The Official ActiveRain Guide

I don't have much time to blog these days, but I wanted to do a quick post on sites that have revolutionized the way I do business as a coach/SEO consultant/website marketer, etc...

Ready??

1.  Google Website Optimizer 101 - (Absolute Must Read!!  It will change your entire outlook on web marketing)

• This page is from the Conversion Rate Experts.  It explains the wonderful world of "Conversion Rate Optimization" (CRO).  Get used to this phrase, I guarantee you will be hearing more about it... it's taking the SEO world by storm right now and revolutionizing the way most web marketers look at websites.  Bottom line:  you can generate traffic all day long but do you know how to convert it?

2.  Wiep.net - (The best up to date link building information available)

• You may think that link building is outside your area of expertise, not worth your time, or just plain confusing.  Wrong.  IMO, this is one of the most valuable and often overlooked weapons in your RE marketing arsenal.  It can provide instant qualified traffic, and more importantly, increase the ranking and traffic of your entire website (not just the page linked to).  Read this site carefully, and bookmark religiously.  His link post roundups are especially good, and there is some great buried treasure in there...

3.  Local SEO - (An often neglected topic in the RE.net world)

• Local Search Optimization Video on SEOmoz

• [This] is what you get when you pool all of the best local SEO talent in the world

4.  Social Media Automation  (Some will cry foul here, but I don't care.  They are valid tools)

• Twollow.com - Autofollow based on keywords (I suggest starting with your location)
• Twitter Karma - Auto-UNfollow people that aren't following you back
• Twitterfeed.com - Automate part of your posting process with relevant RSS feeds.  Property feed Twitter account anyone???  The sky is the limit here folks... seriously.
  
• Disclaimer (be careful with all of these.  They are great tools, but can be mis-used.  I only use them to help supplement certain social accounts for clients because I have a life and can't be on twitter every 5 minutes)

I hope these were fun and useful for you.  I love "broadening" my arsenal of tools.  Enjoy...

Just wanted to share a recent experience I had creating a RE website. Granted, I don't have a huge amount of experience building or designing websites, but I was up for the challenge and wanted to get my hands dirty with some of the new technologies available with RSS, IDX, social media, etc...

Luckily the client is a close friend so he was very patient with me...  He's my dad!  He hired me on a limited basis to redesign his old Advanced Access website that he had for over 10 years.

WordPress was the obvious choice as a platform since it's so search engine friendly, but is also very flexible in terms of design and features.  I also jumped right on with Diverse Solutions as they have a really slick IDX system that allows the creation of RSS feeds based on a custom property search criteria.

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The design and set up went smoothly enough...  I used my favorite hosting company:  BlueHost to switch the domain over and got to work installing WordPress.  I chose a real estate specific theme called irealestate, that at the time was one of the first real estate WordPress themes ever created to my knowledge.  It has a really cool blue tabber on the right that can feed recent posts from any category you choose.

Without boring you with the details, we got the site up and running without too much trouble... but there was one thing that was really bothering me.  How do we showcase listings on the website without using a lame, cumbersome, framed in version of the IDX search?  It's slow, confusing, and just looks crappy framed into the site.  You can see an example of what I mean here.

Not only that... from experience, I know that those iframes are very UN-friendly to search engine crawling and might as well be a blank page in the eyes of the search engines.

So immediately, one of my #1 goals became:  how do I fix this???  How can I get listings to show up as static pages of the website that can be crawled and found by the search engines?

As I was digging around and researching this problem, I stumbled upon a feature of the irealestate theme I had purchased that had a page template that allowed you to feed listings into into it through RSS.  Bingo!!  I thought I had found the perfect solution!.  You can see an example on this OC Foreclosures page. 

The only thing that bothered me was that it just lined up all the listings on the page.  I had seen something like this before on Jay Thompson's website under the Phoenix Listing Feed section.  It is really cool, but I recognized immediately that this wouldn't solve my search engine problem.  Yeah, the search engine might crawl this page and find some of the listing data, but it was on a single page, and it would constantly change because of the data feed it was pulling from.  Not exactly the great solution I originally thought it was.

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So I kept looking...  I knew exactly what I wanted, but didn't know how to make it happen.  My dream was to have a feature that allowed individual listings to automatically create a single blog post as they came into the feed under whatever criteria I chose.  So, if I wanted to have a category of listings in a certain zip code with a certain price range, I could set it up so every time a listing came up, a new blog post was created with WordPress.  This would ensure that each listing got it's own unique URL on my site and would be able to be crawled and found by the search engines.

Alas, I began to start thinking that this was probably just impossible...

Around the same time I was looking for a solution to this problem, a friend of mine over at the Real Estate Tomato (Jason Benesch) announced the soft launch of a tool he called Listing Press.  It was almost exactly what I was looking for (and I highly recommend it if you want a plugin solution).

But being the DIY'r that I am, I had to find another way to make this happen and make it have the flexibility I wanted it to.  The the search continued...

Low and behold, after searching for many many hours, I found just the thing.  A combination of plugins and tweeks that would do exactly what I wanted.  I turned it on at about 2am one night after working for about 6 hours on it, crossed my fingers, and went to bed....  The goal was to set it up so the listings would populate as blog posts automatically without me having to do anything and I knew that by the time I woke up I would know whether I had accomplished this goal.

I rolled out of bed at about 8am to check the computer, and to my utter amazement, 95 new blog posts had been created over night!!!!!  Each one of them was a new listing pulled down from my Foreclosure feed that I had created with Diverse Solutions.  Amazing!!!

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Sorry, I know this post is getting long, but I almost feel like I need to journal it because what happened in the weeks to follow was incredible...

Because of some other work obligations and a vacation, I wasn't able to really work on the site for about 2 weeks.  I did set up some new feeds...  I was really interested in the foreclosures because I knew that the REO market was really hot in Orange County and wanted to capitalize on that.  I created 5 categories on the blog, each one targeting a different price range of foreclosures.  I also found a really cool tool on Diverse Solutions that allowed me to find properties with price reductions... that was pretty cool too so I created a new page for that as well.

After a couple weeks, we had over 1,000 blog posts on the site as listings and noticed that many of them were even ranking when you did a search for the address, or even the street name.  I found that they even outranked sites like Zillow and Trulia for the same listings... and most of the listings were so fresh that most of the sites that publish listings hadn't even found them yet.

But where was the traffic??!!  I was starting to get frustrated that my dad wasn't getting any calls or emails.  Why wasn't it working?

Then I got the call that changed everything...

My dad called me early on a Monday morning saying that he just got a call from a very angry Orange County resident saying that he was so tired of his phone ringing off the hook for people wanting more information on real estate listings.  Bingo! 

Stupid me!!!!  I had placed the wrong phone number on the IDX feed!  LOL!!!!  There were hundreds of listings being indexed by Google with this poor guys phone number on them.  I immediately deleted all of the posts and started from scratch.  But the good thing was, I knew it was only a matter of weeks before we started seeing some real leads and traffic.

It didn't even take 3 days...  My dad called me on Thursday telling me he had 4 calls that day for people wanting more information on "listings they had seen on Google" and it looked like at least 2 of them were going to use him to represent them as a buyer's agent.  Pretty amazing.  We had done it, and the scary thing was that we hadn't even scratched the surface yet.

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That was a couple weeks ago.  Since then, the phone is still ringing off the hook, the listings are still getting posted automatically, and the traffic for the site is around 200 visitors per day when it was previously about 25 per day.  Over 90% of the traffic is coming from search engines and I'm just amazed at the potential.

Some possible opportunities and deals have opened up, and I'm weighing my options on what I should do with this technology.

I wanted to get some feedback from you, the Activerain community on what you thought about this whole thing.  Even though I'm a nerd, I'm not as smart as I look.  I feel like I've got a tiger by the tail and am not totally sure what to do with it.

You'll notice that I didn't get into alot of detail on how I did it, and that is for a few reasons:

First, I'm not completely sure what I should do with this information.  Should I share it with the world, or keep it under my hat?

Second, I don't want everyone and their mother flooding the Google index with listings.  A wise man once told me that if I have something good going, why try to publish it to the world and risk running into unforeseen problems (that man was actually Jonathan Washburn who gave me personal advice on another business I had in late 2006)

Third, I'll be honest... I'm selfish.  I'm not sure I want to release it on a broad scale because there might be some business models I can create out of it.

So, I defer to you the ActiveRain community.  What do you think I should do with it?  I'm trying to be as transparent as possible here.

Here are a few of my ideas... you let me know if I'm crazy or not...

• Keep it secret and just make my dad a ton of money.
• Release it to a few key brokerages around the country that could benifit from it as a source for leads.
• Create a business that designs basic WordPress sites, or takes existing WP sites and add this functionality.
• Hire a developer to create a WordPress theme that has this functionality built in.
• Create a bunch of sites around the country and use them to farm leads and create a referral network.
• Lastly (and this is my favorite and the one I'm leaning towards)...  create a large video series on how to do it and release it for a small fee.  There are a ton of features and possibilities that I didn't even go over in this post.  Like how to exclude listings from showing up in your main blog, how to syndicate this feed to Twitter and Facebook, how to create a custom email subscription box for a certain search criteria, how to create a feed based on any search criteria you choose... the possibilities are endless and I think I could create about 5-6 hours of video that would explain how to do everything...
  

What do you guys think?  Am I crazy?  Shoud I try one of the above ideas or just keep it under my hat???

Thanks for listening to my ramblings this morning....

• Block Duplicate Content - With the nifty All In One SEO pack for Wordpress, you can easily set your category and archive pages to be noindex/follow… meaning that Google will follow the links to the individual articles, but not index those pages which will help guard against the duplicate content problem.  For those of you not running Wordpress, try turning off your archives, and not placing posts in more than one category.  Read more about: Multiple categories & Onsite Duplicate Content.
• Keyword Research Before You Post - This little tactic has helped me tremendously.  Before you get ready to hit publish, run the keyword phrase that you used in your title through a keyword research tool like Google’s Keyword Tool.  You may often find that with just a slight variation, you’ll be targeting phrases that get a higher volume of searches.  For more help on keyword research, read this post I wrote about the money tail.
• Internal Link Juice - In order to properly pass Page Rank, and link value to deep pages of your site (like older blog posts), you’ll want to link to these posts often.  This can be achieved through a related posts section, or by simply linking back to previous articles as resources.  Sometimes a few basic internal links with proper anchor text can have a great effect on that page’s ranking.  Andrew Shotland gave a great tip related to this when I interviewed him about local search marketing.
• Keep Your Link Count Down - This can be a problem with some blogs… too many links on one page.  It can water down your internal Page Rank, and cause problems with full indexing.  Generally, try to keep the number of links on a single page below 100.  Google has said that it may not crawl any links past the 100 mark.  So be careful with your categories, archives and blogrolls.  These are the things that can eat up your links fast especially on the home page and category page.
• Use Unique Titles For Blog Posts - Diversify your ranking potential by using unique titles on blog posts.  I’ve written about this topic extensively here: Keyword Cannibalization.
• Each Post is a Ranking Opportunity - View each post you write as a new opportunity to rank for a unique keyword phrase.  Each post has it’s own content, title, title tag, and URL slug making it a prime candidate for unique ranking for certain phrases.  Don’t try to target the same phrases over and over in each post.
• Use Heading Tags - Not only is this important for usability, it’s vital for search engine ranking.  If you are targeting a phrase in the title of the post, try to incorporate that phrase somewhere in the post within a heading tag.  This will also break up the article nicely and make it easier to read.
• Label Pictures Properly - Each picture should include the tag that can be used to describe a picture with text.  Be descriptive, but try to also include keyword phrases that you are targeting.
• The Perfectly Targeted Post - When you are attempting to rank a post well, you must do the following: 1. Identify a keyword phrase  2. Place the phrase in the post title towards the front  3. Place the phrase in the first sentence of the post  4. Use at least one subheading in the post that includes the phrase  5. Place the phrase in any images on the page using the alt tage.  6. Let the phrase flow naturally throughout the post.
• Write a Linkbait Post - This is a post that is written for the sole intention of building more links to the website through viral popularity and interest.  It could be something funny, something controversial, a hoax, insider news, a free resource, and more.  Just about anything can be linkbait if it ends up getting other people to link to you.
• Create Link Clusters - Each post has it’s own keyword phrase ranking potential in the search engines (usually based on the keywords used in the title and body).  Create extra links to pages like this in clusters.  Example:  you have a post that is targeting: “blue widgets”.  Create 10 links to that post from other related articles with that exact anchor text as the link: “blue widgets”.  This can dramatically increase the ranking of that page for the chosen keyword phrase.
• Leverage Strong Pages - Every website has a few strong pages.  Usually these are the most popular posts that have the most incoming links and comments.  These pages can be leveraged to help build the authority of other pages on the site that may not be performing to their full potential.  Link generously.  Try using this tool for finding your strongest pages.
• Monitor 404 Error Statistics - Using Google Analytics and Google webmaster tools can help identify error statistics.  Keep your eye 404 errors for pages that get consistently accessed.  It probably means that there is an old link to that page that is bringing traffic to it.  You’ll want to set up a 301 redirect for the 404 error page, or talk to the webmaster of the other site to have them change the link to a working page.
• Check Status of Outgoing Links - Many times the pages we link to get moved, taked offline, etc.  It’s important that all of your outgoing links work properly so your readers can be taken to outside resources that actually work.  Try this dead link checking tool.
• Find Missed Link Opportunities - Many times, your company or website can be referenced online without the actual hyperlink.  It can be an effective strategy to find these references and ask the webmaster to turn them into a link.  Use this query to find pages with these references.

A couple months ago, I decided to create a post on my Searching Solutions Blog that contained a giant list of blogging tips on everything from setting up an effective blog, to advanced SEO tactics.  It has become a regular feature of my site, and something I update every week with new tips.  There are currently over 100.

I'll be posting portions of the list on AR for reference.  If you want to see more, make sure to check out the origianl list here: Ultimate Guide to Blogging

** If you plan to link to or bookmark this guide at some point, please do me a favor and link to the original at: www.searchingsolutions.com/blog   Thanks for your help!  **

Here are some of the categories I cover in the guide:

Contents:

• Tips For Getting Started
• Basic Blog Formatting & Structure
• Blog Design & Features
• Blog Content Tips
• Blog Participation
• Blog & Article Promotion Tips
• SEO For Blogs
• Social Media

Here is part 3 in this series on Blogging Tips:

Blog Design & Features:

• Create a Best Post List - This is an awesome way to help promote some of your best work.  There are some posts that will become a legacy so to speak.  Your “Pillar” posts that people will come back to again and again.
• Use a Favicon - These are those cute little icons that appear next to the URL in your browser and on bookmarks.  They are simply a neat way to brand your site, and I find that they can become quite memorable over time.
• Social Bookmarking Options - Social bookmarking is becoming pretty commonplace in the blogging world.  Giving people options in this area can really help.  I prefer using the plugin called Share This, but there are a host of other plugins that do something similar.
• Include Useful Widgets - I’m not a huge fan of widgets because they slow down blogs, and are rarely useful, but in some industries there are some very user friendly widgets that can add alot of value.  Make sure you think of the reader first, and not just how “cool” a widget is.
• Publish Full Feeds - It is a well known fact that most people prefer to see the full version of your article in their RSS reader and email.  Don’t truncate to try to snag extra traffic… you’ll just end up annoying your readers.  Give them full access on their own terms.
• Setup A Proper XML Sitemap - This is a basic plugin for Wordpress.  If you don’t have Wordpress, you can create a basic page that simply links to all of your posts and important pages.  Make sure to use relevant anchor text.
• Update Your Design - Blog feeling a bit stale?  I feel that way about every 2 weeks.  If you haven’t changed your design in over a year, it may be time for a snazzy new design.  If you have the dough, get a custom design or at least a premium theme.  Even the simplest design changes can make a huge difference.
• Call to Action | Related Articles Section - This is vital for any blog.  Make sure you have a section somewhere on each post (typically near the bottom) that lists articles related to the current one.  This can really improve page views, length of visit, stickiness, and overall usability.
• Call to Action | Email Subscription - Every blog should have an easy way to subscribe.  For your technically challenged readers, the easiest way is through an email subscription form.  You can use a link, but a form looks so much nicer.  Go to the email management area on your Feedburner account to find the html for this form.
• Call to Action | Connect on Social Media - Are you a Facebook, Myspace or Twitter user?  Make sure you give an invitation to connect via these sites.
• Call to Action | Social Bookmarking - If you ask nicely, your readers and friends just may help you social bookmark your posts on sites like Digg and Stumble Upon.  This is good.  Giving them easy options can make it a painless process for them.
• Call to Action | Extra feature - Have any extra features on your site?  Many real estate based blogs will have a MLS search feature built in.  If you have a valuable tool or service on your site, make sure to call attention to it often.
• Call to Action | “The Classic” - Sometimes only a direct in your face call to action will work.  Not always appropriate for every post or every situation, but your phone number, email, and contact forms are all examples of the “classic” call to action.
• Calls to Action | Where Do They Go? - Most calls to action will fit nicely into the bottom section of a blog post, but you can be creative.  If you can sprinkle them throughout a post without sounding too commercial, you’re in good shape.  The goal?  Try to include at least 2 calls to action in each post.

And it just keeps on growing... please comment if you have a tip you'd like to share (I'll give you credit and a link from the original post).

By now, if you've been following this short series on RSS, you should have a firm understanding of:

• What RSS is
• What it means to be an RSS publisher
• How to locate your RSS feed
• How to sign up with feedburner
• How to add a feedburner subscription form into your sidebar

If you happened to miss those first 2 posts, you can click below to review:

The Ultimate (& Practical) Guide To Optimizing Your RSS Feed (Part 1)

How to SuperCharge Your Activerain Blog With Feedburner (Part 2)

In this 3rd and final post of this series, we're going to get into detail about improving your RSS subscriber count, analyzing your Feedburner statistics, promoting your email subscription, and how to add options into your blog posts.

First...  Analyzing Your Feedburner Subscriber Data

If you recently subscribed with Feedburner, you may not have a huge subscriber base to speak of (and that is ok).  RSS subscribers are notoriously hard to build and keep.

Here is a screen shot of what your Feedburner subscription page looks like:

Notice, the bulk of subscribers are through email.  This is extremely common, as it's the easiest way to subscribe to your feed.

Now lets look at "item use" within the side bar.  This will show click activity within your feed for a set amount of time.  This is a very interesting way to see which of your posts are the most popular, and what activity happened within your feed and when.

Most of the stats within feedburner are self explanatory.  What I want to really point out is the fact that these stats are separate from any other website tracking statistics you may have access to.

For example... you typically use Site Meter or Google Analytics to track your visits, referrals, etc.  But now that you have a Feedburner feed, you can also track stats on your RSS feed.  This is hugely important.  The point of offering people the RSS susbription options is to allow them to read your content on their own terms.  They may sign up once, and never return to your site again even though they are a loyal reader to your blog through email.

So just keep in mind that the feedburner stats are something you're going to want to keep your eye on along with your regular analytics in order to get an accurate picture of who is actually reading your content.

How to Promote Your Feedburner Email Subscription Form

Next I want to go over a few ideas for promoting your Feedburner email form.  In my last post I went over how to add the feedburner form into your ActiveRain sidebar, and hopefully you were able to install that properly.

You've probably noticed by now that the html form I showed you last time isn't compatible in many places.  You can't place it into AR posts, and you can't place it in your email signature.  Unfortunately, there are many places you can't place an html form.  But, the good news is that you have other options.

Just because you don't have a nice form to give to people doesn't mean you're out of luck.  At this point, I think it would be helpful to point out where you can get a hyperlink to your email form.  A hyperlink has ultimate versatility.  You can attach it to a banner or button, you can put it in your email signature, you can create a text link... you can use it just about anywhere.

But, to get the link you need, you'll have to follow a couple steps.

First, navigate to your Feedburner feed.  Mine is at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CRENARBlog

Then, follow these steps:

Make sure to hang on to this link.  Bookmark it, write it down, whatever... just don't lose it.  You'll want to use it later.

Now, let's just create a simple link in our AR blog post that allows people to subscribe via email...

so...

Pretty simple so far right?  Remember, you can take this link just about anywhere to allow people to sign up via email.

In my opinion, your email subscription tool is one of the most powerful in your entire arsenal.  You should be promoting it religiously everywhere you leave a footprint online.  You can even promote it offline if you have the means.  I had a student that sent out blog announcements to their SOI offering a free $5 Starbucks card for the first 50 email subscribers.  It was a great way to build awareness and get new subscribers.

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In the last part of this post, I want to review a few tips for building your subscribers.

Tips on Increasing Your RSS Subscribers

1. Write Great Content - Ok, ok... it's not earth shattering, but you have to have a solid base to work from.  If you write bad articles, building a subscriber base will be excruciatingly difficult.
2. Write Consistently - This was found to be one of the number one reasons why people UN-subscribe from a blog.  Lack of consistency will kill you.  Even if you can only realistically write 2 posts per month, that's better then setting a 1 post/day precedent, then not writing for 3 weeks.
3. Give Some Incentive - People like free stuff.  A gift card can work well, but if you're working on "the cheap", try offering a free e-book to subscribers.  If you promote it right you'll create a great value, and build your subscribers at the same time.  If you really want to get advanced, you could offer exclusive content in the feed itself.  This would create a sort of "secret tips" feed that only your subscribers can see.  There is a post here on how to do it.
   
4. Don't Just Promote It On Your Blog - If you're like most bloggers, you probably have a pretty large online footprint... Social Networking, Forums, Bookmarking, Social Media...  these are all places where you can promote your feed.  We typically use our websites as a signature, but why not our RSS URL's as well?
5. Publish a Full RSS Feed - It's tempting to want to publish a truncated version of your feed to try to drive traffic back to the site, but it rarely works like that. What you end up doing is just making people mad.  This was listed as the 3rd most popular reason why people UN-subscribe from blogs.
6. Place an RSS Icon in a Prominent Place - This is an easy one, but you'd be suprised how much it can help.
7. Seek Out People that Didn't Confirm - One of the frustrations of Feedburner is that it's a double opt-in system.  It' good for protecting spam, but sometimes people will try to subscribe but never confirm their subscription.  These people are listed in your Feeburner account.  Simply email them again asking them to confirm their subscription.
8. Stay on Topic & Don't Overpost - These were both popular reasons why people UN-subscribed from blogs.  If you write a mortgage news blog, don't write about what you had for breakfast.  No one cares.  And if you're a prolific writer, try to keep it down to 1 per day.  Each post you write should be very high quality.  If you have too much to say try using Twitter as an outlet...
9. Write Great Content - Um... did I already mention this?  

Well, I hope by now that you have a firm understanding of what RSS is and how it can become a very powerful tool for promoting your blog.

If you have any questions about anything I covered in this 3 part series, please comment!

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This is the part of the post where I ask you to subscribe to MY blog!!   ;-)

• Email Subscribe: Tomato Coach Blog on ActiveRain
• Email Subscribe: SEO blog @ Searching Solutions
  

From: The Publisher's Guide to Understanding RSS

Disclaimer: You don't necessarily have to have an Activerain blog to apply these principals.

In my last post, I reviewed the basic concept of RSS and how it can be used as a syndication tool.  Alot of people use RSS readers, or have signed up to RSS via email without even knowing it... but many people don't seem to grasp the value of being an RSS publisher.  If you have a blog, you ARE an RSS publisher whether you knew it or not!

If you don't have a solid understanding of RSS, don't know how to find your own feed, or aren't yet signed up for Feedburner, make sure to read my last post to review before you move on with this one.

Click Here to Read My Last Post:

The Ultimate (& Practical) Guide To Optimizing Your RSS Feed (Part 1)

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Moving forward, you should have a firm understanding of what RSS is, how to find your RSS feed, and how to subscribe with Feedburner.  As I went over last time, Feedburner is a great tool for expanding the reach of your RSS feed and essentially gives your readers more options.

Understanding Feedburner Email Subscription Options

One of the primary benefits of using Feedburner is the ability to let your readers subscribe to receive future articles via email.  If you don't understand the significance of this... trust me... it's huge.  The ability to "push" your content to subscribers is revolutionary.  And email delivery does just that.

So let's cover the basics.

First, you'll need to activate this feature within Feedburner.  Login to Feedburner, Navigate to the "Publicize" tab, Click "Email Subscriptions" in the sidebar, and click "Activate".  I highly recommend that you keep the default settings.

Now that it's activated, let's review some of your choices.  The first screen will immediately give you an option to create a form to capture new email subscribers.  Let's put this in our ActiveRain sidebar to give people more subscription options.

Setting Up A Feedburner Email Subscription Box in My ActiveRain Sidebar

Step 1: Copy and Paste the html in the box as shown below.

Step 2: Navigate to "My Settings" in your ActiveRain account.  Under the "Blog Description" box, paste in the html code for the email form.  If you are up for it, you can even change the text that appears within the box.  The default says:  "Enter your email address".   I like mine to be more descriptive... something like: "Enter your email to receive future articles:".

Step 3:  Admire your fine work.  Go to your blog and make sure it looks ok.

Before you're finished with the email subscription options, make sure to visit the "communication preferences", "email branding", and "delivery options" sections in feeedburner to set those up.  While you're at it, go ahead and activate "Ping Shot" which is just below "delivery options".

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Now that you have an email subscription box set up, lets quickly review one more option in feedburner.  Navigate to the "Optimize" tab, and click on "FeedFlare".  This is a unique option that allows you to add extra features to the bottom of your feed.  In this example, I've chosen the ones that I like to use, but the choice is completely yours.

You'll find a host of options within your Feedburner account that I don't have time to review here.  Many of them won't apply to you unless you plan to post podcasts, place advertisements in your RSS feed, or want to Geotag your post with a location.  So you don't really need to worry about most of them.

Now that you have Feedburner set up properly, and have given your readers an easy way to subscribe, the only thing left to do is promote your feed which I will covering in my next post. 

~Homework~  Get your Feedburner email subscription form set up on your blog.  Then, make sure to subscribe to this blog so you can read the third and final part of this RSS Series.

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In the 3rd and final part of this RSS series, I'll show you how to:

• Improve your RSS subscriber count
  
• Analyze Feedburner subscriber data
• Promote your email subscription form
• Add Subscription options to blog posts
  

Click Here to Read Part 3!

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Please comment if you have any questions!!

From: The Publisher's Guide to Understanding RSS

This post was stirred out of the overwhelming number of questions I get about how to optimize an ActiveRain blog and profile for the search engines.  I realize that many of you have outside blogs, and only use ActiveRain as a supplemental blog, but that is ok!  Your AR blog is still a very powerful tool, and one that should be optimized properly so it can be successful not only within the AR network and Localism, but on search engines too!

Here is a Basic SEO Quiz For You…

“What is the number one thing search engines look at when deciding to rank your site in the search engines?’

1. Page Content

2. URL’s

3. Title Tags

4. Incoming Links

Any ideas??  Well, if you answered #3, you answered correctly.  Title tags, or Meta Titles are the most important factor in search engine ranking.  Of course all the above are important, and #4 is a close second, but Titles have consistently shown to be the most important attribute to search engines.  And don’t take my word for it, take a look at this study that polled the top SEO experts in the country on what the top factors were.

What is a Title Tag???

Let’s start with the basics.  For those of you that aren’t really saavy to website architecture, this may be helpful.

“A Title Tag, or Meta Title Tag is an HTML element placed on webpages to help identify the page”

It’s commonly used by search engines to determine what a page is about, and thus help rank that page for keywords included in the Title Tag.

Where Can You Find a Title Tag?

Most pages on the internet have a Title tag.  You just need to know where to look.  Here are 2 places you will probably see Title Tags most often:

The easiest way to determine what the Title Tag is for any given page, is to look at the top part of your browser when looking at a page:

The other place where you can find titles commonly is in the search engines themselves.

So… with the understanding that title tags are the most important part of search engine ranking.  What can YOU do about it? A few things…

Title Tag on Your Activerain Profile Page

Many people on ActiveRain have utilized this feature already, but for you newbies out there, and others that may not have realized why this was important, take note…

When you type in a first and last name for profile, it automatically becomes the meta tag title of your profile page, and is used on may places of the site to identify you.  So make sure to tell people who you are, AND the areas you serve (including keywords that will help you rank better for your profile page).

Want proof that this can help your ranking?  Take a look at this:

Title Tag on Your Activerain Blog

The Title Tag on your blog works much the same way as your profile page.  Whatever you insert as the Blog Title becomes the Title Tag of your blog home page.  My blog home page is at: http://activerain.com/blogs/hismove  notice that the title tag is the same as the title of the blog.  In other words… I want to use the keywords that I want to rank for the most as the title of my blog.

I don’t suggest creating a blog title that simply reads:  “Las Vegas Real Estate”…   Use something that separates you from the pack.  Something Catchy, memorable, etc.  But DO include some relevant keywords in the title… that is the point of this whole post.  Showing you how to customize these titles so you can rank better.

Title Tag on Activerain Blog Posts

Ok, so this part may be basic for some, but I’ve found that so many people simply don’t understand this concept.

When you post a blog post, the title of that blog post automatically becomes the Meta Tag Title of that page.  This is also true for many other types of blogging platforms: wordpress, blogger, and Typepad all use a similar system which is one of the reasons blogs rank so well in the search engines.

So, what is the significance to understanding that blog post titles become Meta Tag Titles?  Hopefully, you’ll think alot harder when it comes time to writing your blog post titles!!!

Not only do post titles need to describe what you’re writing about, but they need to include keywords that can help that post rank higher in the search engines.  If you don’t include strong keywords in that title, don’t expect to see that post ranking well.

I hope this short tutorial was helpful for you in understanding why Title Tags are important, and how you can maximize them in the search engines.

Please comment if you have any questions!!

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