That's MSN and Yahoo, but what about Google?

The real big Question: What will Google do with RSS? How will they use it?

The key may lie in Tags!

Tags is another application of RSS/Blog you should be preparing your site for.

Tags have hit 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="nofollow" rel="tag">Computers<*/a> (remove asterisks in actual code)

and you will have created a tag for computers.

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

Webpages can even be designed around these tags and RSS Feeds. Directly deliver or pull all this content onto an RSS Supersite. Say you have a website on 'notebook computers'! You could pull RSS Feeds on all different brands, all product review materials, all company information or updates, etc. and build a content rich RSS Supersite.

You could even compile this Supersite into an RSS Feed and deliver it to all your interested prospects. Might make a very effective marketing system!

Information runs net, RSS Feeds is now most efficient way to deliver that information. It's nature of beast; blogs and RSS Feeds are more 'on topic' than webpages. They deliver highly concentrated 100 proof content.

They're closer to spider!

You get your content without graphics, add-ons, website follies...it's closer to heart of matter. RSS delivers pure content. It's original acronym stood for rich site summary. Give me what spider sees and leave frills behind!

Right now, webmasters can, for lack of a better word -- 'turbo-charge' their sites with these RSS Feeds. You can add daily updated targeted content for your site. Should make any decent SEO smile.

Right now, webmasters should be positioning their sites for RSS. Those who jump first will get a leg up on their competition to say least. For any online business, a strategic tactic or move should be considering or planning their RSS strategies at this moment. Get your site into position.

For MSN example is just one application of RSS that's coming into view.

But watch out ... this gorilla is just hitting fan... on horizon there are endless streams of applications for RSS. Keep your eye on cursor... don't let RSS get too far from your radar.

The one who figures out real potential of RSS will be 'King of Hill' for a little while until something else comes along.

Titus Hoskins Copyright © 2005

Selecting which phrase will produce highest ROI based on these numbers can be a bit more involved, weighing a number of factors such as cost in either time or money (or both) to optimize for various phrases, sales-per-click ratio, etc. Basically what you want to do is consider your budget vs. how much can you make per click and thus, how many sales you can expect per day based on keyword phrase you have chosen to target. If a promotion can pay for itself over a 3 to 6 month period of time, thus producing a surplus after it is paid off, it can be considered a successful promotion.

It should be noted that this step is not an exact science. The number of sales you will get per day will be dependant on exactly what position you attain on natural engines (your content is also important obviously, however you will have used your existing content on PPC engines so for most part you will be comparing apples-to-apples). There will be some guestimation but you will get a good idea of how many sales you would make if you ranked in same position for all of possible phrases.

While I have not tested above noted phrases on PPC engines and applied them to natural engines I would feel confident in predicting ROI would be higher for “acne treatment” based on two factors:

1. The competition is lower and thus number of sales required to produce a return on investment is about half that of phrase “acne”.
2. The phrase is far more targeted. People searching for “acne” may be writing papers on subject or just looking for information whereas people searching for “acne treatment” are far more likely to be looking for a solution to an acne problem.

While I have my instinct on subject, were I to advise a client on best possible strategy I would have to recommend testing these phrase on PPC engines. It may extend promotion for a bit but in end decision on which keyword phrase makes best target will be based far more on statistics and facts than a simple guestimate.

Additional Considerations:

While this article’s purpose is to explain how PPC engines can be used to help increase ROI of a search engine positioning campaign, your use of PPC engines should not stop there. While you are testing out phrases you should be making sales as well. If revenue generated from PPC promotion is higher that it’s cost then stick with it. PPC engines are a great testing ground however they’re also a great source of leads and revenue if used correctly.

There are many PPC engines out there. We’ve researched a number of them and posted ones that have produced highest ROI for our clients on our PPC Engines page. These are engines that we have found are worth sticking with once any testing phase is complete. In case of primary engines (Google and Overture) you will have to use your discretion based on cost-per-click to determine whether they are worth testing or advertising on.

Dave Davies is CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc. He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into top positions on major search engines.