you to post your item as text and it will format the line breaks for you. As long as you put a double hard break at the end of each paragraph of text, your article will look fine. You can add bold or italics or underlines as needed. But, the better your HTML skills, the more creative you can be in how your posts will look.

Also, if you have the necessary expertise and tools, you can add graphics, Flash, audio, video, or anything else you want to jazz up your pages. Do NOT add executables (EXE) files to your posts. That creates all kinds of problems for your readers and is forbidden by most, if not all, publishing systems. Also, if you add multimedia to your newsletter, I strongly recommend you do in a way so that your reader can choose to view it or not. Not only is that the courteous thing to do, but it also will prevent you from locking up your reader's computer. Although most people have fairly sophisticated computers these days, there are still people who might not be able to or do not want to view these kinds of files. Remember, your reader is in control here, not you.
Doing daily posts, which I consider the ideal schedule, may seem like a lot more work, but, in reality and once you get the hang of it, it really is less time consuming than doing one big issue a week. Also, a lot of email publishers have gone back to doing text-based newsletters to avoid some of the filtering of email that is going on. HTML email is often blocked or the HTML is disabled unless you specifically ask to see it.

Text newsletters are dull and boring. The Internet is a visual medium first and foremost. Yes, it is for the transmission of content, but that content has to be visually appealing to your readers. There is nothing appealing about a long text message that uses rows of unimaginative characters like #,@, * or others to try to add some zest to all that text. If you want to keep your readers, yes, provide them with lots of great content, but also present that content in a way that captures their imaginations.
Finally, there is a very strong marketing reason for using a blog type of format. I will only touch on it briefly here and explain it in detail in my next blog on marketing with RSS.

You want new subscribers for your newsletter, right? That means you need to get new people to see your newsletter, right? That means getting traffic to your newsletter page, right? One of the best ways to do that is to get the search engines like Google to spider your newsletter every time you add a new item to your weblog. What would you say if I told you there was a marketing tool that could do that? It's called pinging weblogs.com... more about it in my next blog!

How does one become an Internet marketing guru? In the case of Doug Champigny, it took almost 30 years... Starting as a reporter/photographer in the early 70's, he soon realized the real money was in advertising - and made the switch as quickly as possible! After stints as advertising manager of various print publications, Champigny jumped to the Advertising Agency arena, founding two retail agencies over the years... Fascinated by the mass-communication potential of the fledgeling Internet, Champigny took a 2 year sabbatical in the 80's, returning to college to study computer programming full time, joining the online 'geek' community in 1982. How the 'Net has changed since then!

About the Author :- Returning to the advertising industry, Champigny founded The Cyber Surfer in 1993 as a retail advertising 'boutique', creating print, radio and TV campaigns for local and national accounts while monitoring the growth of the World Wide Web. By 1996 the decision was made to switch the agency's focus from traditional media to the Web, and Champigny's never looked back!

Using RSS Feeds to Market a Poker Affiliate Program

RSS, otherwise known as "Really Simple Syndication" is a file format that is used by webmasters to syndicate content on the internet. As a poker affiliate, you can use the power of RSS to make your web content available to other webmasters instantly and doing so can be a tremendous source of traffic.

So what exactly is RSS? Basically RSS is a mini-database containing both headlines and descriptions of your articles. Also included is a hyperlink that allows readers to visit your site in order to read the article in full.

Over the last few years, RSS as become more and more popular and is now being used by a record number of webmasters to add fresh, updated content to websites. Tapping into the powerful world of RSS is quick and the easiest way to do so is through the use of blogs.

Blog software platforms come with built in RSS feeds that will automatically update when you've added new content to your site.

Once you have and RSS feed, readers will be able to simply plug your feed URL into an RSS reader or aggregator which will be updated automatically when you add new content to your site. RSS readers simply hold a collection of feeds that the user enters in. There are 3 types of RSS feed aggregators:

· Desktop RSS readers - Desktop RSS readers are simply applications that run on an individual's computer. They run in the background and update automatically whenever new information is published.

· Web based aggregators - Online aggregators are server side and allow users to login and monitor their RSS feeds from any computer.

· Plug-in aggregators/readers - Browser plugins allow feeds to be read from inside an existing program.

As a poker affiliate, RSS will aid your marketing efforts in the following areas:

· E-mail marketing 
 · Search engine marketing (SEO)
 · Blogging
 · Advertising
 · Public relations (PR)
 · Branding

I urge you to add RSS to your mix of poker affiliate promotion tools today. It is an easy and sure-fire way to boost traffic and generate additional real money sign ups. Happy marketing!

About the Author :- Learn how to become a super poker affiliate by promoting the best poker affiliate programs at http://www.epokeraffiliate.com/

Feed The Need: 5 Ways To Use RSS To Boost Your Business Or Organizational Success

RSS (it stands for Really Simple Syndication, among other things) is a relatively new technology that allows anyone who creates frequently changing web content - news, blogs, current events, etc. - to deliver their messages to interested readers with no fuss, no muss and best of all - no spam!

Currently, RSS is being used by content-rich sites (mainly blogs and news centers) to keep readers up-to-date on newly published posts or breaking stories. But RSS can do so much more. Many businesses and organizations are failing to truly exploit the amazing properties of this technology - and in doing so are leaving on the table innumerable opportunities to create even greater value, sales and traffic for their company, product or service and the market share it represents. Below are just a few of the creative ways that businesses and other groups can tap into the power of RSS and create new streams of revenue and interest for their organizations.

1. Create An "Announcements And Special Offers" Feed

If your business offers classes, seminars, products, services, specials, sales - essentially anything that changes, updates or rotates throughout a cycle - then creating a dedicated RSS feed could save you (and your clients) time and money. By creating an "Announcements and Special Offers" feed and offering access to your clients as an alternative to emails and print mailers, you can keep your client base up to speed, plus send out limited-time and exclusive "feed only" special offers and discounts, thereby offering an incentive to "get on board." This not only saves you time by reducing the advertising cycle to the time it takes to update your web page/feed, it saves your clients money by enabling them to quickly scan through the offering headings and pick out just the one's they're interested in - while your savings on the cost and time of paper and digital mailings (with their appallingly low conversion rates and sporadic delivery) progressively increase as the feed readership segment of your client base grows.

2. Create A "Client of the Week" Feed

If you're in a business where this sort of recognition is appropriate, then this could be a big hit! Creating a feed that regularly highlights a different client, their business and any special offers that they might like to make available - exclusively to other feed members, of course - can be a great value-add for your clients, one that costs you little more than the few minutes it takes to create the "spot" and publish it on your site/feed. Include a photo and a business link and your clients will be singing your praises far and wide!

3. Create A Training Or Team Feed

If you are part of a network marketing venture or are in charge of a large sales force or other team and need a way to consistently and continually get training aids, updates, incentives, sales copy, goals, meeting agendas and other items to your downline or members, consider setting up a feed just to serve this function. Since the actual content is hosted at one central site (subscribers only receive a "teaser" that they have to click through to get the full message), you can upload any digital file of any size that you need at the site itself and be assured that everyone who gets the message will be able to retrieve the files - not always a sure thing when dealing with email attachments and text messaging.

4. Create an inter-office feed

Memos, presentation materials, files, announcements, new policies, schedules - all this can be gathered up in one central feed (or broken down into departmental feeds) that are then easily maintained in one central archive and easily accessible by anyone who needs them. Nobody is left behind or out of the loop because they didn't check their email (or because the message got filtered or bounced) and everyone gets just the information they need without dealing with a lot of cross-over communication from people replying and clarifying.

5. Schools, non-profits and other organizations - RSS works for you too!

Schools - Consider the possibilities of a student feed, updated with activities, exam dates, school closings, special "student only" offers from local businesses and so on. Or how about a special assignment feed in which class materials are uploaded by each instructor for students who are ill, away from home or otherwise unable to be in class?

Churches - A congregational feed can supply daily meditations, worship service schedules, prayer requests, special events and other such messages right to your congregant's desktop - a sort of ongoing, rolling newsletter that never has to wait for a full page or go out off-schedule due to mised deadlines (items go out as they come in - it's that simple). This could also be accessed by members who are doing missionary work overseas, to help them feel more connected with home and to allow them to contribute by sending in updates of their work to be added to the general feed.

Non-profits - Volunteer feeds could provide a running update of available positions and work needed, as well as featuring profiles of special volunteers and organizational wish lists; fundraising feeds might keep donors abreast of giving events and how their donations are being used; and inter-organizational feeds can keep board members and other involved parties up to date on meeting times, agendas and projects. All great ways of utilizing the powers of RSS for the common good!

Consider these options the next time you need to get information out to a scattered and diverse readership, or need to publish material that never seems to come in when you need it to. RSS is a new technology, surely. But that just means that it's true power to serve your needs is only now being discovered. One of the best ways to keep ahead of the crowd is to forge a path through new territories. Where will RSS lead you?

(c) Soni Pitts

About the Author :- Soni Pitts is the Chief Visionary Butt-Kicker of SoniPitts.Com . She specializes in helping others reclaim "soul proprietorship" in their lives and to begin living the life their Creator always intended for them. She is the author of the free e-book "50 Ways To Reach Your Goals" and over 100 self-help and inspirational articles, as well as other products and resources designed to facilitate this process of personal growth and spiritual development.

How To Display RSS Feeds on Your Website

This article is intended as a guide for webmasters who want to display automatically updated content on their website in the form of RSS feeds. In this article I will cover the easiest method to implement using javascript for displaying RSS on websites to create additional dynamic content. This will allow you to display headlines from syndicated content around the web on your website.

RSS to Javascript.

By far the easiest method is to use client side javascript to parse and display the headlines on your site. To achieve this all you need to do is cut and paste some HTML or javascript code into the web page where you want the RSS feed headlines to display.

To achieve this there are several sites that offer a free service that will allow you to select a few options to choose your feed source and display formatting parameters. You will then be presented with some javascript code that you can cut and paste into your website.

Now before I give you the address of the sites that offer this service freely there are a few points I need to clarify with you. Although you will achieve your goal of displaying dynamic content on your site in a few short minutes there are some downsides to this method.

Javascript is not search engine friendly.

As you may or may not already know, javascript is not visible to search engine spiders. They will not see the RSS feed you have parsed into your site and so this will not benefit you if you are doing this to better your search engine rankings.

You are using a third party service.

The second potential downside is that although the javascript is on your site you are actually calling a script on another server. This could lead to a couple of potential problems. If the server is busy it will mean the news feed will take longer to display on your site. The other point is if the third party server fails or disappears altogether then your feed will not be displayed at all.

In summary there are a few downsides, but if you do not code and want some feeds on your site quickly then this is the way to go. Ok, so now you understand what is involved here are the links to the sites that provide the free RSS to javascript service. All you need to do is follow the on site instructions.

• Feed2JS
• RSS2HTML
• RSS-to-Javascript
• FeedSweep
• RSS Xpress Lite

About the Author :- Allan is the webmaster at http://www.newsniche.com an RSS resopurce for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.

How to Add RSS to Your Website - Simply

I am primarily a web-based travel agent, making my living from selling travel arrangements from leads generated from my specialist travel websites. Over a period of time I have built many websites and when creating the last few sites I have added an RSS news feed to generate up-to-date news about that particular travel niche.

In doing so I have added another valuable resource for my potential clients and site visitors but at the same time I have added a source of continually changing content that helps my sites with regard to their search engine optimisation.

However, initially I found the great mass of articles, ebooks and software really confusing. All I wanted to know was how to be able to set up an RSS feed and then add it to my site.

After many, many hours of researching RSS feeds and buying quite a few, reasonably expensive RSS feed creation programs, I finally came across this solution, which for me, is easy to use, straightforward to set up and, more importantly, is free.

To set up, say, a "Cruise News" feed, I would find a suitable feed from sources such as www.icerocket.com, www.2rss.com or visit Yahoo's news feeds at http://news.yahoo.com/rss.

For example, to create a feed in Yahoo I would enter my subject in the "search" box, which would result in a new page of news, relevant to cruises and cruising. I would then click on the orange RSS feed icon that will be shown on the page and the copy the resulting feed URL, (e.g., http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=cruise&ei=UTF-8) that would appear in the IE address bar.

Next I would visit "FeedJ2s", at http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/index.php?s=build and enter that Cruise News feed URL. Then, by pressing the "Generate Feed" button I would be able to generate the relevant "Cruise News" RSS code that I could then enter in the relevant place on my new website.

Now I am not suggesting that this is the best way you could create a useable RSS feed for your website. There are plenty of other ways and other programs out there and you can visit my dedicated website (http://www.rss-feeds-4u.com) which will tell you all about RSS feeds and products.

However, if you don't want to spend a lot of time or any money on setting up RSS feeds for your website, this must be the easiest way by far.

About the Author :- Sig: Colin Maddocks is a web-based travel agent and marketer who operates several successful websites including http://www.rss-feeds-4u.com

RSS For Rookies

What are RSS newsfeeds?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or for Really Simple Syndication. Both mean the same thing, so don't let it confuse you. An RSS is something a website (or a blog) offers to readers provide a "news feed" of their information. It's available for everyone to add to their own "news reader" for free and gets displayed on your desktop or in your web browser.

It works almost like a stock ticker, delivering exactly the information that you have anonymously "subscribed" to, eliminating the need to go out and check your favorite outlets for new information, because they're already delivered to your computer.

Who needs RSS?

Well, everyone need it. It's so much more efficient than going to get it, or getting endless email newsletters. Having the paper delivered to your home makes more sense than driving to the store every day, doesn't it? In the same vein, let's say that you want only the latest news about only certain subjects, and routinely go out and check several websites to see what's new. Using RSS, those individual websites will deliver that news right to your desktop, suitable for reading, clicking, printing, or ignoring.

How can you use RSS?

There seems to be no single definitive answer, because there are so many ways to use it. I'll tell you about the easiest way to get RSS feeds that I know of, but by no means is that the only way. That is; on your homepage of your web browser.

First, you need an RSS newsreader, (a.k.a. "aggregator"). The good news though is that you may already have one. Since millions of people have Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail or Google accounts, I'll walk you through adding a news feed to your MSN home page. Go to http://www.my.msn.com and sign in. If you don't already have a hotmail account, go ahead and create one. If you'd prefer, you can go to http://my.yahoo.com and do the same) It only takes a minute go get a new account.

After signing in to My MSN, you'll see quite an array of news, weather, sports, ads, stock quotes, local information etc. Think of this as your canvas, and you're free to arrange or remove the information how you see fit. Each of these sections you see can me easily moved or deleted. To move them, just click and drag from the top right of each subject area. To remove them, click the minus (-) sign in the top left of the subject area. Feel free to delete them all, since you can always add them back later.

Now go to top left of the screen, right above the "Welcome" area you'll see "Add content" below your name. When you go there, you get four choices (Tabs) for adding content. The default tab that comes up is "Search". and from here you have four options and each is clearly defined. If you know the exact web address (URL) for a company's newsfeed, you can enter it right here. The other three tabs might be worth exploring too, since they let you browse by company names and subjects. Then you just click a box for all you want.

After signing in to My Yahoo, you'll notice that there are already several news feeds from Reuters listed there, with "Top stories", "world News", "Politics" and "Business". Above those stories, you'll see a big yellow box in the center explaining how you can "Add Content". Click the link to "add content" and you'll come up with a search box allowing you to "find content" about a given subject. Type in a search phrase, and you'll be presented with search results that all have an "Add" button next to them. Hit the "Add" button by the ones you want, and then hit the "Finished" button at the top right, and you're done. You just added that RSS news feed to your My Yahoo page. Scroll down at the My Yahoo main page, and you'll see those news headlines you added at the bottom of your list. To rearrange the order of your news feeds, just hit the small "edit" button at the top right of each news section. To remove a news feed, just hit the X like you would to close any window.

Customizing your own news feeds

Now suppose you don't need to "find" a news feed on a subject, because you already know you want to add a particular one. Well that's easy too. Al you have to do is identify what the "RSS feed URL" is for the information you want to add. Most blogs or news organizations show you these now on their websites.

Look for a small orange box on the website that says XML or the words "RSS Feed" or "News feed" and click on it. In the case of large organizations, like CNN for example, you'll be taken to a page with a nice set of instructions, and a whole list of RSS news feed URL's that you can manually copy and paste into your news reader.

Sometimes though, you'll be taken to a page that looks like gibberish code. Don't let that scare you like it did me the first time I saw it! When that happens, you are actually looking right at the feed itself, and all you have to do is copy and paste what's in the address bar of your web browser, right into your news reader. That's called "knowing the specific URL of the feed" on MSN, and ""Add RSS by URL" in Yahoo.

In My Yahoo, to manually add a news feed, go to the "add content" area, and choose the link to the right of the Find button that says "Add RSS by URL". Once you paste your URL in that window and hit "add" the news headlines should show up there. If they don't, then you may have copied the URL wrong, or added a space at the end. Then just hit the "Add to My Yahoo" button and you're done! In MSN, you'll paste the URL of the news feed right into the search box, then check the box when it shows the result.

Delivering exactly what you want and only when you want is how the internet is supposed to work. Things are only getting better.

In researching this article, I notice that My Yahoo seems to be having problems adding certain manual URL's. Oh well. Nothings perfect.

About the Author :- Scott Hendison is an internet consultant based in Portland Oregon, but working with companies in five countries. He specializes in search engine placement and E-commerce POS solutions. For over 100 other articles he's written please visit his website at http://www.searchcommander.com.

5 Easy Ways To Use RSS On Your Site

You hear so much talk about RSS these days on the Internet and in the media. Everyone is acknowledging it's importance in boosting your site's presence on the web. Not to mention how it can increase your site's traffic and ranking. But what exactly is RSS and how can I actually use it on my site? Try these Five Easy Ways...

First, just what is RSS?

RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication'. Basically, RSS allows you to directly deliver your content to all interested parties... don't come to us; we will deliver the information to you or your website.

It syndicates your content. It lets you send updated headlines and brief summaries to your subscribers. In a nutshell; it's simply a more efficient way to get your content 'out there'.

Many people associate RSS with Blogs or Blogging because Blogs are usually written in XML or RSS format (code like html) so that these headlines and postings can be easily read and accessed.

RSS has been around for awhile but it really didn't catch on when users had to use RSS readers or aggregators but with the increasing popularity of MyYahoo, the Firefox Browser and Blogging...RSS is becoming: more popular, more accessible and more mainstream.

That's great --you say-- but just how do I put the stuff on my site!

If you're wondering how to actually use RSS and Benefit from it -- Try these Five Easy Ways...

1. How do I Get My OWN RSS Feed?

First, you need to get an RSS Feed for your site. There are several ways to do this. Let's just stick with the easiest. You can use a site like www.blogger.com and start a Blog on your site's topic or any topic that interests you.

Creating a blog with sites like Blogger (owned by Google) or Bloglines (recently acquired by Ask Jeeves) is quick, fast, and painless. Within minutes you can have your own blog up and running.

This Blog will also supply you with an RSS Feed that you can place on your site. Get a XML or RSS orange button and place it on your site. Link it to your RSS Feed url - this is your atom.xml link if you're using Blogger.

You can also use a MyYahoo button so visitors can add your feed to their MyYahoo. Each time a subscriber opens their MyYahoo site; your RSS Feed will be updated.

You can also add 'MyMsn' and 'Bloglines' buttons on your site. Plus others, give your visitors every opportunity to subscribe to your RSS Feed or Blog, and you will see a marked increase in visitors to your site.

Of course, you can also get your own blogging software and install it on your site. For those who want to choose this route, it might be helpful to check out this comprehensive comparison of the different blogging software here: http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm

2. How Do I Place Other RSS Feeds On My Site?

Have a cool RSS Feed from your favorite site and you want to place that Feed's content on your own site. How is it done?

It's a lot easier than you think!

There are several ways, but we'll again stick with the easiest way. If you just want to place headlines on your site - try a free service like www.feedburner.com and you will get a headline animator. This will display the RSS feed's headlines with links to the content.

If you want to place other content from a feed on your site - one of the easiest ways I found is to use this free site: www.bigbold.com/rssdigest/

This site will generate the source code (html or javascript) that you need to place into your webpages. It's good because it gives your code in several options: Javascript, Php file, and Iframe.

Keep in mind that Search Engines cannot or don't read javascript so if you want this daily updated content to be indexed please be aware of this.

Just take this code and add it your webpages where you want this content to go.

3. How do I place MSN Search Results Directly on My Site?

MSN has come out with their Beta Program using RSS in their search. You can now place RSS search results directly onto your website. It can enrich your site with daily updated content.

And it's quite simple to use; just add "&format=rss" at the end of the URL in your MSN search engine query. For example, to get an RSS Feed for 'tsunami relief' you would use this url: http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=tsunami+relief&format=rss

4. How do I place Yahoo Results on my site?

In Yahoo the URL would be slightly different:

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=tsunami+relief&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt

Of course, in both cases you can change 'tsunami+relief' with the keyword or phrase of your choice to suit your website's content.

Yahoo also has an RSS Search Directory here: http://news.yahoo.com/rss

5. What are Tags? How can I use them on my site?

Tags are more or less keywords for blogs and you should take advantage of them to bring targeted traffic to your site or blog.

Tags have hit the radar lately because Technorati, which indexes 4.5 million blogs, started sorting blog posts by using tags.

They have created a folksonomy, drawing tags from different sources, mainly Flickr.com which sorts or groups pictures and from del.icio.us -- where you create a tag when you bookmark a page.

Or if your blogging software supports categories; this will be recognized by Technorati as a tag.

If you want to create a 'tag' it's very simple; just place this code in your blog:

<*a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Computers" rel="tag">Computers<*/a> (remove asterisks in actual code)

and you will have created a tag for computers.

Conclusion

You have just discovered five easy ways to put RSS on your website, but you have to implement this newly acquired information in order to see any results. You don't have to try all five --- just pick a few and put them on your site. Just take action and do it.

It's fairly easy, and you will see the benefits of RSS almost immediately. You will also see what all the fuss is about!

About the Author :-  Bizwaremagic.com

To Put RSS On Your Site Within Minutes - Visit This Link: RSS and Blogging Guide

Visit http://www.bizwaremagic.com for more simple solutions to your online marketing tasks.

Get More Web Site Traffic From Search Engines

Considering all of the money you spend on promotion and advertising, wouldn't it be great to build a steady stream of web site traffic from the free search engines?

Steady web site traffic from search engines is just a dream for many home business owners. Especially in profitable niches, it can be virtually impossible to get a decent listing. That means you'll get little or no traffic from Google, MSN and many other popular search engines.

To solve your problem (no web site traffic from the search engines), you should begin by creating a web site with a lot of useful content on a certain subject. But even if you know something about optimizing web pages for the search engines, this still may not be enough to bring in a steady stream of targeted visitors to your web site each month without paying for it.

Let's look at your next two options...

Both will cost you on a regular basis and both will bring you a steady stream of quality web site traffic.

' Pay For Inclusion Search Directories '

When you search the internet from Yahoo, the results are provided by a web site other than Yahoo. Search the Yahoo Directory (hundreds of thousands of people do each month) and you'll see web sites that have paid to be in those results. Each web site owner pays at least $299US per year to be there and may not even be included. This fee is for the application only. If your site is accepted, you will pay at least $299 per year, every year. You will pay more if you want a premium placement for your listing.

' Pay Per Click Search Engines '

The concept of pay per click search engines is very simple and works well. You buy targeted ad space based on a keyword phrase that is related to your product or service. Your ad is displayed on the search results page after a user searches for your keyword for that ad. Every time a visitor clicks through to your web site from that ad, it costs you from one cent up to $10 or more. You get web site traffic that is interested in your niche, as much as you are willing to pay for.

If you are not careful, pay per click services can cost you a lot of money. You must know what you are doing before you start using them. Consider yourself warned.

Now for another option for getting web site traffic from the search engines...

' Hire An SEO Specialist '

A Search Engine Optimization specialist can get your site listed highly in search engine results, which will bring you loads of quality web site traffic. This can cost into the thousands just to get your web site set up. Some SEO services will charge a lower amount for setting up your web pages, then charge you on a cost per click basis after that. A good example of a reputable company that operates in this manner can be found at http://www.arundel.net.

Unless you have deep pockets, you may want to look at your next option. Pay a small fee up front to use a product as much as you want that will bring you targeted web site traffic. You won't pay monthly or yearly bills like the options described above.

' Produce Web Pages That Bring In Search Engine Traffic '

There are useful software products available that will let you create web pages that will bring you targeted web site traffic from the search engines. And you won't pay a dime for it.

If used wisely, these tools will work well to bring in the quality web site traffic you want. Each of these products use different methods to bring targeted visitors to your web site. Use them to create more valuable resources for your web site visitor. Do not use them to try to fool the search engines into thinking your site is not what it really is. This is frowned upon by search engine companies.

For example, Product A lets you set up niche directories of related, quality web sites. These directories are linked to from your web site home page so all of your visitors can benefit from the resources included. Each Product A directory page contains search engine listings of related web sites based on a specific related keyword phrase. This keyword is also related to your product or service, so the pages bring targeted visitors to your web site.

The search engines want relevant results for their user's searches. When Product A or another similar product is used properly, you can produce web pages that will be relevant and useful to anyone searching for that particular keyword phrase. Done responsibly, you can create the steady stream of web site traffic you want without having to pay for it.

Depending on your resources, these are your options to choose from if you want more web site traffic from search engines. Choose wisely and you can see a steady stream of web site traffic in just a few months time.

About The Author :- A steady stream of targeted web site traffic means more orders and more leads for you. Get your steady stream of search engine traffic started today... http://websitetraffic.for-your-biz.com.

How Do I Get Traffic To My Website?

Internet Marketing requires you to sale other people's products or services, or if you have decided to create your own product, sale your own. But whether you are selling your own or others, we all have one thing in common – getting traffic to our websites. But what is most important is not just getting traffic, but targeted traffic. Thus, How Do you or I get traffic to our sites?

In my early beginnings on the Internet, I tried many methods of getting traffic to my website. I was definitely a newbie in training – some of the software or services that I bought did me no good. I found, at times, that it was truly difficult to decipher which was a good deal and which was not – who was honest, and who was not – but I guess it goes with the Internet territory – and you must always do your due diligence.

However, I have found three methods of getting traffic to my site or affiliate product or service – Buying it – PPC, such as Google, Mamma, Overture, linking or the hard one Search Engine Optimization.

Pay-Per-Click

If you have the money to invest in Google or some of the other search engines pay-per-click programs you can make some money. Here you create an ad or ads relevant to your affiliate program, and place a bid on the keywords you select. This takes time, energy, persistence and money – and research. Also, I would advise that you read your affiliate programs rules, as well as, the rules of Google Adwords before jumping into the pay-per-click arena. You usually have to put "aff" after your ad or something similar to that – it's dependent upon the affiliate program you are in. The idea with pay-per-click is that you pay only when the individual clicks on your ad.

Linking

Linking can be by either paid or unpaid methods. The paid methods are paying for your link to be shown in Ezines, newsletters or on other peoples' sites. It can be costly, so the best suggestion that I can give you is to research the Ezines, newsletters and or other people sites that you want to link with before buying. In most cases, if ezines are accepting advertising, you know they must have at least 500+ subscribers, or I should say, be sure that they have at least 500+ subscribers before advertising in their ezine. Know what you are getting before you put your money down – and as they always say, be sure to read the fine print.

The unpaid method is through article creation. This requires hard work on your part, but the return will be seen in the long term. Keep in mind, your articles should be relevant and address the subject matter of your site and products. Content reigns king on the Internet – and if it is relevant to their needs – they will eventually come to read.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is basically the optimization of your web pages so that you can get a decent ranking by the search engines, and thus, to pull people to your website by it relevance. This is a difficult chore and needs to continually be worked at – and within the ethics of the Search Engines.

To conclude, getting targeted people to your site is really part of growing your business. And Internet marketing – well, it's not for the faint-hearted, but for the determined, persistent individual who wants to really make a living on-line. Thus, if you really want to make a living on-line – don't give up and promote.

About the Author :- Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free/and need to buy promotional tools, articles, ebooks, how to info, affiliate opportunities, services and products – to meet your budget and needs.

Pixel Advertising:Drive Traffic to Your Website

Pixel advertising is fast becoming all the rage with new pixel advertising website pages appearing on a daily basis.

So what is pixel advertising and how did it all come about.

The original idea seems to have been started a few months ago by a British student named Alex Tew who was trying to find a way to make an online income and help pay his way through college.

He decided that if you were to divide a web page into a grid formation, consisting of 100 pixels per square, it may be possible to offer advertisers a choice of purchasing any amount of these grid squares and in return they could upload an image or banner and advertise their individual sites.

He set his pricing at $1 per pixel, which equated to $100 per grid square and in total meant that his web page, that consisted of a one million pixel grid, would be worth one million dollars if all available pixels were sold.

Well the idea was innovative and after starting to sell some of his advertising space to friends and colleagues the idea really started to spread and capture the imagination of the Internet world. From this initial start things really started moving fast and traffic to his site began to build at a tremendous pace. It wasn't long then until the news and media became aware of what had become a phenomena and this news coverage really started the ball rolling.

Approximately three to four months after starting his pixel advertising website he has now sold over $800,000 worth of advertising and has nearly reached his initial goal of producing a one million dollar homepage.

It really does pay to advertise.

For free pixel advertising of your website visit:

http://www.pixeladzone.com

This is a brand new pixel website so all the prime positions are still available to the early birds.

Free Traffic Exchanges Are King

If you're a serious online marketer with your own website or websites, or you promote affiliate marketing programs, you know how expensive PPC (pay-per-click) advertising can be. If you're in a very competitive market, you know first hand how very expensive this can be. Your $1 and $5 clicks add up very quickly, and if you don't know what you're doing, you will lose a lot of money to your competition, and to the PPC companies you're advertising through, like Google AdWords.

There are other online advertising options open to you other than just PPC. There are traffic exchange websites that allow marketers to earn credits to have their websites advertised to a whole community of many thousands of users within the exchange. Webmasters earn credits to have their websites and promotions added into the rotation while surfing through other websites within the traffic exchange system. Also, most of the newer click exchange websites allow you to purchase hundreds or thousand of hits for fractions of a penny, so you don't have to spend a lot of time surfing. Some also have games to keep you occupied and amused while earning credits. Some allow you to sell or trade your credits for cash. Many of the newer traffic exchange sites are truly a huge benefit for online marketers today.

Another huge benefit for website owners from traffic exchange systems is the number of back links they receive for their websites. The more popular these click exchange sites become, the higher their page rank becomes in popular search engines. When your website URLs are in the website rotation, your click count increases, and search engines start to rank your website higher on the free search engine chain. You not only attract new visitors to your website each and every day from the exchange, but you have the ability to get your website higher in the free search engine listings.

One of the absolute best ways to get free, or very cheap, targeted traffic today is by using traffic exchange website. Having a large community of users, clicking through websites and advertisements to earn credits is a powerful way to get targeted traffic to your website. Having the ability to generate more free traffic, and options to purchase clicks for fractions of a penny, or cash in credits for cash, are just some of the benefits why these traffic exchange sites are so popular today and their popularity is growing by the day. All website traffic is not created equally. Traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is king! These traffic exchange website deliver targeted traffic by visitors who are interested in what you have to offer.

Nothing will replace good old PPC advertising, but when you compliment PPC with click exchanges, just watch your visitors increase by the hundreds, if not thousands each and every month, and watch your sales increase as well. And isn't this what it's all about? So do all you can to increase your targeted traffic, and you will increase your odds of converting your visitors into paying customers. And that's the name of the game my friend.

About the Author :- Andrew Daigle is owner and creator of many websites from DXInOne Free Training Site and Forum at http://www.dxout.com, to Google AdWords Training at http://www.adwording.com and Free Traffic Exchange at http://www.trumptraffic.com

Guerilla Marketing: 4 Ways To Generate More Traffic Next Week

You can create more traffic for you and your business without spending any additional money on marketing. With guerilla marketing, it is more about out-smarting the competition than it is about out-spending the competition. Boundless opportunities and countless positive effects on your business await you when you take advantage of the guerilla- marketing concept.

Guerilla Marketing is defined as unconventional marketing designed for low budgets and maximum impact. Guerilla marketing gets you and your company in front of future customers in the places that they frequent. Customers today are bombarded with traditional advertising and have become resistant and unaffected by it. Meaning: it is time to change the way you market.

Guerilla marketing works when complimentary businesses agree to come together and take a cooperative approach to marketing their businesses. There are synergies between companies who serve a similar customer base. Identifying these synergies and getting to know one another's business are the first steps towards creating a lasting guerilla marketing relationship.

The possibilities are as vast as your imagination. Here are four guerilla- marketing techniques that you can use to generate more traffic next week:

1. Thank-You Take-A-Way Packets

A thank-you take-a-way packet enhances your sale, helps validate the customer's purchase, and provides a valuable service to your customers while simultaneously thanks them for being your customer.

The key to the take-a-way packet is to have something that is high quality and feels like a thank-you gift. It should, by no means, represent a selling piece.

The thank-you take-a-way packet will vary depending on your type of business. For a high-end retail location we suggest using a small folder about the size of a half sheet of paper. On the outside of the folder should be an effective and professional design with the words "Thank You." Inside the folder should contain all the relevant paperwork associated with their purchase as well as all necessary information to make sure that their after purchase experience is pleasant and well informed. This information should go on one side of the folder only.

The other side of the folder is where you will put your pieces of value. Pieces of value can include anything that your customer will enjoy receiving. Successful examples include, a free appetizer at a local restaurant, free dry cleaning, a small book on a topic relevant to their purchase, or a small ad-specialty item from a complimentary business. The pieces of value will differ depending on the type of business that you are in. Use your imagination and have fun with it.

These thank-you packets work because every company that is represented in your packet will reciprocate by including your piece of value in their packet. Therefore, you are quadrupling your exposure to customers from complimentary businesses in exchange for giving your customers something that they perceive as a gift.

2. Website Co-Branding

When you have a strong guerilla partner network, you can use a similar approach with your website. The group of businesses can link their websites together in a way that 'provides value first'. Providing value first means that the link needs to be positioned in a way that is more than an advertisement.

A good cooperative link on a website is more than just an advertisement. It must be something that would interest a customer. Examples include interesting tips, suggestions, or examples of how the customer can enhance their experience. For example, having an interior designer and a realtor provide design tips could add value and augment the experience of buying a new home.

3. Lunch and Learns

Whether you are a financial planner, a realtor, or a fitness expert, you have valuable information that people would love to hear about. When you provide value first and you provide value without expectation of something in return, a return is exactly what you will get.

Office buildings love food -- especially free food. The lunch-and-learn program is a guerilla marketing strategy that has been proven successful. The lunch and learn program is an educational lunch program for an office that would be sponsored by you or your company. The office personnel would gather and eat lunch while listening to your talk on something both valuable and interesting. Do not try to sell them anything; this should be treated as an opportunity to share valuable information that they can use.

The best contact to set up these lunches is the office manager. Most times the office will provide the lunch and you will provide the talk. If they do not provide lunch, you will be able to negotiate for a local restaurant to provide the lunch for free in exchange for some signage on the lunch table and their information in your packet that will accompany your presentation.

Topics will naturally vary depending on your profession. If you are a financial planner you can give a talk on "10 things you can do now to guarantee financial security," "investing tips for the non-investor," or anything else that is both creative and interesting. After the mini seminar, ask "If anyone would like to hear more about (topic), just drop your business card in the basket at the front." You can also have a mini- book prepared on the subject and offer to send it free to anyone who is interested. You will leave with an established reputation in the field as well as a small stack of qualified leads with whom you have already established rapport and credibility.

4. Be A Guest Columnist In A Newsletter

There are networking organization newsletters, non-profit newsletters, and internal company newsletters. These newsletters are always looking for guest columnists that will provide a relevant and an interesting article.

This technique is similar to the concept of the lunch and learns. Seek out these newsletters and offer to write a column. When they run your column, you will provide valuable and interesting information. By doing so you will be getting your name out into the community as an expert in your field. By having a brief bio at the end of the column, the readers who have an interest will have the information necessary to contact you for further information. You may even direct them to your website to download a small mini-book on the topic where you will capture their information for proper follow up.

The different types of guerilla marketing are endless and are only limited by your imagination and willingness to get out in front of people. Guerilla Marketing is incredibly effective because the rapport that the partner business has already established with their customer is transferred to you and your company. When you successfully implement guerilla marketing into your marketing plan, then your cost per lead will be significantly reduced while the quality of your traffic will dramatically increase.

About the Author :-

You can create more traffic for you and your business without spending any additional money on marketing. With guerilla marketing, it is more about out-smarting the competition than it is about out-spending the competition. Boundless opportunities and countless positive effects on your business await you when you take advantage of the guerilla- marketing concept.

Guerilla Marketing is defined as unconventional marketing designed for low budgets and maximum impact. Guerilla marketing gets you and your company in front of future customers in the places that they frequent. Customers today are bombarded with traditional advertising and have become resistant and unaffected by it. Meaning: it is time to change the way you market.

Guerilla marketing works when complimentary businesses agree to come together and take a cooperative approach to marketing their businesses. There are synergies between companies who serve a similar customer base. Identifying these synergies and getting to know one another's business are the first steps towards creating a lasting guerilla marketing relationship.

The possibilities are as vast as your imagination. Here are four guerilla- marketing techniques that you can use to generate more traffic next week:

1. Thank-You Take-A-Way Packets

A thank-you take-a-way packet enhances your sale, helps validate the customer's purchase, and provides a valuable service to your customers while simultaneously thanks them for being your customer.

The key to the take-a-way packet is to have something that is high quality and feels like a thank-you gift. It should, by no means, represent a selling piece.

The thank-you take-a-way packet will vary depending on your type of business. For a high-end retail location we suggest using a small folder about the size of a half sheet of paper. On the outside of the folder should be an effective and professional design with the words "Thank You." Inside the folder should contain all the relevant paperwork associated with their purchase as well as all necessary information to make sure that their after purchase experience is pleasant and well informed. This information should go on one side of the folder only.

The other side of the folder is where you will put your pieces of value. Pieces of value can include anything that your customer will enjoy receiving. Successful examples include, a free appetizer at a local restaurant, free dry cleaning, a small book on a topic relevant to their purchase, or a small ad-specialty item from a complimentary business. The pieces of value will differ depending on the type of business that you are in. Use your imagination and have fun with it.

These thank-you packets work because every company that is represented in your packet will reciprocate by including your piece of value in their packet. Therefore, you are quadrupling your exposure to customers from complimentary businesses in exchange for giving your customers something that they perceive as a gift.

2. Website Co-Branding

When you have a strong guerilla partner network, you can use a similar approach with your website. The group of businesses can link their websites together in a way that 'provides value first'. Providing value first means that the link needs to be positioned in a way that is more than an advertisement.

A good cooperative link on a website is more than just an advertisement. It must be something that would interest a customer. Examples include interesting tips, suggestions, or examples of how the customer can enhance their experience. For example, having an interior designer and a realtor provide design tips could add value and augment the experience of buying a new home.

3. Lunch and Learns

Whether you are a financial planner, a realtor, or a fitness expert, you have valuable information that people would love to hear about. When you provide value first and you provide value without expectation of something in return, a return is exactly what you will get.

Office buildings love food -- especially free food. The lunch-and-learn program is a guerilla marketing strategy that has been proven successful. The lunch and learn program is an educational lunch program for an office that would be sponsored by you or your company. The office personnel would gather and eat lunch while listening to your talk on something both valuable and interesting. Do not try to sell them anything; this should be treated as an opportunity to share valuable information that they can use.

The best contact to set up these lunches is the office manager. Most times the office will provide the lunch and you will provide the talk. If they do not provide lunch, you will be able to negotiate for a local restaurant to provide the lunch for free in exchange for some signage on the lunch table and their information in your packet that will accompany your presentation.

Topics will naturally vary depending on your profession. If you are a financial planner you can give a talk on "10 things you can do now to guarantee financial security," "investing tips for the non-investor," or anything else that is both creative and interesting. After the mini seminar, ask "If anyone would like to hear more about (topic), just drop your business card in the basket at the front." You can also have a mini- book prepared on the subject and offer to send it free to anyone who is interested. You will leave with an established reputation in the field as well as a small stack of qualified leads with whom you have already established rapport and credibility.

4. Be A Guest Columnist In A Newsletter

There are networking organization newsletters, non-profit newsletters, and internal company newsletters. These newsletters are always looking for guest columnists that will provide a relevant and an interesting article.

This technique is similar to the concept of the lunch and learns. Seek out these newsletters and offer to write a column. When they run your column, you will provide valuable and interesting information. By doing so you will be getting your name out into the community as an expert in your field. By having a brief bio at the end of the column, the readers who have an interest will have the information necessary to contact you for further information. You may even direct them to your website to download a small mini-book on the topic where you will capture their information for proper follow up.

The different types of guerilla marketing are endless and are only limited by your imagination and willingness to get out in front of people. Guerilla Marketing is incredibly effective because the rapport that the partner business has already established with their customer is transferred to you and your company. When you successfully implement guerilla marketing into your marketing plan, then your cost per lead will be significantly reduced while the quality of your traffic will dramatically increase.

About the Author :- Tom Richard conducts seminars on sales and customer service topics nationwide. Tom is also the author of Smart Salespeople Don't Advertise: 10 Ways to Outsmart Your Competition With Guerilla Marketing, and publishes a free weekly ezine on selling skills titled Sales Muscle. To subscribe to this free weekly ezine go to http://www.tomrichard.com/subscribe

How To Increase Targeted Web Site Traffic

I get on average around 10,000 to 12,000 unique visitors to my main site each month. Actually, when you're speaking about the Internet, that's not too much to brag about, but it's better than getting say 1000 or 2000 visitors; that was my usual rate until I aggressively went after targeted traffic for my site.

I thought I would briefly and in very simple terms explain how I increased the targeted traffic to my main site from around 1,000 to 10,000 unique visitors each month. That's a ten-fold increase -- I am aiming for a hundred-fold increase but would gladly settle for thirty or forty times the traffic.

How did I increase my site's traffic? The answer might just help you get more traffic to your own site. Most of these techniques are very simple to implement and if you're serious about building an online business, lets face it, the first thing you're going to need is targeted visitors to your site.

I hope you have noticed I have mentioned the words 'targeted visitors' several times already. I did this to bring home the fact that you're not just after traffic but targeted traffic or visitors to your site. You want visitors to your site who are already interested in your site's topic and who are more likely to benefit from your site's content or products.

It's the first ingredient for a successful web site.

Below are my 5 main sources of targeted traffic to my site. Along with a short explanation of how you can create or put the same practices to work for your own site.

1. RSS EMPOWERED One of most effective sources of traffic to my site would have to be my blogs and RSS feeds. Notice I said blogs and feeds; I have created simple blogs and feeds for the major topics of my site: on rss resources, web hosting solutions, notebook computers, etc. These blogs and feeds bring in a great number of targeted visitors to my site.

With the introduction of Google Blog Search, my blog traffic is increasing even more. Within minutes of posting to my blog - I am getting targeted traffic from Google. You are instantly indexed by Google Blog Search; it's reason enough for every webmaster to put at least one blog on their site.

Try to imagine the traffic you'll get when the next RSS empowered Windows browser arrives from Microsoft. Get your own site ready and prepared for RSS to take advantage of all this traffic. Just use Google owned blogger.com to create your blog -- it has that all important blog search bar at the top!

2. SEO EMPOWERED Seo optimization should be your goal! Still the main source of traffic to my site are the search engines. Mainly from Google, followed by MSN and Yahoo. You must optimize your site for the search engines. This includes off/site links and on/site tactics.

I have been online since '98 so I thought I knew how to optimize a website. Boy, was I ever wrong! I didn't notice a big jump in my traffic until I stumbled across a SEO expert, actually stumble is the wrong word, I actually sought out the best SEO expert I could find. His name is Brad Callen. He offers a free email course on how to optimize your sites for the search engines. His main product is SEO Elite.

Just the free course and his helpful newsletter have really fine-tuned my site, which resulted in a major increase of traffic especially from Google. You should try the same for your site or sites and see the results for yourself.

3. ARTICLE EMPOWERED This one works. Article marketing for me has been the major reason for the turn around in the amount of traffic my sites were receiving. It's one of the most effective ways to get targeted visitors to your site.

Getting your articles published in ezines and on sites such as addme.com or sitepronews.com will generate an enormous amount of traffic to your site. As a bonus, you even get 100's of subscribers to your own ezine in one day!

The trick is to write helpful how-to articles on current topics that other webmasters want on their sites, this will boost your link popularity with the search engines and increase your rankings. You must also very carefully choose the right keywords to target in your articles, matching the content on your site. One way to do this is with a site like www.nichebot.com -- it will show how to pick the right 'competitive' keywords for your site. You must target keywords that have high traffic, yet little competition from competing web sites.

My main sources of traffic from article sites include www.ezinearticles.com and www.buzzle.com.

4. EZINE EMPOWERED Building a large opt-in list or subscribers to my ezine is another method that brings in a lot of traffic to my site. You can use an ezine to offer helpful tips to your subscribers. It is a very easy way to get repeat visitors to your site and build up a relationship with your visitors.

Your ezine should relate to your site's theme and offer more information on the same. Whether you believe it not, if you operate a site on a particular subject for a couple of years, you will fast become an expert on that subject. People will regard you as such and this will also bring in visitors to your site.

5. VIRAL MARKETING EMPOWERED Another way to attract targeted visitors is to offer a free product or service. I use free brandable reports that visitors can download and use. These reports and ebooks have links back to my sites. One of my most popular ones is a timely report and guide on how to use and benefit from RSS on all your sites. It brings in a lot of traffic.

Similar to the one above, I use other free viral techniques to build targeted traffic to my site. These are products that can be branded with your links and passed around. Helpful software programs that match the theme of your site are good choices to make.

Another popular one that I have on my site is the DATEwise eCalendar and personal planner that visitors can download and place on their desktops. It has hotlinks to my site that brings in traffic. It can be customized with your site's products so you get targeted visitors or customers.

OTHER SOURCES There are other sources of traffic for my site that I find effective but they bring in lesser traffic than the methods listed above. But they are still worth mentioning, one of these is regular posting on major online forums. This brings in very good targeted traffic, so too, is posting comments in online blogs.

Another good source is a traffic exchange called 'Traffic Swarm' - most sites where members exchange traffic don't work. You get worthless hits to your site. However, Traffic Swarm is one exception that your should try. You just set your start page to this exchange, and click on sites you want to visit.

Increasing targeted traffic to your site is an ongoing struggle for every webmaster. I hope you can try some of the techniques that have worked for me. I am sure they will also work for you.

Empower your site with targeted traffic!

About the Author :- Titus Hoskins Seo Optimization

Drive More Traffic to Your Website

Everyone wants to know the big secret to driving traffic to their website. Every day I see an article or an ad talking about driving people to your website. Driving traffic to a website has become the "holy grail" on the internet. People are realizing that 'if you build it, they won't come... unless you give them a reason'. Website traffic just doesn't happen by itself. Your website is just one of many millions on the web and people rarely just stumble upon your site by accident.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You can buy traffic from vendors that will pummel your website with hits from automated programs. This will increase your hits but will it increase your bottom line? Probably not. You can set up blogs that spider (connect to) your website increasing your traffic count. Does this drive users to your website? Only if your blog is sointeresting that people are reading it. There are thousands of blogs posted on the internet and your blog is just a needle in the internet haystack.

Another trick is to create RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for your website and subscribe to other RSS feeds. This again will increase your hit count but will do very little to drive potential customers to your website unless you're providing valuable information. Tricks will increase your hit count but do very little todrive potential customers to your website.

A better way to buy traffic for your website is by using pay-per-click with Yahoo and Google. You identify the most common keywords associated with what you're offering and bid on those keywords. This can be a costly option if you're bidding on popular keywords but it's a reliable way to generate highly targeted traffic. In my next newsletter I'll go into more detail about using pay-per-click advertising.

The best way to generate traffic for your website is to provide quality content that will solve your customer's problems. People search the internet for information that will solve their problems. Write and post as many articles as you can on your website.If you don't have time to write articles or can't write then hire someone to write the articles for you. You can have quality articles written by freelance writers at www.elance.com for practically nothing. The articles should be relevant to the problems your customers are experiencing and to the services you provide to solve those customer problems. Remember, it's all about providing solutions to your customer's problems. Check the "How To" Articles section on my website at www.valiss.com for more information about your website content.

The bottom line is that you can't trick people into finding your website. You must provide valuable information that solves your customer's problems. Your customers don't come to your website to read your blog about how you spent the weekend. They'll come to your website if they know they can find a solution to their most pressing issues. Keep your content fresh and relevant to solving your customer's problems and in no time you'll have plenty of visitors to your website.

Next time I'll talk about how you can use pay-per-click to generate targeted traffic and not spend a fortune.

About the Author :- Ted Prodromou spent over 25 years in the computer industry working for IBM, Digital, and Cellular one. Today he's the owner of Valiss IT, a consulting firm that provides small business coaching and marketing help. He's also a certified personal and professional coach.

Ted has created and led many coaching workshops and today is helping small businesses automate their marketing with his latest coaching program, "Attract Clients While You Sleep". For more information visit http://www.valiss.com/specials.

The Hybrid Blog and Ping

For the past two years, one of the best SEO inclusion tactics was the use of blogs. Blogs have become a base standard in SEO marketing, but as times change, so does the efficacy of any tactic.

With that said what worked two years ago certainly isn’t the same thing that’s working now. The worst part is that uninformed marketers are still teaching the old methods of SEO marketing with blogs to the masses.

In this article, you will be enlightened to the newest form of SEO marketing with blogs.

Let’s begin by eliminating a huge fallacy.

The blog and ping is a process by which you post a snippet of information from your site to a blog (mainly blogger.com) with a URL to your site included, and then notify Yahoo that a post exists on this blog. The idea is that your blog will be spidered quickly by both Google (due to blogger.com) and Yahoo.

You only need to blog and ping a maximum of 10 pages from your site. The entire purpose for doing this is to attract search engines to your site and let them spider the rest of your site on their own. You can equate this process to renting links. You simply rent one link to your site in order to get the spiders to visit your site.

Unfortunately money hungry marketers came along, didn’t understand the concept, and then took it upon themselves to teach people that every page on your site required blogging and pinging. To top it off, these same uninformed marketers began teaching their followers that three pages should be processed every 15 minutes.

The blog and ping isn’t as effective as it was a year ago because of these numbskulls.

With that said, it was time for the process to evolve. Its efficacy was diminished due to misuse and misguided education.

So where has it evolved to?

It’s evolved into an organic blog that grows of its own. This blogging system receives its data from remote sources and posts on a consistent, yet infrequent basis. It pulls usable and visitor friendly data from a variety of sources, while still hosting the links you want found by the search engines. This blog informs over 50 blog directories every time an automated post is made, making it extremely valuable to the search engine algorithms.

How is this accomplished?

First, you need Wordpress (http://wordpress.org) and RSS to Blog (http://www.stealthtrafficsecrets.com/rsstoblog.html). Once you’ve downloaded both of these, make sure you install them.

Once installed, configure Wordpress per the instructions found here: http://www.stealthtrafficsecrets.com/wordpress-tricks/.

Second, create a list of links from your site which will be used in this new hybrid blog and ping tactic. One of the bonuses for RSS to Blog is a tool that does this automatically for you.

Third, add these harvested links to the RSS to Blog system and hit save. Set your cron to post out as often as you like and you’re done.

That’s it in a nutshell.

There are a couple of additional points I need to make,

First, when using RSS to Blog you also have the ability to add additional data from other sources in order to make your Wordpress blog readable by the masses.

Second, the Wordpress tricks book gives you the knowledge to make your blog more search engine friendly as well as providing a list of blog directories that are automatically notified every time you make an entry.

With this tactic revealed, it’s my intention for you to enjoy the quick search engine inclusion that comes as a result of implementation.

About the Source :- This article has been authored by Keith Baxter, the editor and publisher of the fast selling video newsletter at http://www.StealthTrafficSecrets.com. If you wish to learn how to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website, then subscribe to the site now… it’s only $7.00 per month!