“My Yahoo!” RSS Headline module Coming Out of Beta?

If I had to guess, I'd say all signs point to yes. When that happens, Yahoo's RSS/Atom directory will likely contain only those who added their feeds early. New feeds seeking to be included will probably face stricter standards than in past.

If you don't have one yet don’t worry, because it’s never been easier to make one. If you can cut and paste, there are tools all over Net that will show you how- some will even generate file for you.

However, there are still certain guidelines you need to follow with your feed to get a good result out of Yahoo - again, it's not as simple as adding your feed now that there are more competing listings.

Yet, Yahoo is still accepting new sources for RSS feeds. Readers of my last book state that they are getting excellent results following my instructions, though initial inclusion no longer occurs at same rate. Plenty of markets have few feeds available, or none at all. Your site could fill that void.

That means you still have a chance at a first page ranking. The traffic I get on a daily basis from My Yahoo readers alone sounds like I just like to brag.

And I do, but that's hardly point.

The point is, there's no place you can even go to buy caliber of exposure to quality of audience that reads feeds.

The typical audience that accesses information by feed are also blog readers. A study this summer estimated that 69.3% of blog readers are aged 29-50, and that 40% of this audience are people who have household incomes greater than $90,000.

The type of surfer that would subscribe to your feed has pre-qualified themselves as a lead, with a certain level of understanding and interest in your topic, often on a professional level. And if you don't spend every post hitting them over head with your sales pitch, they can be both loyal and interactive.

(If you do, they'll unsubscribe from your feed faster than you can spell s-p-a-m.)

And if you're in business of providing information you can use, in a way that shows how you can solve their problem, it's like preaching to converted. Further, if your product solves their problem, and you show that you deserve trust of this subscriber, you’ll also find route to a sale an increasingly downward slope.

The bottom line - this is power surfer's favorite toy. And if your content appeals to them, you need to learn how to play.

If this table structure does not fit your design at all there can be work arounds. A good example of this is shown on http://www.far-sited.ca. Notice that index page upon load has a very simple look, no text, clean, crisp image. This is a good way to present your business with a simple entry page. If you scroll down page you will see that there is in fact a lot of text below this main image. With a simple 100% x 100% table you can achieve this affect on your website. This table will open same way in all resolutions giving your index page look of a text free page when in fact it is not.

100% x 100% table used as mentioned above:

If you choose to use 100% x 100% table noted above you should still try to stick to general table structure shown first for your internal pages. There can always be room for adjustments based on size of your site however most websites use left hand navigation and this table structure is based on left hand navigation. If your navigation is across top of your page, maybe reconsider it. It can remain at top, I have designed a few websites that are ranking well with this top navigation, but for best result, left hand navigation using table structure first mentioned in this article is best.

All in all I cannot stress enough that a well designed site will rank higher. Even if you do not have a complete SEO overhaul of your site this table structure will increase your rankings over those that do not have a clean, properly structured website. Though table structure is not noticed so much by visitors to your website aside from look of it, it is very noticed by spiders and they will go through your website based on it. For an added edge, have your site designed with this table structure, or do it yourself. Make a point of not only giving visitors to your website information you want them to have but also spiders and as quickly and easily as possible.