· Description: a description of channel's purpose and content

The first two lines in our RSS feed example define this as an RSS feed. The tag comes next and contains required information about this news channel (as listed above). Optional information follows these items and includes language, copyright info, contact email addresses, and an image (logo) that can be displayed with channel's headlines. The above example contains all these options, but you can leave these out of your own feed if you prefer.

In addition to required information, channel must contain at least one news item.

>> News items consist of following:

· Title: this is headline that will be displayed for news item

· Link: URL where full news item can be found (for best results, each item should be on its own unique web page)

· Description: a description of news item - sometimes referred to as a "teaser."

The first two elements are minimum expected by nearly all sites that carry headlines. The description field is optional, as some syndicators will ignore this field altogether, posting only item headline. Because of this, Kalena's RSS file does not include item descriptions.

Below that, you'll see two news items listed, "Google Defines Ethical SEO" and "Yahoo Offends Gay Community in UK". Additional news items would follow same format and be listed directly below within tags. Finally, last two lines of feed are closing tags - XML, like HTML, requires opening and closing tags.

To preview what Kalena's RSS feed looks like when syndicated, click here:

http://www.wc.cc.va.us/services/news/preview.asp? c=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.high-search-engine-ranking.com%2Fsenb.rss

You can create your own simple RSS file with just about any text editor - I set up sample above with Notepad. Once you've created text file, do following:

Save file with .rss as extension (example: mynews.rss) and upload it to main folder of your website.

Validate your RSS feed by running it through RSS Validator to make sure it's set up correctly.

Display "valid RSS" logo on your site (available from link above) and provide a visible link to your feed (link: http://www.mydomain.com/mynews.rss) from your site page/s. You could say something like Kalena uses on her site: Webmasters! Click below to feature our Search Engine News Blog headlines on your site. RSS Feed For This Page.

(optional) Create a javascript version of RSS feed to enable other webmasters to syndicate your content on their sites (the Wytheville Community College News Center provides this service for free).

Submit your feed to content aggregators. Some sources are provided below.

Update your feed regularly by adding new items to .rss file and ensuring each item has it's own link on your web site.

To keep your feed fresh, try to keep your channel items to a maximum of five, deleting older items from your feed as you update it. The dates next to your news items will adjust depending on when content aggregators pick them up. So, that's basics of RSS! We have only been able to scratch surface in this short lesson, but it's enough to get you started. A complete description of RSS 0.91 format can be found at http://backend.userland.com/rss, and more resources on creating your own newsfeed can be found here:

Set Up Your Own Newsfeed

RSS: Lo-Fi Content Syndication

Blogify Your Page

Content Syndication With RSS (Blog about RSS)

[Kalena] Thanks Dan. Ok, so your feed is created, you've verified it works and you've set up code and Javascript on your site so that webmasters and content syndicators can grab it easily. But you're not finished yet! Now you need to spread word about your feed. Here are a few content aggregators where you can register your newsfeed:

Syndic8

Moreover

Aggregator Userland

News is Free

News Knowledge

You only need to do this once and then syndicators tracking your feed automatically pick up your new feed items as you update them. You can also download one of these RSS readers to examine your own newsfeed:

http://www.feedreader.com/ http://www.headlineviewer.com/

So there you go. Not as difficult as you thought huh? With a little effort, your site can be rubbing shoulders with big players on major news portals. Enjoy traffic!

Copyright © 2002 by Dan Thies and Kalena Jordan. All rights reserved under U.S. and international law.

4. Don't question SEO process after it has begun - It should all be outlined in initial proposal, but a SEO worth his/her salt will make actual changes to your site. They will change visible text and/or design. They will probably get rid of that pretty Flash image or graphic from your home page. They might change your graphic navigation menu into a bland looking text menu. But remember they are doing this for a very good reason - to ensure your site is as search engine compatible as possible. Listen, learn and trust them - they're experts at this stuff.

5. Don't expect high rankings overnight - It really yanks my chain when clients call me up a week after their site has been submitted wanting to know why they're not ranking highly yet! All good things take time and it can take up to 3 or 4 months for search engines and directories to index your optimized content and re-rank your site accordingly. That said, you should notice an improvement on some of faster engines within 2 or 3 weeks.

>> 6. Don't assume traffic is goal - While your new SEO campaign might generate high traffic levels, your site needs to encourage all these visitors to stay, browse, join and/or buy from you. This means you need to ensure your site is looking its very best, your navigation structure is intuitive, copy is enticing and convincing and interactive features of your site (such as catalogs and shopping cart facilities) are working and easy to use. Not all of these items are responsibility of SEO.

7. Don't assume campaign ends with submission - Web sites are not static, they are not like a brochure that is printed and distributed. They should be thought of as organic - always growing and changing upon visitor demand. Are your site visitors finding your site via search queries for information on a particular product? Why not expand your web site to accommodate this demand? You should always be analyzing your log files or visitor statistics to see how people found your site, what pages they like best, what keywords they used to find you, how long they stayed and what they did while visiting. Use this information to grow your site and work with your SEO to expand your search engine focus.

8. Don't undo all their good work - Speaking from experience, there is NOTHING more frustrating than a client who makes significant changes to their optimized pages without telling you. I've heard horror stories from other SEOs about clients that agree to everything, let their site be optimized and re-launched and then completely remove carefully optimized body text or META tags a week later - aarrggh! I won't mention client of mine who decided to shut down their site for Christmas, removing all pages and optimized content without realizing impact this would have on their rankings. Search engines are constantly refreshing and indexing your site content. Just because your site is ranking well this month, doesn't mean it will rank that way forever. If you change your site significantly, your SEO's hard work and all your high rankings could be down drain.

Copyright © 2003 by Kalena Jordan. All rights reserved under U.S. and international law.

Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank. Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australasia and is well known and respected in her field. For more of her articles on search engine ranking and online marketing, please visit High Search Engine Ranking.