RSS means “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication.” This is a feed that is read by a feedreader. Other feeds include Atom and RDF. These feeds are a content publication that is readable by a machine and they are updated often. Feedreaders read these feeds and note if there is a new post to a blog. If there is a new post, the feadreader dispalys the post with a link to it. There is usually an small excerpt from the post along with the link. It is helpful to have a feadreader to check if the blogs you enjoy visiting have new posts. This way, you don’t have to constantly visit the blogs. You get an update automatically when something new has been published. Wordpress explains feeds and feadreaders well in their Introduction to Blogging.

Blogs usually come with feeds. You can access these feed addresses and submit them to the three major search engines, directories, or other sites that accept feeds in order to get your blog visible. This helps with SEO in a sense because you are getting your blog out there for people to see. I have experience with Wordpress and Blogger. So, I will explain how to get the feed URLs for these two hosting companies. Hopefully this information will help anyone who has a blog hosted elsewhere.

Wordpress

Wordpress has an article to help you find your feed URL. There are four options for the feed URL of your blog and you can access these four options in two different ways. So, that’s eight options. It might be confusing. Sorry about that. Below are the four options and any of these options works for your feed URL:

1. http://example.com/wp-rss.php

2. http://example.com/wp-rss2.php

3. http://example.com/wp-rdf.php

4. http://example.com/wp-atom.php

You can also use the following versions of these URLs:

1. http://example.com/?feed=rss

2. http://example.com/?feed=rss2

3. http://example.com/?feed=rdf

4. http://example.com/?feed=atom

Just for fun, here are the first four options of this blog’s feed URLs:

1. http://seo101blog.com/?feed=rss

2. http://seo101blog.com/?feed=rss2

3. http://seo101blog.com/?feed=rdf

4. http://seo101blog.com/?feed=atom

Please feel free to add it to your feedreader. We update it regularly.

Blogger

Once you are in your blog on Blogger, you can go into the Settings tab and then click on the Site Feed option in the top navigation under the Settings tab. You are givien the Site Feed URL at the top, which is your blog address. Next, you are given the Site Feed Filename, which is atom.xml.

As an example, Dr. Bray is a Los Angeles Plastic Surgeon who updates his plastic surgery blog regularly with valuable information. He has subscribers to his blog that are interested in updated news about procedures and his practice. He pulls his blog into his site so the blog has the same design as the site. His site feed URL is http://www.drbray.com/atom.xml.

As you can see, Dr. Brays Site Feed URL is http://www.drbray.com and his Site Feed Filename is atom.xml.

Submitting Your Site Feed

Okay, so you have your site feed URL… now what? You can find directories that accept site feeds that are in your area of interest. For example, Dr. Bray would submit his site feed to directories about plastic surgery. Just do a search for directories that are in your area of interest, check them out to make sure they are worth while, and then submit your feed to them.

You can submit your site feed to Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

Submitting to Google’s add feed is a little trickier than submitting to Yahoo! or MSN. First, you need an account. So, create an account with Google if you don’t already have one. Once logged in, go to your account by clicking on the “My Account” link at the top right hand corner of your browser. When you are there, go to where it says “iGoogle” in the list of My Products. Next to this link is a link to “Add Content.” Click there and look for the “Add feed or gadget” link at the bottom of the list of links on the left hand side. Enter your site feed URL and submit. I hope that makes sense. Good Luck!

Google also offers some other tools to help reach more users. Check out Google’s Tools to help you submit your content. There is a Media section, which you may find super useful.

For Yahoo!, go to the Yahoo! submit page to submit your site feed.

Use this link to submit to MSN.

Another good thing to do with site feeds is having some on your site. They don’t help your search engine results, but it helps your visitors know that you stay up-to-date and offer up-to-date knowledge. This helps with site stickiness. If a visitor can come to your site to see what you offer and see news, it saves them a trip to multiple sites.

By implementing the new rules, Google wants to eliminate multiple listings for a single business. For example, Jan Dils & Jim Leach Attorneys at Law, PLLC could previously use this tactic to rank well in Google maps, by using keywords such as, West Virginia Personal Injury Lawyer, West Virginia Medical Malpractice Attorney, and so forth could be added to the companies’ keyword criteria to rank high. This strategy enabled one business to achieve multiple listings for a variety of different phrases.

With the new rules, Google wants these keywords to be placed within your description and custom attributes fields. For example, if you are advertising plastic surgery, you can create an attribute called Brands Carried (and put in the types of breast implants such as saline and silicone breast implants). Then to the right you’ll list various brands you carry. We recommend you consider placing your most important keywords OFFICIALLY into the title of your business.

Please Note: Claim your listing!

Spammers have recently started to hijack unclaimed listings of business and making them into their own. Spammers are hijacking majority of the top ranked businesses, which they have now started to direct traffic to their affiliate sites. Now the hijackers are earning commissions from your Google Maps listing. By not claiming your site, you’ll never be alerted by phone because the thief has changed “you” phone number to their own. There is a good chance that you will never notice the hijacking took place unless you happen to notice the incorrect information. Google has created a form to claim your business listing. If you do not claim your listing now do not say you were not warned.

Google Maps has also added an enhancement to their Mobile Search service. This new service can now track your location to give you listings of what you are looking for in your area. This may freak you out that there is someone tracking you, by Google is going through great lengths to assure us our location is never associated with personal information, even if you are logged into your Google account. Along with this new feature, Google has recently released Street View which will make it easier for consumers to find what they are looking for.

What Google is saying, marketers who are prepared to precisely segment their target audience, and efficiently match offers to customer locations, will be raking in the big bucks? Start preparing today because when the changes come, I believe that they will happen quickly.

SearchWiki Feature Example

This feature was developed with the user in mind. It is meant for you to be able to organize your search results and make comments. First, you have to be logged in to your Google account. They stress the point that you can see if you are logged in by looking in the upper right corner of your browser and see your login name. If you don’t see your name, you need to log in. Once logged in, when you search for keywords that you will often search for, like SEO Blogs because you want to say up to date on techniques and news, you can organize your list with your favorite sites by clicking the arrow in the upper right section of the listing. If you don’t like the result, you can click the delete button next to the arrow and the listing goes up in clouds. Pretty cool? Once you have tagged a listing that you want to go the top, the arrow is green so you know you like that one.

Google's SearchWiki Feature

This is good because you can move a listing you like from page 2 or 5 to the first page. But why not just use bookmarks? I have a list of SEO blogs in a folder in my bookmarks tab that I like to frequent, this being one of them! I don’t constantly search for SEO blogs. If I want to see other blogs to add to my list, I don’t want to see the ones I like, since I know I all ready like them.

The good part about this feature is that you can comment on why you like the listing. There is a comment bubble near the “Cached” and “Similar Pages” links at the bottom of the listings. This is where you can say that you like this blog listing because it has up-to-date information about SEO or that it is really funny and informative. If you have a super long list of sites you like and your memory isn’t so good, you can use SearchWiki to keep those listings at the top of the search for the exact search phrase you used and make detailed comments about them. These comments, be warned, are public. You can view other people’s comments about listings and they can view yours.

SearchWiki does not affect other users results. Just because you don’t like a listing and delete it from your search doesn’t mean that other users won’t see it in their results. So, you can’t go around deleting your competitors from search results. You will be the only one benefiting from not seeing them.  The only part about SearchWiki that will affect other users’ searches are the comments. Those are universal. I guess this means you can write anything you want, including that you don’t like the site and why…

Google seems to be trying to enter the realm of Web 2.0 with the somewhat voting system they have in place reminiscent of Digg. They are trying to be more interactive. What happened to the simple Google with a search bar, two buttons, and the results you are looking for?

I am confident that, once you look at this tool, you will figure out a good use for it on your own, even if it’s to ignore it.

What are Heading Tags?

Heading tags are the tags used to organize the content of the site. In the beginning, the internet was used for sharing information like scientific papers and other seemingly boring articles. These papers and articles needed to be structured for easy reading.

Enter the Heading Tags!

• H1
• H2
• H3
• H4
• H5
• H6

These tags act much like an outline of a paper. The main title of the outline would be an H1 tag, the section title would be H2, the subtitles of the sections after that would be H3, etc.

I. H1

A. H2

1. H3

a) H4

(1) H5

(a) H6

Web sites are not built out like this anymore. New uses for the H tags have been developed, but the basic use is still relevant.

How Do You Use Heading Tags?

The H1 tag is the heading of your page. H2 tags are for additional keywords that are not as important as the H1. The H2 can also support the H1. H3 tags are for the titles of the different sections of your content, but are not to be used as the title of the page. That is for the H1 tag. H4, H5, and H6 tags are not as important as the first three and can be used as subheadings to the content sections.

A great example of the use of heading tags is in Dr. Green’s site, who is a New Jersey Cosmetic Dentist. His site uses the first three heading tags to help organize the site. The neuromuscular dentistry page on his site shows the H1 tag as the title, which is “Neuromuscular Dentistry.” The H2 tag is the areas he serves and reads as “Serving Caldwell, Morris County, Newark, and Passaic, New Jersey.” Lastly, the H3 tag is used a few times on the page for the titles of the sections in the content. Examples of his H3 tags are Neuromuscular Dentistry and Your Smile Makeover, Dentures, and TMD.

How Do Heading Tags Help With SEO?

I’m glad you asked that question.

The H1 tag is the most important of these six tags and should be placed at the top of your content so that visitors to your site can easily understand what the page is about and so the search engine robots can see it before the rest of the content when they crawl the page. The H2 is the next important and can be used as a subheading. H3 tags are not as important as H2 tags and are a little more important than just bolding text. The rest of the heading tags don’t really hold much weight for keywords. So, you are okay to just bold the text from here.

Search engines like to see the first three heading tags because it helps them understand what the pages of your site are about. As always, the most important tag is the Title tag in the heading section of your page, but the heading tags help reinforce the Title tag. With that said, the H1 tag should repeat the Title tag, but it does not have to be verbatim. The same keywords should appear in both tags.

You want to only use the H1 and H2 tags once on a page, but the H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags can be used multiple times. The H1and H2 tags should only be used once because they carry so much weight and you don’t want your page to look like the SEO is more spam related.

As a continued example, Dr. Green’s neuromuscular dentistry page’s Title tag reads “New Jersey Neuromuscular Dentistry” and the H1 tag reads “Neuromuscular Dentistry.” New Jersey is not repeated in the H1 tag, but is repeated in the H2 tag. Both the H1 and H2 tags reinforce the Title tag.

Please do not confuse the heading tags with the heading section of your site. These tags do not belong in this section. Only the Title and Meta tags go here. Again, do not add the heading tags between <head> and </head> on your pages.

I was reading a SEO chat forum where someone asked if it is a good idea to use H3 tags in the navigation. This is not a good idea. Heading tags cannot have an anchor tag on them. In other words, heading tags cannot be links. The code will not validate in the W3C’s Markup Validation Service, which is used to make sure that the code of your site is correct and complies with the W3C’s rules. You are better off to bold the navigation in your CSS to help add emphasis to those links.

How Do You Use Heading Tags in the Design of a Site?

Here is where you luck out. Heading tags, unfortunately, have a preexisting style and format. H1 tags are gigantic and take up way more space than needed. They don’t go with any design and just completely destroy the flow of the design.

But there is an easy fix. It’s called CSS! All you have to do is specify what you want your tags to look like in your CSS file. Here is an example. Say you wanted your H1 to be a nice green with a font size of about 30 points and with some room below it so it will not crowd the H2 tag. Next, you want your H2 tag to be black at about 18 points with a bit of room below so it will not crowd your content. Lastly, you want your H3 tag to be a nice dark gray about the same font size as the H2 tag with some room around it to stand out from the content. Here’s how your CSS would look:

h1 {
color: #096C57;
font-size: 30px;
padding: 0px 0px 30px 0px;
margin: 0px;
}

h2 {
color: #000000;
font-size: 18px;
padding: 0px 0px 30px 0px;
margin: 0px;
}

h3 {
color: #6f6f6d;
font-size: 18px;
padding: 0px 0px 30px 0px;
margin: 0px;
}

That’s all there is to it. Now you can design your site using these bulky heading tags, but design them to flow with your design and help out your SEO. It’s a very cool thing, really. And very satisfying.

Linking out to relevant websites can help provide readers in-depth information about similar topics and additional resources. This gives your viewers confidence in your expertise on the subject. Good links to other websites can make visitors want to come back for more analysis on future topics. Another positive effect of outbound linking is that it helps build relationships with other domain experts which turm builds a mutually beneficial networking system.

According to Google, unmonitored  links and undisclosed paid advertising outbound links can reduce your website’s credibility. To ensure your site doesn’t lose credibility, make sure that user-generated comments are moderated and/or add the rel=”nofollow attribute to user generated links.

Google doesn’t like paid links. If you are receiving payment for outbound links, add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link. Google recommends not having too many links per web page as this may confuse viewers and is not considered user-friendly. Google makes it very clear that you shouldn’t worry about the PageRank of a website as long the site is relevant to your website.

Another important piece of information is that a website will not automatically get a ranking boost on Google if it has links from .edu or .gov domains.
Links from .edu and .gov domains have no special value.
[If you get an .edu link and no one is linking to that .edu page, you're not going to get any PageRank at all because that .edu page doesn't have any PageRank. [...] We generally treat all links the same - be it from .gov or .edu or .info sites.”]

By using the above guidelines, webmasters can ensure that their outbound linking strategies are bringing in stronger credibility and higher rankings for their sites.

Welcome to APT, an online platform from Yahoo! that will make buying and selling digital ads easier. APT will make cross-selling easier for businesses, publishers, networks and agencies. APT from Yahoo will give you the ability to find the right audience at the right place, at the right time. According to Yahoo, “APT will be a “transform development for the advertising and publishing worlds” by allowing advertisers to shift its focuses from properties to audiences.” It has been mentioned that the business of selling digital ads exceedingly time severe and complicated. This new platform will aim to make the process of selecting and targeting display ads fast and easy.

Currently newspaper agencies are hurting in the online ad business and will try anything to grow their online revenues. So Yahoo has decided to release APT starting with the first phase of the platform by opening it up to a couple of newspaper agencies like San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle of Hearst News. This system will allow papers to offer their display ads which will target certain demographics and bundle those ads together with similarity targeted ads from Yahoo. “This system has already started to increase the revenues of MediaNews on remnant inventory while cutting process time by half,” according to Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews. Yahoo plans to roll out APT to other businesses such as cosmetic dentist, personal injury lawyers and plastic surgeons that participate in PPC. APT also will target agencies, publishers, networks and all other interested parties in the upcoming year of 2009.

In my opinion the companies that will profit using APT is users, partners and developers and advertisers and agencies. It will benefit the users by allowing them to be drawn to more relevant online experiences which users will see more targeted and more engaging ads. Partners and developers will benefit in ways that will bring their technologies, solutions and innovations to a wider variety of the marketplace. Advertisers and agencies will benefit also by reaching a large scale of audiences which will harness detailed insights on those users, driving better performance as they simplify media buying.

To find more information on APT you can visit apt.yahoo.com

Google Enhanced Image Search Home Page

It is kind of like a game you can play. How it works is that you go to the Google Image Labeler page and click the “Start Labeling” button. You will automatically be paired up with a partner. You and your partner have two minutes to give as many labels as you can to the same set of images. You will earn points once you match your partners label. The amount of points you receive depends on how specific your label is. You will be given another image once you and your partner match labels. You have the option to pass on an image if you cannot come up with a label. Once time has elapsed, you will get to see all the images you and your partner labeled as well as what labels your partner listed. You can also see what websites the images came from and the total number of points you and your partner earned.

Playing this game is easy and sounds like it will help with the image search results. But this feature is not for everyone and there are some negatives. You have no idea who is suggesting labels for your images. These people may not be experts on your products and could completely mislabel your products. Your competition may be labeling and they could corrupt your images. If you are a cosmetic dentist and have after images of your patients’ beautiful smiles, you don’t want to take the chance that someone may label your images as “gross.”

There are no exact locations available unless you know exactly where the image came from. A nice photograph of a beach with palm trees and a gorgeous sunset could be anywhere. Your image will not be labeled with Hawaii, Cocoa Beach in Florida, or the Virgin Islands. It will most likely be labeled with beach, blue, sunset, palm tree, beautiful, etc.

Google Image Search Car Image

There are keywords that are off-limits for some images. You have a column for your labels and then another for the labels that you cannot suggest. My partner and I had an image of a car on a road, but there were several words that we could not use like car, sky, sun, sunset, and VW. I suggested ad, clouds, and white. We ended up matching on white, which doesn’t seem like a very good label.

Google might be wanting to find labels for images that are not obvious. So, they put in the off-limits section, but do you really want to search for white and see a car?

You can misspell words. Who is to say that if you and your partner both misspell the same word, that you won’t match on it. Then your image will be labeled with a useless misspelling.

Ear Piercing Diagram From Google Image Labeler

You may come across images that you have no idea what they are. Images of electronics are all over the web and you may come across one while labeling. You may have no clue what it is. Many times, my matches with my partner were colors. I did the Google Image Labeler game several times and most of those matches were color.

On one image of an ear that had piercings, we couldn’t use the words ear, diagram, or piercing. I didn’t know what else to try other than illustration, metal, and gray. My partner suggested gray too and that was 130 points.

A Lasik surgeon’s site might have diagrams of eyes explaining the process of Lasik and PRK. Someone labeling images might put down eye, eyeball, lens, blue, or light instead of Lasik or PRK. How are we supposed to know what the image is about without seeing it in the context of which it is used?

Your images may not show up better on the SERPs if you enable Google Enhanced Image Search. If you have specific products or images you do not want mislabeled, then don’t enable this feature. Your best bet is to optimize the images the best you can and rely on the robots to do their job. If you have products that are obvious to label, then this tool may be a great option for you. Right now, this is a hit or miss and should be used only on sites that you are confident will not be hurt by it.

Title — Each page on the site should have a unique Title containing the target keywords The keyword/s should figure prominently in the Title and should be under 60 characters.

Description  — Create a customized description to provide a a reason for people to click your listing when displayed in the search results. The description may or my not contain keywods but must have a call to action that is attractive to the viewer.

H1- Header — Each page should have an <h1> header that contains the targetted keywords , if possible use variation such as the singular or plural version of the keyword that has been used in the Title.

Keywords — Ensure your keyword/s occur at least 3-4 time within the content on teh page, highlight keywords by bolding of italicizing or underlining them.

Anchor text — Link to your other pages by placing your best keywords within your links. Limit the number of links on a page to less than 10. If you link to an extrenal site , make sure it opens ina  new window.

Page URLs - Format your URLs consistently to avoid confusing the search engine spiders and lowering  PageRank.

Local search comprises of what is known as Nearcasting and Farcasting. Viewers maybe looking for something nearby ( Nearcasting) e.g. a chinese take-out near their residence, or they may search with local intent but for a location that may not be local (Farcasting) e.g. A Denver, CO resident searching for a hotel in downtown, New York City.

There are an vast number of online businesses targeting viewers searching for something located in a particular area. Hotels, restaurants, legal services, health services, and more can use geo-targeted SEO tactics to out-do competitors and improve their rankings for geo-targeted terms.

Here are some the most important points to keep in mind when optimizing for local search:

-Work on keyword research, ensure that highly searched terms are targeted and
prioritize your optimization based on the relevance of the pages. Ensure that the website has content and pages that are relevant to the search terms.Use synonyms and regional colloquialisms where possible.

-Keep an eye on how competitors’ sites are faring, check on Page rank, site optimization and so on, use SEO tools to check their incoming links.

-Optimize your pages for geo-targeted search. Use targeted search terms and try and be creative while using them in metatags and within the content of the the site.

-Create listings and verify them on Google Maps, Yahoo Local and Microsoft Live Local. Submit the site to Local Directories and online Yellow Pages.

Work on getting Reviews from from users, reviews have a lot of impact in most geo-targeted and local platforms.

-Work on Link-building with other service or product partners that support the client’s business.

-Ensure that the physical address and phone number of the business is incorporated in text format on every page of the site.

In a few words, letting a Viewer know precisely what the Business is about and where to find it will get the site ranked on top for local search.

To ensure that your business draws the maximum number of visitors it is imperative that your domain name is one that is memorable and makes an impact on the viewer. It should be easy to remember and straight forward. Avoid  complex and hard to pronounce words. Unless  the business name dictates it, try and avoid numerals and initials.

Try and limit your domain name to ten charcters and avoid exceeding twenty charcters at all costs. A great domain name is less than ten characters; a good domain name is less than twenty characters, going over twenty characters is less than acceptable.

As far as extensions go,  the .com domain name extension is the best by far, because it is the most widely used. The .net extension is the second best,  certain extensions are related to the kind of business, for example .gov is restricted to government related sites, while .org is typically used by not-for-profit organization and educational websites and .info extensions are generally used for informational websites.

I’s also important to use the right spelling and to avoid using symbols as viewers who misspel or who do not remember to ad the symbols may land on a competitors’ site.

A good domain name should be short and sweet and something that sticks in the viewers’ memory and draws them back to your site.