Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site. Originated by UserLand in 1997 and subsequently used by Netscape to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites. RSS solves myriad problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic, and gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution services.

RSS is the hottest thing in Web communication. It powers many popular applications such as weblogs, knowledge management networks, and news syndication.

Weblogging, a term coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997, is one of the most popular and fast growing applications of RSS. A blog is someone's personal dated 'log' frequently updated with new information about a particular subject or range of subjects.RSS is changing the world of publishing news and searching for news.

RSS File Format:
RSS defines an XML grammar (a set of HTML-like tags) for sharing news. Each RSS text file contains both static information about your site, plus dynamic information about your new stories, all surrounded by matching start and end tags.

Each story is defined by an item tag, which contains a headline TITLE, URL, and DESCRIPTION.

RSS Contains:

• Blogs Feed
Many blogs are catalogued in an RSS feed, with each blog entry summarized as a feed item. This makes it easy for visitors to scan blog posts for items of interest.

• Article Feed
Articles are often placed into feeds to alert readers when new articles and content are available. The feed entry is typically an article summary or introduction. Readers can then ascertain if the article is of interest and read further.

• Forum Feed
Many forums now have add-ons that allow participants to receive forum posts via RSS. The RSS feeds often will show the latest discussion topics; if users are interested they simply click to enter the forum to participate in the discussion. As the topic is updated they will see new entries in the RSS feed.

• Schedule Feed
Schools, clubs and organizations will often use feeds to communicate meeting times, places and events that might be occurring. The RSS feeds are often used to publicize events, notify the community of schedule changes or meeting agendas.

• Discounts / Specials Feed
Retail and online stores have begun using RSS feeds to deliver their latest specials and discounted offers. Some online retailers have taken this a step further, allowing user to create their own feeds based on keywords or phrases.

RSS feeds can be used by realtors to communicate the time and location for open houses, announce new property listings or promote decreased mortgage rates. Content feeds can also be used by universities to communicate sports scores or event schedules. Computer service professionals can create feeds to notify clients of potential security breaches, virus risks or outbreaks. Ultimately, RSS is molded to meet the communication needs of many sectors. Consider how RSS can benefit your business and supplement your communication needs.

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What is Anchor Text Optimization?

Anchor Text:
Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink. Anchor text is weighted (ranked) highly in search engine algorithms, because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page. The objective of search engines is to provide highly relevant search results; this is where anchor text helps, as the tendency is, more often than not, to hyperlink words relevant to the landing page. Anchor text is the hyperlinked text found on a Web page which link site users to detailed page that contains full information about the linking page.

Anchor text optimization can be done externally and internally:

• External anchor text involves getting inbound links form other websites, directories, forums and blogs using necessary keywords as anchor text.
  
• Internal optimization of anchor text can be done by using specific keywords on the links that link the various pages within the website.

If Anchor text is used wisely it can help a website rank high in search engine. One can optimize a Web page with targeted keywords in the form of anchor text and link it with various related pages within the site and thus, increase the relevancy of a web page in search engine ranking.

Search Engine Algorithms like Anchor Text:
The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking of your site pages. All search engines that matter, give significant weight to the anchor text on your pages. In fact Google even has a special operator: allinanchor: keyword', which picks up text only from within the anchor text of indexed pages.

Benefits of Anchor Text Optimization:

• Proper use of anchor text can help you show the relevancy of your web pages to key search engines to help rank for desired keywords. You can use this knowledge to build the relevance of each page of your site, through anchor text optimization containing important keywords, relevant to the theme of such pages, from other pages of your site.
  
• Inclusion of keywords in the anchor text helps your website achieve higher ranks in all search engines, especially in Google, MSN, and Yahoo. All search engines for that matter, give significant weight to the anchor text on your pages. Google gives heavy weight to anchor text and thus improves the ranking. However, inclusion of important keywords will make a big difference to the existing website by improving its ranking position in search engines.
  
• Want to optimize your anchor text for higher ranking of your website? At LSF Network exploit all resources to help you reap benefits of anchor text optimization. Request a free quote now to see how LSF Network can help you optimize anchor text and improve Search Engine Rankings of your web site.

Anchor text optimization is an important off-page optimization factor as it tells search engine what the linking page is all about. Among the search engines Google gives more weight to anchor text and Google Page rank being the targeted issue, Anchor text optimization becomes an unavoidable subject.

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Now register your Web Address through Google

GOOGLE INC. will join the crowded field of services registering website addresses in a move aimed at encouraging more usage of the online search leader's free software products.

The Mountain View-based company is offering its latest service in a partnership with GoDaddy.com and eNom, two of the many administrators that help websites officially register their names under domains like .com and .net.

Google's service will charge a $10 (euro7.60) annual fee and only handle addresses ending in four suffixes — .com, .net, .biz and .info. There are more than 250 other suffixes in the Internet's master directories.

Websites that register their domains through Google will be automatically set up to work with several other company products, including e-mail, calendaring and instant messaging. The configuration won't prevent the websites from using services offered by Google rivals like Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warn er Inc.'s AOL. Meanwhile, Google and Baidu.com Inc., its biggest rival in China, are exploring options to expand their online video services in the world's fourth largest economy.

Industry sources told Reuters this week that the two Internet search leaders have independently had early discussions with some local video websites for potential business cooperation or possible acquisitions. However, neither Internet giant has secured a specific target yet, said the sources with knowledge of the situation.

The moves come after Google last month closed its $1.65 billion acquisition of top online video-sharing site YouTube. Baidu also launched its own Chinese-language video Web channel on a trial basis a few months ago.

“Google and Baidu have the same idea of expanding their online video business in China, though they are still studying a variety of business proposals,” said an Internet industry source close to the two Web sites in China.

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The usability of website and Search Engine Optimization

My focus is on how website usability goes hand in hand with good SEO. Usability science, or human factors, pursues the quest for human-computer interface designs that are easy to use. While Usability Day is about technology as a whole, and how that technology makes our lives easier, this article will turn its attention to website usability, and how it can be important in search engine optimization.

• Website usability deals with ease of navigation, how colors work together to enhance a user experience without hurting the eyes, the size of fonts, and design. But some of the concepts of website usability have a direct effect on how search engines crawl your website, and index it accordingly.

"Memory is part of usability. That's why navigation is such a pain in the neck to work out and make usable for everybody who will use your web site. There are ads, images, blinking thingy’s distracting your eyes, and your mind is going everywhere at once".

Usability Testing
Web site usability focuses on what happens after users arrive on a Web site. When usability professionals perform formative tests on Web page prototypes, the initial assumption is users have already landed on a specific page. Usability professionals observe what people do once they arrive on that page. Do they take the desired call to action? Do they understand what page they're viewing? The focus of formative usability testing is to create a user-friendly interface. It isn't how to encourage people to visit your Web site. That responsibility is usually relegated to the marketing department.

Search Engine optimization:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing. The term SEO also refers to "search engine optimizers," an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients' sites.

• It is the process of analyzing and optimizing your web site's design in order to ensure its indexing and increase its positioning in search engines.
  
• The goal of this analysis and optimization is to make your web site and its content more attractive, relevant and visible to search engines and web searchers.
  
• It would be terrible to have a beautifully designed web site with excellent written content, yet receive little traffic simply because your site cannot be easily found, if at all, by using a major search engine.
  
• We will provide you with our expert advice on your site's architecture in order to make it search engine friendly.
  
• A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don't realise is that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors.
  
• Ultimately this means more people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. But are search engine optimization and usability compatible? Aren’t there trades-offs that need to be made between giving search engines what they want and giving people what they want? Read on and find out.

This Earth-Day-style event, focused on easy-to-use technology, currently involves plans in more than 70 cities in 30 countries. Online headquarters of the international day, says, “World Usability Day promotes the value of usability engineering, user-centered design, and every user's responsibility to ask for things that work better. The Usability Professionals' Association is doing that by encouraging, organizing, and sponsoring 36 hours of activities at the local level around the globe.

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What is the Difference Between http and https?

http is hyper text transfer protocol which is responsible for transmitting and receiving information across the Internet where as https is secure http, which is used exchanging confidential information with a server, which needs to be secured in order to prevent unauthorized access.

HTTP is Hyper Text Transport Protocol and is transmitted over the wire via PORT 80(TCP). You normally use HTTP when you are browsing the web, it’s not secure, and so someone can eavesdrop on the conversation between your computer and the web server. HTTP can support the client asking for a particular file to be sent only if it has been updated after a certain date and time. This would be used if the client has already retrieved a copy of a file by that name from that server, but wants to check to see if it has been updated since then. The server responds either with the updated file, with a message to say the file has not been changed, or with a message that the file no longer exists.

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer or HTTP over SSL) is a Web protocol developed by Netscape and built into its browser that encrypts and decrypts user page requests as well as the pages that are returned by the Web server. HTTPS is really just the use of Netscape's Secure Socket Layer (SSL) as a sub layer under its regular HTTP application layering. (HTTPS uses port 443 instead of HTTP port 80 in its interactions with the lower layer, TCP/IP.) SSL uses a 40-bit key size for the RC4 stream encryption algorithm, new-age browsers use 128-bit key size which is more secure than the former, it is considered an adequate degree of encryption for commercial exchange. HTTPS is normally used in login pages, shopping/commercial sites.

How it Work
Https is not a separate protocol, but refers to the combination of a normal HTTP interaction over an encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) transport mechanism. This ensures reasonable protection from eavesdroppers and (provided it is implemented properly and the top level certification authorities do their job properly) man-in-the-middle attacks.
The default TCP port of an https: URL is 443 (for unsecured HTTP, the default is 80).To prepare a web-server for accepting https connections the administrator must create a public key certificate for the web-server. These certificates can be created for Linux based servers with tools such as Open SSL's ssl or SuSE's gensslcert. This certificate must be signed by a certificate authority of one form or another, who certifies that the certificate holder is who they say they are. Web browsers are generally distributed with the signing certificates of major certificate authorities, so that they can verify certificates signed by them.

Main Features

• Dedicated to HTTP protocol, show a wide range of HTTP related information, request and response header, content, sent and received cookies, stream, query strings, post form values...
  
• Request builder, Users can handcraft an HTTP request by using the HTTP Request Builder, or they can use a drag-and-drop operation to move an existing request from the session grid to the Request Builder to execute it again.
  
• Hex Viewer allows users to view and edit binary files in hexadecimal and textual format.
  
• Displays Winsock traffic originating from Java applets and JavaScript embedded in a Web page, displays Winsock traffic originating from ActiveX controls and COM objects instanced by an application (Stand-alone Edition Only)
  
• "Before request and after response" browser cache comparisons
  
• Support HTTPS, show you unencrypted data sent over HTTPS / SSL connections, HTTPS is available if the application uses the Microsoft WININET API (ex. ie, outlook) or Mozilla NSS API. (ex. firefox, thunderbird)
  
• Selectively clear caches and cookies which are related with HTTP/HTTPS session.

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Best way to Search the Internet

The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc.; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is accessible via the Internet, as are many other services including e-mail and file sharing.

Uses:

The internet is an amazing resource that provides quick access to all sorts of information. The amount of information, however, is so vast that being able to find what you are looking for is a daunting task. Search engines are the answer. Our favorite search engine is Google because it does an remarkable job of listing relevant search results.

Tips & Suggestions:

Although Google is powerful and easy to use, here are some tips you can use to get the best results:

• Don't get stuck on one search term or phrase; if your first search does not give you the type of results you are looking for, try different words or different phrases.

• Putting quotation marks around a phrase in the search box requires all resulting pages to include that exact phrase to be located somewhere on the page.

• Keep in mind that most search engines work with AND as the default operator; this means that any words you enter in the search box must exist on the resulting pages (unless you put a hyphen before a word).

• Including a hyphen before a word means that pages that include that word will be omitted from the search results.

• The order of the words you enter into the search box affects results, so try to enter the most important word first.

• If you enter dictionary words, your search terms are listed in the bar below the search box on the results page, and clicking on the word sends you to the definition of the word itself.

• You can enter math equations such as 27/3 and Google will provide the answer.

• You can enter a unit conversion such as 33 Celsius in Fahrenheit and Google will provide the answer

Perhaps the best tip to getting the most out of the internet, is to realize that it is there and to realize the breadth of information that is available. Before the rise of the internet, people were used to going on with their lives without plenty of relevant information.

You would go to the movies without knowing where you could find parking, or you would have a discussion about India without knowing the population. Once you realize that there are answers to virtually any question you could possibly have, you can start thinking about the gaps in your knowledge and using the internet to fill them. You can start to focus on the things you don't know about a particular subject, and instead of proceeding with ignorance, you can learn and explore.

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What is Google Blog Search Pinging Service?

About Google Blog Search Pinging Service
Google just recently launched the Google Blog Search Pinging Service, which allows individual bloggers to inform Google of their content changes. This new service enables for faster inclusion in Google Blog Search.
The Google Blog Search Pinging Service API allows users who frequently update their blog to programmatically inform Google Blog Search about changes to their blogs. Blogging provider admins can also use this API to notify Google of changes to blogs on their platform(s). To set up automated pinging of Google Blog Search, create either an XML-RPC Client or a REST Client which sends requests as noted below. It doesn't matter which method you choose for notification; both are handled in the same way. We all know that search engines love fresh content; that's why many of us have started blogs and encourage our clients to have blogs on their web sites. Now Google has made it easier to let it know when you've added fresh content to your blog. It's called the Google Blog Search Pinging Service, and there are a lot of good reasons to use it.

Google Blog Search Adds Ping Service
Google has added a pinging service to its Blog Search offering. Dubbed Google Blog Search Pinging Service, now bloggers and blog providers can now instantly inform Google Blog Search of new posts and content changes. Besides its own new Pinging Service, Google Blog Search uses other ping services to update its index as to when blogs are updated. Sure, manual pinging is very 2003/2004 as most blog software pings automatically, but by using the Google Blog Search Pinging Service, bloggers will no longer have to wait for Google to crawl their blogs in order for new posts to show up in the Google Blog Search index. By doing so, blogs get updated faster in Google Blog Search and Google can consolidate its blog crawling more efficiently. Blogs can be manually submitted to the Google Pinging Service and most blog providers should soon start pinging Google automatically.

Good reason to use it
For one thing, it's not just for Google. To quote from the FAQ, "These updates are then published and shared with other search engines to allow them to discover the changes to your weblogs."
It's also a great way to add your blog to the list of blogs that Google Blog Search crawls and indexes. Incidentally, if you run a blogging service, you might want to provide this service to your blog writers.
In the FAQ, Google gives a URL to let you manually ping the service. It's a one-time notification, however, so you'll need to resubmit every time your blog content is updated. You might find it much easier to use the API (also included in the FAQ) to automatically inform Google of every update to your blog.
Be patient when checking Google Blog Search for your blog updates though; the process is automated, but a number of factors can delay your blog's inclusion.
If you're really impatient, Google does publish the last five minutes of ping activity for its Blog Search as an XML file.
Should you use the pinging service if you already use Google Sitemaps? Google is a little unclear on this point. If you're a blogging service provider, it's a good idea.

What search operators are supported?
All of the standard Google Search operators are supported in Blog Search. These include:
Link:
Site:
Intitle:
Additionally, Blog Search supports the following new operators of its own:
Inblogtitle:
Inposttitle:
Inpostauthor:
Blogurl:

The Google Blog Search Pinging Service is for bloggers who wish to have their blogs crawled by Google and have them updated in Google Blog Search. It is also for blogging services that wish to provide the service to their blog writers. Google currently monitors other pinging services and will continue to do that. However pinging Google directly will potentially reduce latency when crawling your blogs.

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How to Increase Your Traffic with Web Directories?

A web directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion, and have human editors review submissions for fitness.

A web directory is not a search engine, and does not display web pages based on keywords, instead listing web pages in convenient categories and subcategories. The categorization is usually based on the whole website, not one page or a set of keywords, and there is often a limit of one or two categories for site inclusion.

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth – not all web traffic is welcome.

Increasing Traffic through Web Directories:

• Most directories attract considerable traffic. Surfers access specific categories of interest to them and open websites within the category. By default, the website submitted by you will get “click through traffic.”

• Directories are not search engines; directories do not send out spiders that index individual pages and nothing is added to the directory autonomously. Directories rely on websites being submitted to them; then a team of actual people looks at the site to categorize it and check its quality and relevancy before adding it to the directory in the appropriate categories and sub-categories.

• Web pages in directories are not found using keywords (although some directory sites, like Yahoo! and DMOZ will let you search the directory and Yahoo! also proves directory listings at the top of its search results pages), but by drilling down through relevant categories until they find the category that the site resides in.

• Web traffic can be increased by placement of a site in search engines and purchase of advertising, including bulk e-mail, pop-up ads, in-page advertisements and traffic generators. Web traffic can also be increased by purchasing non-internet based advertising.

• If a web page is not listed in the first pages of any search, the odds of someone finding it diminishes greatly (especially if there is other competition on the first page). Very few people go past the first page, and the percentage that go to subsequent pages is substantially lower. Consequently, getting proper placement on search engines is as important as the web site itself.

• There are a number of other things you can do to increase your web traffic, including but not limited to building link popularity, webrings, offering free e-books or articles and classified advertisements.

One of the best known and biggest directories in existence is probably the Open Directory Project (ODP), sometimes (most times in fact) known as DMOZ. This directory has been around for years and now lists over four million organized and categorized web sites. DMOZ has also been around for a very long time (in web terms). This directory is maintained by a huge number of volunteer editors that add new URLs of submitted sites to the relevant categories.

Many other directories on the Internet take content from the ODP, including Google, so getting your site into it can reap huge benefits as your URL will be shared with many other directories, which means that your site will have many more inbound links and therefore greater link popularity.

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What are eight magical SEO techniques?

I know most of you will be surprised to read the title of this article. Actually this is what search engine optimization is all about. There are a few points which every search engine optimization engineer should remember. Going through this will not only get you a better SERP's ranking but also will increase your Google PR.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to websites. If you rank high in search engines, your website are shown to a huge number of target users. To start with, you have to pick a list of target keywords. Try the overtones keyword tool provided by www.SEOChat.com

1. Submit to as many quality directories, article sites and Press Releases as possible like this site <<>>. While doing so the most important factor to remember is that all these should have a unique content and anchor text. As this is what I am using for several years successfully and which I am promoting as "8 magical SEO Technique

2. Many people do submit articles to various sites and think there job is over. But if you really want your article to make headlines, you should make it as unique as possible like the title above which is "8 magical SEO techniques

3. Getting Link backs: Most SEO's think the more the link backs the better the PR and SERP's which is one of the biggest rumors going around in the world of SEO.

4. Don't place common anchor text on hundred's and thousands of sites as these can be identified by Search engines as link spam or a Black hat technique.

5. Avoid Link Farms: Avoid sites which offer thousands of links instantly by placing a folder on your site. This is one of the worst methods of getting link backs. While submitting to directories, have a close look at the PR and the quality of the back link.

6. Make use of all tags in your pages like title, description, keywords, header 1, header 2, alt of images by focusing on 10 main keywords for optimization.

7. Install a sitemap script for your website if it has thousands of pages and set a corn to update it daily if you wish search engine's to crawl your site regularly. You can find many such scripts on the internet today.

8. The more your websites content is unique the more chances are that it will rank at the top. So place your website content with some unbelievable words like for example - thought provoking content.

What DOES Work?
So after I’ve dashed your dreams, the least I can do is give you some insight into how write SEO copy. I don’t do any or all of these in any particular order. I don’t do them all every time I write. I am NOT saying that you should do all of these things every time you write.

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