Category Archives: Featured

Featured articles on interesting, subjective or even abstract news on the internet. Features can be latest news or simply something that sparks interest or is a little profound.

Using RSS Feeds To Generate Traffic

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Using RSS Feeds To Generate TrafficOne of the promotional tactics I’ve been working on lately is RSS. While I know RSS has been around for a long time, I’m just starting to get into it. Here are a few of the ways that I have been using it lately to generate traffic to my sites.

1. RSS Combiners (or Mixers)

There are many different sites that will take multiple RSS feeds and combine them into a single XML feed. The benefit of this is you can combine your RSS feed with other related RSS feeds and promote that RSS feed somewhere (blog, twitter, RSS feed engines, etc) and it will be a totally unique feed. My favorite RSS Mixer is RSSMix.com.

2. RSS to Twitter

Whether you have one RSS feed or 100, you can use different services to post your RSS feed updates to Twitter. This in turns will create a link back to your site. The amount of traffic you generate will depend on your Twitter account as well as your posting frequency. I’ve found that posting updates every 10 minutes doesn’t get much traffic and will cause you to lose followers. Posting 10-20 times per day seems to be the sweet spot for generating quality traffic from people interested in your link. My favorite RSS to Twitter site is Rss2Twitter.com. The site works great, but their traffic stats are WAY off.

3. RSS to WordPress

If you want to syndicate an RSS feed to your WordPress blog, then you’ll need a special plugin. There are a couple different plugins that I’ve tried, but one stands out clearly as the best, WP-O-Matic. It hasn’t been updated in nearly two years, but it still works great. This plugin will take an RSS feed and create a post (or draft) out of each item it pulls from the RSS feed. Duplicate content doesn’t usually rank well in the search engines, but if the info is relevent it can be of benefit to your readers it is worth considering.

4. Getting Links Indexed

One of the most difficult thing you’ll do as a webmaster is building links. After you start building links, you’ll realize that unless search engines know about those links, they’re useless for anything but direct traffic. One of the ways you can help search engines find your links is to bookmark them, and use that RSS feed.

Delicious offers RSS feeds for your bookmarks, so just start building your links, bookmark them at Delicious and send that RSS feed to a blog or Twitter. That’s thinking outside of the box! Here is an example feed of Delicious’ last 15 hot bookmarks. I use this method to get deep links from high PR sites indexed. Works especially well with sites like Ezilon and BOTW since the root domain is an authority, but some of the inner pages need to be indexed.

While link building is still #1 on my list of priorities, the way link building happens is beginning to change, and it’s getting easier!

Brandon Hopkins is a professional link builder who works with small and large sites to achieve #1 rankings. If you want to rank #1, contact Brandon today!

WordPress Contact Forms Plugin with Gravity Forms

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Gravityforms was a recently released plugin for wordpress that is under the premium license.

It might be different from other plugins because it has a cost involved but it is WORTH EVERY PENNY.  Its so damn good I’m recommending it as an essential purchase and am affiliated with the developers. (Just to be clear).

The forms on your site are one of the most important aspects, and lets be honest this is a no brainer.

So don’t be tight.

There are a few other forms available (if you are to cheap to buy this) and the best is probably CForms II WordPress Plugin though it is quite comprehensive it its functionality it tends to update frequently to cover errors and other issues and, in order to maintain the integrity of the plugin you should update asap every time so it can be a bit of a time sink. Aside from that it is the best alternative.

So why is Gravity Forms so good.

Its so good because it is incredibly simple to manage, setup, install and has a range of functionality and application.

Honestly, its one of those, “Can’t live without it” type plugins.  Even though it costs to buy it the added benefit is that you have dedicated support as well and an active and informed community who are helping the developers find new ways of increasing the functionality of the plugin and of course dealing with tech support issues and questions. Not something to be snubbed! All the new functionality, like most plugins, is then added on to your existing plugin and because the developers are being supported financially the updates are of a very high quality.

Using the plugin requires you to do a little messing about by inserting your personal reference key into the settings, once you install and activate the plugin, to validate the purchase and also create an account on the Gravity Forms community forums but this is, in itself,  is a simple enough process.  Once you create a new form and realise just how much and how easy it is to do you will be hooked.

Have a read through the features that Gravity Forms offers and im sure you will agree that its money well spent. (and thanks for the business if you do decide to buy it, it is most appreciated).

User generated media is killing our culture and economy – Andrew Keen on Its only a theory

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User generated media is killing our culture and economy Andrew Keen on Its only a theory“Its only a Theory” is one of those shows that I enjoy when I catch it on the BBC because the format is smart and witty at the same time. Hosted by Andy Hamilton, Reginald D. Hunter (sort that website out Reg) and joined by a third guest panellist, the broadcaster Dermot Murnaghan on this episode, individuals are invited on to present their theories about any particular subject matter then convince the panel with information, opinion, fact,  argument or science to win the panellists “approval” of the theory or if they fail watch as it gets shredded.

What caught my attention (of course this would) was the theory presented by Andrew Keen entitled “User generated media is killing our culture and economy” and it addressed the subject of how social media, online video and music downloads are having an adverse effect on our culture and economy as it has created a massive shift in the means and methods by which we communicate and interact.

Rather than going into detail discussing the points in the theory you would of course be better off  watching the video, but some idiot has decided to restrict its viewing to the UK alone on the only youtube video I could find (something about copyright infringement, broadcasting rights or other such nonsensical statement) , which means that you will need to use a UK proxy to watch the discussion.

Anyway, ignoring this glitch, I will raise one thing that made the discussion for me. Reginald D. Hunter initially disqualified the theory but then decided to flip and approve it when he said something to the effect of “Yes, I think it is killing our culture and economy but I think these need to evolve, and maybe this is how it can happen”.  (Sorry I can’t quote this accurately at the moment, but this was the general idea).

Anyway, if you can see it enjoy, and if you come across a version that isn’t for the UK only please let me know (I will seek it out in the meantime anyway!)