There is no doubt - Yahoo's Slurp loves Blogs!

I've received some feedback on my blog post Can RSS get me listed in Yahoo for free?.

In the feedback this webmaster, Claire, mentioned that she

• only set up a blog similar to this one,


• did NOT have a RSS feed on her web site and


• the blog contained links to different web site pages.

These web site pages were all quickly spidered and indexed by Slurp.

Now this is VERY SIGNIFICANT! ... and worth shouting about.

I thought is was my RSS feed on my web site that got my web site spidered and indexed by Yahoo in less than 48 hours.

This feedback says that it was a blog, (hosted off site like this one) with links to specific pages on her web site, that got those pages spidered and indexed.

Let's interpret these results:

• This says that one does not need a RSS feed on one's web site to get quickly spidered and indexed by Yahoo.



• Any one, without any technical knowledge of creating a XML file for feeds for their web sites, can start a blog with links to specific pages on their web site, get visited by slurp (Yahoo's spider) and not only the blog gets listed(interesting but not primarily what this is about) but also all the web pages linked to in one's blog are listed! (which is what everyone wants)

So, guys and girls who would love to have slurp visit and do its stuff - what are you waiting for?

Start blogging!

Regards

P.S. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the RSS feed on one's site is not important. This is great for generating traffic. But to get into Yahoo (and b.t.w. Inktomi, MSN, Fast and Altavista) one needs a blog with links to one's site.

What is the orange "XML" or "RSS" icon I see on many websites?

This question does not have a one sentence answer! If I just said that one uses this XML icon to get this site's RSS feed, you still won't understand. So let's try and answer this question in such a way that it all makes sense to you and, more importantly, that you learn how to benefit from it.

Let's say that you like my web site or this blog very much and you would like to read new content as I add it. At this stage there is no way of informing you when I've added a new page except for you checking back regularly. The other way is for you to bookmark my site or blog - but how many times do people really go back to a site?

What if I told you that you could have a little "window" (called a reader or an aggregator) on your monitor and that, each time I updated my site, you are automatically informed about it.

How, you may ask? A headline (called a news feed) and a short summary to inform/tease you is squirted to your reader. If the teaser interests you, all you need to do is follow the hyperlink that will take you to that page on my web site where you can read it all. If you're not interested, you simply delete the headline. The process is repeated each time I add new content.

You can of course subscribe to as many XML feeds as you want to - from current affairs to people's personal blogs like this one.

So, what must you do to set it up and how much is it going to cost?

Let's answer the second question first: Setting it up is FREE - it will cost you nothing.

This is how to setup a reader or an aggregator on a Windows system:

Download Microsoft's .NET framework Install this on you system.

Download RSSReader from here: http://www.rssreader.com/ Install this on you system.

You are now ready to add your first feed.

This is the feed to my web site http://www.perfect-party-ideas.com
Right-click on the orange XML icon. Click the "Copy Shortcut" option.

Open the RSSReader and click on the green "+ Add" icon in the top left hand corner.

A form opens up that prompts you to enter the URL of the feed. Just paste the URL here (ctrl-v).

Well done - you've just added your very first RSS feed.

Let's test if it is working.

Click the "Get" icon which is to the left of the "+Add" icon. You should see a number of feeds arriving in your reader. Simply double-click the ones you are interested in to read the summary. Click the "Read more" or "Open in a Browser" links if you want to read the whole article.

Was it that difficult? No, I agree, it's fairly straight forward.

Now you are ready to sign up for more feeds. Why not sign up for my blog's feed as well? Just copy and paste this URL exactly as you did the previous one:

http://perfect-party-ideas.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Congratulations - you have entered the exciting world of RSS!

Automating Article Submission

I've manually submitted my article to a few article sites - what a PAIN! Working through my long list of article submission sites
is going to take me ages!

So, I've done a bit of searching and I've found this great tool. This gives me access to a database of 1372 ezine publishers in 50 different categories. It's as simple as pressing "Send" and my article is blasted in 60 seconds (or less) to these ezine publishers. What a pleasure - I suggest you give this a try!

Strategies for generating traffic

I'm revisiting my to-do list for January 2005:

• Set up a RSS feed on www.perfect-party-ideas.com Done and working!
• Research the 10 most popular themes for kids' parties and write the pages including all my affiliate links. I'm thinking about it but can't show anything yet
• Prepare to submit to the PPC search engines. Not even thinking about it
• Build traffic This is what I would like to discuss in this post

I checked http://www.perfect-party-ideas.com 's rankings today:

Google	>30
Fast	7
Ask Jeeves	>30
AltaVista	7
Inktomi	7
Yahoo Search	7
MSN	12

Not to bad for less than an hour's work. Read here how I've done it.

Google's >30 is much worse than what it looks - It's actually +- 650!!

The next step is to improve my rankings on Google to The Party Works and I'm very greatfull for it, but that is not enough.

Surely there is something I can do to get links?

Well, there is and I'm about to try it out.

Submitting an article that I've written to article submission web sites.

Submission is free and any one can copy the article (with all its links in tact) and publish this on their web sites and/or ezines. Each time my article is published I have a link from that web site to my web site. When the (foreign) web site gets spidered, my link is followed by the spider back to my web site. The Google spider loves these links and the more links I have that are published on other web sites, the higher my web site will rank.

This will take a little longer than the "less than 48 hours to become number 7 on Yahoo" but it is the only way with Google. And Google is important enough to spend the effort and energy to set this up.

Here is a list of article submission sites:

http://www.aracontent.com/
http://articleresponder.com/
http://businessknowhow.com/newsletter/articleguidelines.htm
http://cerebuswebmaster.com/onsite/articles/submit_article.html
http://freezinesite.com/articles.cgi?action=add
http://goarticles.com/ulogin.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aageneral/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aainet/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublish/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublisher
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/articles4you2use4promotion/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/articlesubmission/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/articles_archives/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/article_announce
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/article_announce_list/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/epub
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ezinezone
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Content/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Reprint-Articles
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freeezinearticles
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freelance_promotion/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeWrites
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freezinecontent
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free_eContent/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hersmallbusiness
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/I_Need_Content/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/netwrite-publish-announce
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PromoteYourArticle/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/publisher_network
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qc_reprint_articles
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReprintArticles-Paradise
http://opportunityupdate.com/articles
http://www.theallineed.com/submit-articles.htm
http://thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/suggest.asp
http://top7business.com/submit/
http://www.1st-in-articles.com/
http://www.addme.com/nlsubmit.htm
http://www.advertisingknowhow.com/
http://www.allnetarticles.com/
http://www.amazines.com/
http://www.aracontent.com/
http://www.articlecentral.com/
http://www.articlecity.com/
http://www.articlecity.com/article_submission.shtml
http://www.articlehub.com/
http://www.articles911.com/
http://www.articletrades.com/
http://www.articlewarehouse.com/
http://www.authorconnection.com/
http://www.boconline.com/sub-art.htm
http://www.business-dynamics.com/resource_library/index.html
http://www.businesstoolchest.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.bytesworth.com/articles
http://www.cerebuswebmaster.com/onsite/articles.html
http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.clickforcontent.com/
http://www.clickforcontent.com/cgi-bin/epro/print.pl
http://www.clickz.com/
http://www.connectionteam.com/
http://www.connectionteam.com/submit.html
http://www.digital-women.com/submitarticle.htm
http://www.dime-co.com/articlesub.html
http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.expertarticles.com/
http://www.ezine-writer.com.au/
http://www.ezinearticles.com/
http://www.ezinetrendz.com/
http://www.family-content.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/submit.asp
http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/submitarticle.asp
http://www.goarticles.com/
http://www.hitsnclicks.com/contributors
http://www.holisticjunction.com/
http://www.home-business-directory.com/addarticle.htm
http://www.howtoadvice.com/Submit
http://www.ideamarketers.com/
http://www.ideamarketers.com/writers.cfm
http://www.learningfolder.com/submitarticle.aspx
http://www.linksnoop.com/
http://www.mailbiz.com/
http://www.makingprofit.com/
http://www.marcommwise.com/
http://www.marketing-seek.com/
http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.mastersyndicator.com/
http://www.maxebook.com/
http://www.netterweb.com/articles
http://www.netterweb.com/articles/articlesubmit.htm
http://www.opportunityupdate.com/doorwaytosubmit.html
http://www.parentclicks.com/
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/termsofuse/articlesubmission.htm
http://www.profitpage.com/articles.htm
http://www.readycontent.com/
http://www.selfgrowth.com/
http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
http://www.submityourarticle.com/
http://www.theallineed.com/submit-articles.htm
http://www.thephantomwriters.com/
http://www.top7business.com/
http://www.topica.com/lists/freeezinecontent
http://www.upromote.com/newsletter/submit.html
http://www.vectorcentral.com/
http://www.vectorcentral.com/articles-form.html
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
http://www.webmasterarticles.net/
http://www.webmasterslibrary.com/submit.shtml
http://www.womans-net.com/
http://www.work911.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.zinos.com/cool/zinos/submitarticle.html
http://www.zongoo.com/

What a long list I've got - I'm sure there is software that will do the submission for me? Any body out there got any ideas?

Kind Regards

Anne-Marie Killer
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