RSS Feeds are critical to your SEO strategy.

RSS? Really Simple Syndication. Bet that helped…

RSS is the juice that keeps the Web moving...

RSS is the “juice” behind Web 2.0. As we discussed in the first part of this article on leveraging the web, in today’s Internet there are two types of businesses, those that use new technology to push their messages to their customers, and those that are still trying to figure out how to do that. RSS is part of the “how you to that.”

Now, we aren’t going to go get all technical here. You don’t need to “know” a new coding language (don’t go run out and buy “RSS for Dummies“… yes, that is a real book). Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Become RSS “aware”: It’s all around you. Look for the RSS Icon. You might even click on it. You might be a bit confused by what you see, but we’ll get to that in a second. The point is that RSS is “everywhere” these days (except on your site, right?). Now… if we could just figure out how to leverage RSS to OUR advantage…
2. Get an RSS “reader”: This is the important part. You can read most RSS feeds directly in your browser, but then you’ll have to open each feed EVERY time
   you want to see what is going on with that site. That isn’t very efficient, is it? No. And that’s sort of the point of all of this… LEVERAGING the tools… So go grab yourself an RSS reader. You can Google “RSS readers” and find something that works for you. I personally recommend Google’s Reader (http://www.google.com/reader) as that allows me to keep track of my feeds from pretty much any browser.
3. Subscribe to at least TWO RSS feeds using your reader: Start with the RSS feed for this site then add at least one more feed. Remember, we’re talking about using the tools here. Subscribing to just one feed is certainly a start, but the real benefits of will become apparent when you are keeping up with multiple feeds at the same time from one location. This is the power of Web 2.0.

I should also note here that you can pull RSS feeds into other sites as well. If you’re on Facebook (FeO is!) you can import feeds directly to your profile using several methods (Google for more information). Again… that’s the “magic” to all of this… you can read this data from pretty much anywhere you already are… now… if there were only a way for YOU to get YOUR information out to YOUR customers in such a manner…

One of the things that we’ve implemented with Tradebank is an inbound linking program… they refer to it as “WebLinks”… Whatever you want to call it the results are the same.

If you have regular visitors to your site, having them post links TO your site on throughout the internet will help your ranking. There are certain exceptions… this is one area where there can be too much of a good thing… but that would likely only happen if you were indeed trying to cheat the system. The search engines are smart… they’ll figure that out. But we aren’t focusing on “cheating” here… we want to focus on how inbound linking can play a part in your SEO program.

Tradebank leverages the Barter System to increase their exposure on the Internet.

So how can inbound linking work for you? Well, we can help with that. First off, there is value to links. So if you really want people to link to your site you need to find something of value to give for those links. Often times it can simply be a link in return. Be careful though of getting involved with “link exchanges”… sites that contain thousands of links, but no real content. Those fall into the “too much of a good thing” category.

Once you have links, you’ll want to start tracking them. There are a number of analytics tools out there that can get you started (and of course, when we build an inbound linking program we provide that data to you). If you custom build your web app (like we did with Tradebank) then the link clicks should be counted for you. But you can also just watch your log files for “referrals” to determine where your traffic is coming from.

No matter how you track the results though, getting links out there will help your site in the organic rankings, as well as build your pagerank.

Have questions…? Just blip us an email (link to the right or below) and we’ll be glad to help however we can.

Barter, using FeO, is Smarter…

Tradebank has been a client for well over a decade. The relationship with Tradebank began in 1997 when FeO became a client of Tradebank. Since then we have helped Tradebank develop an entire business application that handles all of their customer interaction on the web.

With over a million lines of code Tradebank’s CRM system (known as myTradebank) is one of the largest applications that we manage. We integrate this application into Tradebank’s online presense, their online client management system, as well as their backoffice accounting and customer management system.

Using this system hundreds of Tradebank associates manage tens of thousands of customers all over the United States and Canada. Some of the highlights include:

• Online payment processing.
• A client locating process that integrates with Google Maps to provide location and direction information that helps clients find one another.
• A client directory listing all clients, their business categories, and contact information.
• An automated matching system that helps identify which clients are most likely to do business with each other.
• A classifieds system that allows clients to list items for sale in the myTradebank application.
• A “message board” that allows all the clients and associates to communicate within the application.

Custom built, top to bottom…

WERA Motorcycle Roadracing, Inc is one of the oldest and largest national sanctioning bodies conducting motorcycle races at road courses across the United States.

The project for WERA Motorcycle Roadracing has been ongoing since 2004. Highlights for this project include:

• Custom CRM system that handles all racers, events, championships, and membership functions.
• Integration into live timing-and-scoring system at racing events across the country.
• Website design was taken over in 2008.
• At the time we began optimizing the WERA website, the site was 74th on Google for their desired keywords.
• Within 2 weeks of us rebuilding and optimizing the site their ranking moved to number 6 in their desired keywords.
• We then incorporated live news feeds from various sources related to the motorcycle roadracing community into the website to give their visitors a snapshot of what is happening on other roadracing websites.
• All of the data on the website is dynamically generated out of their CRM system. There are literally thousands of racers, racing in dozens of classes, at multiple events almost every weekend throughout the year. Our CRM system keeps track of all of that data.