It is the trend du jour. They are the subject of pundit press, guru glare, and are ready for mainstream adoption. RSS feeds and their communication kin the blog -- are bandied about as the next big thing.
Everywhere you look there are articles and ebooks touting the electronic affinity and high value of these two forms of media creation and distribution. However can these two forms of digital media drive more traffic to your site, or -- are they just hype?
Blogs are short for web logs and are like daily dairies on the web. Blogs started out as ways for Internet reality types to share their lives with other people on the web, without having to learn very complicated web design applications like Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.
While on the other hand RSS feeds are the natural extension of Blogs. RSS without getting into all the arguments over the name (for the purpose of this article) stands for Really Simple Syndication.
RSS feeds can take your blog postings and syndicate a preview of your blog headlines all over the Internet. Therefore in theory RSS feeds can drive traffic to your blogs and websites similar to how search engines have become major marketing channels.
If your blog's headlines are syndicated on major high traffic websites, RSS directories and Internet Portals, it could be another major source of traffic to your website. But how effective is blog marketing to the average Internet marketer who doesn't have a major personal brand name like John Reese, Yanik Silver, or Dr. Ken Evoy?
This question is reflected in the concerns of bottom-line focused Stephanie McIntyre, president of eSales Unlimited, an eBay Power Seller, auction trainer and coach. Stephanie has generated over $200,000 in profitable sales on eBay and has low tolerance for marketing hype.
"I am not convinced that blogging can really drive traffic or profitable sales states Ms. McIntyre. Internet Gurus like James Maduk haven't convinced me that I can really make money with a blog."
She isn't alone in her skepticism. Many online business people are confused why all this hype is being created about blogs and RSS feeds. Many wonder if they can really deliver on their potential to drive more traffic and sales to business oriented Internet websites.
In short, can blogs and RSS boost really boost our website traffic? I put the technology to the test in the last four weeks to get some definite answers.
I found blogs are having some major income impact on the bottom-line of some companies and business people.
Despite many reservations by some Netpreneurs, blogs and RSS feeds have been boosting the bottom-lines of some marketers. Willie Crawford, a well known Internet marketer generates over $1000 dollars a day from mostly blog generated Adsense™ revenue. Blogging for Crawford has become yet another profitable part of his business.
Weblogs Inc., a publisher of almost 100 targeted niche blogs is noted as being on its way to generating 1 million dollars in Adsense™ revenue! This had to be a compelling reason for AOL to recently buy Weblogs Inc., for a whopping 25 million.
Still another very successful Internet business person I spoke with (who doesn't what to be identified) uses blogs as a form of buzz advertising, resulting in $50,000 in indirect eCommerce sales when properly timed. This business person does close to 17 million dollars in online sales.
I also have been having good success saving time and money by publishing quickly with blogs. My blogs generated good income for me, however I wanted to see if the distribution of my blog headline via RSS feeds would bring in any new revenues.
One of the promotional ways blogs and RSS are purported to increase your online traffic is the strategy of increasing your website's traffic with what I call horizontal SEO. Horizontal SEO is called "winning the search engine lottery" by Internet sales star John Reese.
Most SEO firms and web marketers focus solely on high rankings for popular keywords (Vertical SEO). In contrast a more comprehensive search engine driven Internet marketing campaign would scale more horizontally or deeper with more rich keyword informed content pages.
In other words a horizontal SEO campaign would be like playing the lottery. Your odds of winning the lottery are greater if you have more tickets.
According to Reese "search engines algorithms change from day to day. Therefore, your ranking will go up or down. But if you have more and more tickets in the SEO lottery you have a better chance of winning."
Blogs and RSS feeds give you the ability to create and distribute a lot of web information (content) on the fly that's distributed throughout the Internet at myriad media outlets. Blogs and RSS feeds drive more traffic to your site by helping you win the SEO lottery with horizontal SEO.
Blogs and RSS can be the easiest and most efficient way to win the SEO lottery. They do this by creating lots of targeted niche content on your, and other partner, sites that carry your feeds.
In the last 4 weeks, I launched a website with a blog component without optimizing it in the traditional vertical SEO fashion. It doesn't appear on top of any search engine results worth mentioning. I wanted to see if the blog powered by RSS feed would drive significant traffic to my site.
The results are amazing! I have been totally blown away by the research. Check out why I have become a big believer in blogging and RSS in part 2 of this article. Visit http://www.searchengineplan.com/blog.htm to stay informed on the latest blogging, RSS, and SEO developments.
About The Author
Kamau Austin is publisher of eInfoNEWS.com and runs SearchEnginePlan.com. He is author of Always On Top "How to Get the Highest Search Engine ranking for your website. See more about his strategies at AlwaysOnToptheBook.com.
By Kamau Austin, ©Copyright 2005.
