Keep your website fresh and relevant. As new ideas, issues and technology come into play that relate to your content, update your site to reflect these advances. While it may seem cumbersome to update a large website with new data, there are methods of simple publishing that are search engine friendly: in particular blogs and real simple syndication (RSS).

Blogs for publishing

A weblog, or blog, is a type of website in which content posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order, not unlike a newsfeed, journal or diary.

Blogs have come into popularity in recent years due to ease of publication; blogging software is readily available for advanced users, and people who know little about web design may register onto a free blogging service and create a blog in mere minutes. Blogs may be hosted on specific sites created for the purpose of hosting blog content (Blogger, LiveJournal) or they may be added onto an existing site as a new page that refreshes with each update. Blogs allow for user interactivity; users may leave comments, sign a guestbook, or link back to a specific post tracked by the blogging software.

Blogs may be interactive and employ the use of audio media (also known as podcasting), images, affiliate links, and comment sections for readers. The amount of fresh, relevant content available on blogs as opposed to traditional websites has in recent time captured the attention of the search industry. Google has made available specialized search for blog content, and new search engines geared specifically toward blog content search are finding popularity.

It is due to the continuing importance of blog content that SEOs may recommend websites to add blogs and blog content, as blog content tends to be spidered and indexed at a faster rate than traditional weblog content. Blog content may also be syndicated and aggregated into RSS readers for wider exposure.

Weblogs Compendium offers a list of helpful blog tools a blogger can use to improve functionality to a blog and increase traffic.

Blog software and hosting sites	Blog Search Engines
Blogger - acquired by Google Greymatter LiveJournal Moveable Type Multiply Typepad WordPress Xanga	Blogdex Blogdigger BlogHop Blogwise Bloogz Daypop Eatonweb Portal Technorati

RSS in updating websites

Savvy SEOs know that they can boost site optimization efforts by creating RSS feeds containing top search engine results for the keyword / keywords they are targeting and adding them to the client website. MSN, Yahoo News, and Gigablast all offer easy to use RSS feeds of their search results. Many of the blog search engines also offer RSS feeds of their results. Before placing a search engine feed on a website, be sure to check whether use of the feed on a website is restricted in any way…some of the feeds can only be placed on “non-commercial” websites. (Source: Searchengineguide.com)

FaganFinder's All About RSS page offers information on what RSS is, how users employ RSS aggregators to collect relevant data, and which search engines are friendly to RSS content.

There are two ways RSS can help improve relevancy of your website, and in turn improve search engine optimization and increase traffic to your website.

Place an RSS Feed on your website: Find an RSS news feed relevant to your site's content and create a visible feed to implement anywhere on your site. The constant fresh, relevant data present on your site can increase the relevance of your site with regards to specific topic and in turn attract new and returning traffic.

FeedDigest, FeedJ2S, RSS Feed Reader are three programs that allow you to create an RSS feed to implement on your website. Simply plug in the URL of the RSS feed you want to display on your website, and a code will be generated for you to paste on your site.

 

 

 

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