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Raise Your Website Traffic with RSS - Blogs and YAHOO! (Part 1)
By Kamau Austin (c) 2005

It is the trend du jour. They are the subject of pundit press,
guru glare, and are ready for mainstream adoption. RSS feeds
and their communication kin the blog -- are bandied about as
the next big thing.

Everywhere you look there are articles and ebooks touting the
electronic affinity and high value of these two forms of media
creation and distribution. However can these two forms of digital
media drive more traffic to your site, or -- are they just hype?

Blogs are short for web logs and are like daily dairies on the
web. Blogs started out as ways for Internet reality types to
share their lives with other people on the web, without having
to learn very complicated web design applications like
Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.

While on the other hand RSS feeds are the natural extension of
Blogs. RSS without getting into all the arguments over the name
(for the purpose of this article) stands for Really Simple
Syndication.

RSS feeds can take your blog postings and syndicate a preview of
your blog headlines all over the Internet. Therefore in theory
RSS feeds can drive traffic to your blogs and websites similar
to how search engines have become major marketing channels.

If your blog's headlines are syndicated on major high traffic
websites, RSS directories and Internet Portals, it could be
another major source of traffic to your website. But how
effective is blog marketing to the average Internet marketer who
doesn't have a major personal brand name like John Reese, Yanik
Silver, or Dr. Ken Evoy?

This question is reflected in the concerns of bottom-line
focused Stephanie McIntyre, president of eSales Unlimited, an
eBay Power Seller, auction trainer and coach. Stephanie has
generated over $200,000 in profitable sales on eBay and has low
tolerance for marketing hype.

"I am not convinced that blogging can really drive traffic or
profitable sales states Ms. McIntyre. Internet Gurus like James
Maduk haven't convinced me that I can really make money with a
blog."

She isn't alone in her skepticism. Many online business people
are confused why all this hype is being created about blogs and
RSS feeds. Many wonder if they can really deliver on their
potential to drive more traffic and sales to business oriented
Internet websites.

In short, can blogs and RSS boost really boost our website
traffic? I put the technology to the test in the last four weeks
to get some definite answers.

I found blogs are having some major income impact on the
bottom-line of some companies and business people.

Despite many reservations by some Netpreneurs, blogs and RSS
feeds have been boosting the bottom-lines of some marketers.
Willie Crawford, a well known Internet marketer generates over
$1000 dollars a day from mostly blog generated Adsense™ revenue.
Blogging for Crawford has become yet another profitable part of
his business.

Weblogs Inc., a publisher of almost 100 targeted niche blogs is
noted as being on its way to generating 1 million dollars in
Adsense™ revenue! This had to be a compelling reason for AOL to
recently buy Weblogs Inc., for a whopping 25 million.

Still another very successful Internet business person I spoke
with (who doesn't what to be identified) uses blogs as a form of
buzz advertising, resulting in $50,000 in indirect eCommerce
sales when properly timed. This business person does close to
17 million dollars in online sales.

I also have been having good success saving time and money by
publishing quickly with blogs. My blogs generated good income
for me, however I wanted to see if the distribution of my blog
headline via RSS feeds would bring in any new revenues.

One of the promotional ways blogs and RSS are purported to
increase your online traffic is the strategy of increasing your
website's traffic with what I call horizontal SEO. Horizontal
SEO is called "winning the search engine lottery" by Internet
sales star John Reese.

Most SEO firms and web marketers focus solely on high rankings
for popular keywords (Vertical SEO). In contrast a more
comprehensive search engine driven Internet marketing campaign
would scale more horizontally or deeper with more rich keyword
informed content pages.

In other words a horizontal SEO campaign would be like playing
the lottery. Your odds of winning the lottery are greater if you
have more tickets.

According to Reese "search engines algorithms change from day to
day. Therefore, your ranking will go up or down. But if you have
more and more tickets in the SEO lottery you have a better chance
of winning."

Blogs and RSS feeds give you the ability to create and distribute
a lot of web information (content) on the fly that's distributed
throughout the Internet at myriad media outlets. Blogs and RSS
feeds drive more traffic to your site by helping you win the SEO
lottery with horizontal SEO.

Blogs and RSS can be the easiest and most efficient way to win
the SEO lottery. They do this by creating lots of targeted niche
content on your, and other partner, sites that carry your feeds.

In the last 4 weeks, I launched a website with a blog component
without optimizing it in the traditional vertical SEO fashion.
It doesn't appear on top of any search engine results worth
mentioning. I wanted to see if the blog powered by RSS feed
would drive significant traffic to my site.

The results are amazing! I have been totally blown away by the
research. Check out why I have become a big believer in blogging
and RSS in part 2 of this article.
Visit http://www.searchengineplan.com/blog.htm to stay informed
on the latest blogging, RSS, and SEO developments.

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Kamau Austin is publisher of www.eInfoNEWS.com and runs
www.SearchEnginePlan.com. He is author of Always On Top "How to
Get the Highest Search Engine ranking for your website. See more
about his strategies at www.AlwaysOnToptheBook.com
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