Introducing you and your website to RSS

RSS which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is a great way for your online business to keep in touch with your website visitors once they have been to your website and keep your website 'sticky'... meaning that once you have had the visitor to your site, you can encourage them to receive ongoing information about your company, news, information, new deals or services and keep your clients engaged.

It is actually very easy to implement RSS into your site! By including the following piece of one line HTML code in the head section of your webpages you'll be all set:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="ENTER_RSS_URL">

By doing this visitors to your website will then see within their web browser the RSS icon glow orange and become active - meaning that they can then subscribe directly to your feed, which is like book marking your specials or info page so that they will continue to receive this information from you each time you post out an RSS update.

So RSS is a bit like having an email newsletter subscription service for your website, but only better.

Because RSS was created a few years back as an alternative method to email delivery to get around some of the problems related to email marketing. RSS is automatically opt-in, as the user is choosing to subscribe. There is no spam filters that block your message getting through, nor delays in delivery that can happen with email - RSS is immediate, so a great way for speed to market of your business information or new deals.

A lot of people will actually have RSS available in their email clients like Outlook 2007 and above. So they can subscribe and follow your business information from the comfort of their email application. Once you have RSS set up, you can also provide your clients with a long list of other marketing tools that take advantage of RSS, and which can receive and display RSS. So you could actually create and provide downloadable Google Gadgets, Yahoo! Widgets, iPhone & iPad applications, even Screen Savers that receive and show your company information via RSS. These are some great brand building and marketing tools to help disseminate a brand awareness campaign and attract more eyeballs to your products and services. If you would like some further information about any of these just drop me an email.

So why am I harping on about RSS for your website?

Quite simple really as I'm all about driving more traffic to your online business, and retaining client interaction as well as pointing out ways to create better leverage with Search Engines. We're here to work for you and improve your online business.

RSS feeds can be crawled by Search Engines, they can even be submitted to Search Engines, along with a long list of RSS aggregator websites or online directories. This generates more exposure, and a better interaction with Search Engines encouraging them to find all your content, and particularly any new content you create and get this added into their Search Directories so your site is found more.

And here is a simple tip to actually manage and update your website's RSS feed...

Use Twitter! Yup, signup for your free Twitter account for your business at twitter.com and subsequently Twitter provides a RSS feed of your tweets. This RSS address can be put into that one line of code I provided you with at the top of this email and you are away. This means that you are using Twitter and getting your business information and website links out into Twitter and being seen there as well, and having it generated at the same time into your webpage. Bit like two for the price of... nothing!

Did you know that Twitter has a content relationship deal with Google - meaning, that Google trawls through all the data generated on Twitter. So when you tweet a new deal, a special, a new page added to your site or information about your business it will be found by Google and added very quickly into Google's own search index. This is one of the key reasons I recommend the use of Twitter for your business!

Okay, so a bit of information for you to digest this morning. I hope it makes sense. Of course if you have any further questions shoot me through an email.

Careful with your choice of Domain Name

Such a simple thing, and yet one of the most important and fundamental decisions a business will make initially in their foray into the online space will be the selection of an appropriate domain name.

The Search Engines will look upon this as one of the most important factors in determining what your website is going to be about and hence presenting your site in the Search Engine Result Page relevant to audience queries.

Unfortunately since the internet has now been around for so long, there is relatively limited choice in some aspects for good domain names that still exist. Be careful the choice of Top Level Domain structure and ensure it is appropriate to your location (localised search factor) eg. .com.au for Australia, and not just going for a domain extension because it is available... as this may lead to consumer confusion as they expect the 'norm'.

Keyword rich domain names are the ideal choice that match your business segment. Hyphen separated domains are okay, but do and can add to confusion for typing in the name by the consumer so aren't an ideal first choice, but a good second when nothing else exists.

But beware the acronym, the abbreviated version of your business name purely based on its initials. Particularly if this is not a brand naming convention that users may be aware of. Firstly it is most likely, and certainly not keyword rich, so a back step from the very beginning. However I can understand the use if you have a very long business name. But my concern comes from what sometimes is over looked, in that what does that acronym or abbreviation perhaps mean in another context or even another country? Do your research, search particularly across the Social Media sphere just in case your particular acronym has sinister connections and associations that may already be established and which then may make you reconsider your choice... Research really is an important element of your initial steps into the online space, so step carefully and wisely.

Foursquare as a geo-marketing tool for local businesses

FourSquare: http://foursquare.com/

Foursquare on your phone gives you & your friends new ways of exploring your city. Earn points & unlock badges for discovering new things. Users check into local places like cafes, restaurants, hotels on FourSquare via their smart phones and provide tips and share their location with friends across FourSquare as well as Twitter and Facebook. Users with the most checkins to a venue become the “Mayor”, and can receive loyalty rewards from the venue.

Foursquare co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai met in 2007 while working in the same office space (at different companies) in New York City. FourSquare was launched in Austin, Texas in March 2009. As of August 2010, foursquare had close to 3 million users worldwide.

For local businesses it an opportunity to communicate to your customers, provide coupons as incentives, and promote your business in the social media space.

Wikipedia.org – Online Notability Guidelines

Wikipedia.org remains one of the most reputed sources of editable content in the world.

Within hours of posting content on Wikipedia, it can be indexed in Google and Yahoo!

However, the editorial guidelines are very strict and it is critical to understand that editors police postings. It is vital to have “reliable secondary sources” as references in any Wikipedia.org posting to ensure it survives the human editorial test.

The Notability Guidelines are detailed below.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

List of Web Server Error Messages

Errors on the Internet, and those annoying error messages, occur quite frequently, and can be quite frustrating, especially if you do not know the difference between a 404 error and a 502 error. Many times they have more to do with the Web servers you're trying to access rather than something being wrong with your computer. Here is a list of error messages you might encounter while surfing the Web and their respective meanings to help you figure out just what the problem is:

200 If a page is missing, it's replaced with the custom error page.

302 If the page is missing, it's replaced with a temporary redirect to a custom error page.

301 Redirects errors to either a custom error page, or some other page in the site (i.e. sitemap, homepage or best guess).

400 Bad File Request, usually means the syntax used in the URL is incorrect (e.g., uppercase letter should be lowercase letter; wrong punctuation marks).

 401 Unauthorized  Server, is looking for some encryption key from the client and is not getting it. Also, wrong password may have been entered. Try it again, paying close attention to case sensitivity. 

403 Forbidden/Access Denied,  Similar to 401; special permission needed to access the site -- a password and/or username if it is a registration issue. Other times you may not have the proper permissions set up on the server or the site's administrator just doesn't want you to be able to access the site. 

404 File Not Found, server cannot find the file you requested. File has either been moved or deleted, or you entered the wrong URL or document name. Look at the URL. If a word looks misspelled, then correct it and try it again. If that doesn't work backtrack by deleting information between each backslash, until you come to a page on that site that isn't a 404. From there you may be able to find the page you're looking for. 

408 Request Timeout, client stopped the request before the server finished retrieving it. A user will either hit the stop button, close the browser, or click on a link before the page loads. Usually occurs when servers are slow or file sizes are large. 

500 Internal Error, couldn't retrieve the HTML document because of server-configuration problems. Contact site administrator. 

501 Not Implemented, web server doesn't support a requested feature. 

502 Service Temporarily Overloaded, server congestion; too many connections; high traffic. Keep trying until the page loads.

503 Service Unavailable, server busy, site may have moved, or you lost your Internet connection. 

Connection Refused by Host, either you do not have permission to access the site or your password is incorrect. 

File Contains No Data, page is there but is not showing anything. Error occurs in the document. Attributed to bad table formatting, or stripped header information. 

Bad File Request, browser may not support the form or other coding you're trying to access. 

Failed DNS Lookup, the Domain Name Server can't translate your domain request into a valid Internet address. Server may be busy or down, or incorrect URL was entered. 

Host Unavailable, host server down. Hit reload or go to the site later. 

Unable to Locate Host, host server is down, Internet connection is lost, or URL typed incorrectly. 

Network Connection Refused by the Server, the Web server is busy. 

Sorting out Canonical Issues for SEO

Information on how to use Canonical link reference, and 301 redirects (permanent redirect) to fix duplicate issues in SEO

I am still surprised at the number of websites I come across daily with this problem. The following information is supplied to look at resolving this issue.

--------------------------------

Set the Canonical source reference, indicating the primary page where ranking is to be delivered if you have duplicate content, by including the following metatag. The following tag tells the SEs to treat the page that they are on as if it is a copy of the listed domain/page, and that all of the link and content metrics that the engines apply should technically flow back to that URL.

<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.domainname.com.au' />

Note: 301s carry cross-domain functionality, meaning you can redirect a page at domain1.com to domain2.com and carry over those search engine metrics. This is NOT THE CASE with the Canonical URL tag, which operates exclusively on a single root domain (it will carry over across subfolders and subdomains).

The “301 Permanent Redirect” is the most efficient and search engine friendly method for redirecting websites. You can use it in several situations, including:

    * to redirect an old website to a new address

    * to setup several domains pointing to one website

    * to enforce only one version of your website (www. or no-www)

    * to harmonize a URL structure change

--------------------------------

ASP Sites – 301 Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>

<%

Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”

Response.AddHeader “Location”, “http://www.example.com/keyword.asp”

%>

--------------------------------

ASP Single Page 301 Redirect (a variation on the above)

This redirect method is used with the Active Server Pages platform.

<%

Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"

Response.AddHeader='Location','http://www.new-url.com/'

%>

--------------------------------

ASP Canonical Redirect

The Canonical Redirect with ASP must be located in a script that is executed in every page on the server before the page content starts.

<%

If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0 Then

Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"

Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www."

& Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST")

& Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME")

End if

%>

--------------------------------

PHP Single Page 301 Redirect

In order to redirect a static page to a new address simply enter the code below inside the index.php file.

<?

Header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);

Header(“Location: http://www.new-url.com/page.html”);

exit();

?>

--------------------------------

PHP Canonical Redirect

The Canonical 301 Redirect will add (or remove) the www. prefixes to all the pages inside your domain. The code below redirects the visitors of the http://domain.com version to http://www.domain.com.

<?php

if (substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],0,3) != 'www') {

header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');

header('Location: http://www.'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']

.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);

}

?>

--------------------------------

PHP Sites – 301 Redirect: Add to .htaccess file

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteRule ^index.html$ / [R=301,L]

--------------------------------

Apache .htaccess Singe Page Redirect for Linux Servers

In order to use this method you will need to create a file named .htaccess (not supported by Windows-based hosting) and place it on the root directory of your website, then just add the code below to the file.

Redirect 301 /old/oldpage.htm /new/http://www.domain.com/newpage.htm

--------------------------------

Apache .htaccess Canonical Redirect for Linux Servers

Follow the same steps as before but insert the code below instead (it will redirect all the visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com)

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]

rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

--------------------------------

Search Group - Perth SEO company - www.SearchGroup.com.au

Hi all,

Just an update to let you all know that I am now working as a Search Engine Optimization specialist with Perth SEO company Search Group.

Search Group is a leading Perth SEO Company specialising in website search engine optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and online marketing activities with a large and growing portfolio of Australian clients.

Address: Suite 90, City West Business Centre, 102 Railway Street, West Perth, WA 6005

T: 08 9278 8899 
F: 08 9278 8890
E: matt@searchgroup.com.au
W: http://www.searchgroup.com.au/

So if you would like a free introductory SEO training session, website appraisal and review or just simply to discuss your search optimisation requirements to improve the visibility of your website on Google, Yahoo! and Bing then please drop me an email.