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, visit 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:

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

2. Validate your RSS feed by running it through RSS Validator (http://feeds.archive.org/validator/) to make sure it's set up correctly.

3. 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." (http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/senb.rss)

4. (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 (http://www.wc.cc.va.us/services/news/default.asp) provides this service for free).

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

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

7. 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 http://www.internet-tips.net/Homepages/newsfeeds.htm RSS: Lo-Fi Content Syndication http://www.econtentmag.com/r4/2002/bannan1_02.html Blogify Your Page http://logicerror.com/blogifyYourPage Content Syndication With RSS (Blog about RSS) http://rss.benhammersley.com/

[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 http://www.syndic8.com/ Moreover http://www.moreover.com/ Aggregator Userland http://aggregator.userland.com/ News is Free http://www.newsisfree.com/ News Knowledge http://www.newsknowledge.com/

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!

- By Kalena Jordan (kalena@high-search-engine-ranking.com) and Dan Thies (dan@cannedhelp.com)

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 www.high-search-engine-ranking.com

Score: Nostradamus

5. Death of Two Majors

My prediction here read: "I think 2002 will signal demise for at least two of major search engines and directories".

In 2002 we said goodbye to industry veterans Excite (http://www.excite.com/) and Northern Light (http://www.northernlight.com/). Excite ceased to be a major player in January 2002, when new owners InfoSpace replaced Excite's search database listings with a mixture of Overture paid results and Inktomi search results. Excite UK shut their doors around same time. These days Excite portal still exists, but nobody searches there anymore. Perhaps it's because Excite now uses a mixture of regular and PPC listings from Google, LookSmart, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, About, Overture, FindWhat and FAST, with no disclaimers to help searchers identify which are paid results.

In January 2002, Northern Light closed its public search service. A week later, Divine, inc., a provider of content management and delivery solutions for enterprise customers, bought search site. In a separate deal at same time, Yahoo partnered with Divine to make Northern Light's Special Collection documents available in a new service called Yahoo Premium Documents Search.

Technically we could say that HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com/) also "died" in 2002, given it lost its own search database and became a META search engine in December to display search results from search FAST, Google, Inktomi and Teoma under ownership of Terra Lycos.

Score: Nostradamus

6. One or More Major Partnerships

My prediction was: "I see some major rivals combining in 2002, just to stay alive. I also see some more major partnerships between online and offline firms".

The Yahoo deal with Google in October 2002 to provide combined search listings and Yahoo's purchase announcement of Inktomi in December 2002 spring to mind here. So do many partnerships between Google and search rivals Ask Jeeves / Teoma, AOL and InfoSpace for provision of AdWords paid listings (as listed in 1. above) in 2002 and expansion of Overture via partnerships with various search engines, directories and portals worldwide.

Let's not forget Lycos / FAST deal for paid inclusion services either. Yahoo's 2002 move into ISP market and Ask Jeeves' provision of an offline "butler service" are relevant to latter half of this prediction.

Score: Nostradamus

7. Move away from In-House to Outsourced Services

My original article predicted: "As search engine optimization becomes even more complex and time consuming in 2002, more businesses will realize SEO is a full-time job and not something their marketing or IT staff can do ‘on side'."

A year ago, if you had gone to a major employment site such as careerbuilder.com or monster.com and conducted a search for "search engine optimization", you would have been hard-pressed to find many jobs in this field. Do a search today and you'd be amazed at increase in demand for SEO specialists - just as predicted.

Score: Nostradamus

8. SEO industry Shake-Up

My prediction was: "With consumer watchdogs keeping a close eye, developing industry standards and ethics, as well as crackdown on spammers sure to continue, SEO industry is sure to experience a major shake-up next year, with only most successful and ethical SEO's left still standing."

You could say that 2002 gave rise to ethical SEO. A line in sand was drawn between so-called "ethical" search engine optimizers and marketers (SEM's) and "unethical" search engine optimization firms, nicknamed "Search engine deceivers" (SED's) by some. A number of long-time SED's found themselves permanently banned for search engine spamming by Google in 2002, to sheer delight of many in industry. As more search engines introduced or tightened their anti-spam filters in 2002, many shady SEO cowboys were forced to pack up shop as they realized their spam techniques were no longer effective.

Google's unprecedented decision to publish their definition (http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html) of "ethical" search engine optimization on their Webmaster Guidelines page forced many search engine marketing firms to rethink their SEO techniques. It was also start of what many believe is a new era in industry, where search engines and professional SEO's start to communicate openly, creating an information exchange for possible development of an industry-wide set of acceptable search engine optimization standards.

Score: Nostradamus

9. New Technologies

My final prediction read: "I'm sure there will be some significant technological developments in 2002 that will impact search engine industry and make us all head for forums and chat rooms in a panic."

Sure enough, developments such as Google News, Gator, LookSmart LookListings, SEO Consultants Directory, Overture's Auto-Bidding Tool, Froogle, Wireless Search, TopText, Link Loader, MPZ Format, Chinese Government's ban on Google and Search King's PR Ad Network resulted in some frantic forum activity in 2002.

But none of these compare to storm in a teacup caused by a little green bar. Yep, Google Page Rank™ gets my vote for most talked about technology in search for 2002.

Score: Nostradamus

So with a final score of eight out of nine, it looks like I'm ninety percent Nostradamus after all (-: