SMarT Marketing

An XML sitemap file is a fairly recent standard adopting by the major search engines that can help with indexing. Yahoo recently announced that the big 3 search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN, have agreed on another standard that relates to how these sitemap feeds can be submitted. Previously they could only be submitted through some site management tools maintained by the search engines, but now your robots.txt file can be used to automate the process a little more. By adding a single line to your robots.txt file you can identify the URL location of your sitemap file for indexing. This is good news for sites with large amounts of pages as it makes it that much easier for the search engines to fully index a site.

A “Ping” is a basic internet program that allows one to verify that a certain IP address exists and can accept requests. Pinging acts as a notifier to search engines that you have updated your RSS feed on your site. Once a search engine receives the ping they will typically schedule an immediate refresh of your feed so they have the latest content. This is the easiest way to get your blog or RSS feed indexed by the search engines.

There are two easy methods to ping a search engine. You can use the REST client method or use a pinging service such as Ping-O-Matic.  The REST client method consists of a specific URL that can take optional parameters such as, site URL or site name. You can then take this URL string and place it into the browser and submit it to the site. Typically you will get a plain text reponse in the browser stating that the submission was either a success or a failure. Here are some exmaples of how you can submit your blog or RSS feed to Yahoo, Google and MSN.

Yahoo
URL: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
Parameters:
u = YOUR RSS URL
Example:
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://blog.smtusa.com

Google
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
Parameters:
name = NAME OF BLOG
url = YOUR BLOG URL
changesURL = URL OF RSS, RDF or ATOM FEED (optional)
Example:
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping?name=SMarT Marketing
&url=http://blog.smtusa.com&changesURL=http://blog.smtusa.com/rssfeed.xml

MSN(Results Supplemented by Moreover)
http://api.moreover.com/ping
Parameters:
u = YOUR RSS URL
Example:
http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://blog.smtusa.com/rssfeed.xml

Here are some ping submission services that you can use as well:
Ping-O-Matic
http://pingomatic.com/

King Ping
http://www.kping.com/

Pingoat
http://pingoat.com/

What is RSS?

RSS, also known as Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary, is an XML-based format for distributing links to content on your web site that you would like others to use. Each area of your site that features a changing list of information should have a corresponding RSS feed.

Current State of RSS

RSS users can be lumped into two types of buckets, “Aware” and “Unaware”. Aware RSS users are knowingly using RSS. Unaware RSS users enjoy the benefits of RSS without knowing it.

Workplace Print Media (via eMarketer, subscription required) released results of a study on RSS feed usage and knowledge among U.S. Employees. They found that only 9% know what RSS is. Another RSS study (PDF) back in October 2005 by Yahoo cited only 4% are aware RSS users. One of the great hurdles for marketers is making the end user aware of RSS.

Marketer Benefits

There are several benefits for including RSS in to your marketing mix.

• Provides another channel to build brand awareness
• Easy distribution of online content
• 100% Opt in
• Not competing against hundreds of emails
• Your content will be delivered to all who “subscribe”
• Makes marketing messages more relevant
• No way to send unsolicited content via RSS
• No issues with blacklists or filters
• Customer use is growing
• Helps search engine rankings when RSS feeds are indexed

RSS Feed Auto Discovery is a technique that allows browsers and other software to discover your site’s RSS Feed automatically. RSS Auto Discovery is now supported by all of the major browsers (IE 7, FireFox, Apple Safari, Opera…). So take the time now to implement the small snippet of code to allow your site’s RSS feed to be discovered. You maybe asking how do you do this to your own site… it is simple.

Add this html code inbetween the HEAD tags:

<link rel=“alternate” type=“application/rss+xml” title=”YOUR RSS FEED NAME“ href=“http://www.yourdomain.com/feed.rss”>

If you are using ATOM instead of RSS your link should look like this:

<link rel=“alternate” type=“application/atom+xml” title=“YOUR RSS FEED NAME” href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/atom.xml”>

Derek Harding, clickz.com, released a new article, “RSS: The E-mail Marketing Killer?”. Derek explains how he is skeptical that RSS is an alternative to email for mass marketing.

I agree with him that RSS has not matured enough for mass marketing. But I definitely see that RSS can be used for niche marketing in its current form.

Derek also states, “It’s not useful or effective to take a quarterly newsletter or monthly promotional e-mail and publish it via RSS for the mass market.”

By no means would you want to stop emailing and only offer a RSS feed. You want to compliment your email marketing by putting RSS into your marketing mix. By publishing your newsletter via RSS you provide your users/customers another marketing channel to access your content.