Why I Use Bloglines as My Default RSS Reader
Choosing a decent RSS reader to browse and read your favourite RSS feeds was not a straight forward task. I tried and tested many different windows desktop readers but I ended up uninstalling them for one reason or another. Then I found Bloglines and I am pleased to say I have not yet been disappointed with it. The reason I need a decent RSS reader is that I spend a lot of time reading feeds. I run an RSS resource website http://www.newsniche.com/ which means I have to keep up to date with all things RSS. Naturally I have come across many RSS readers but have found them always to be lacking in one thing or another. In my research I came across Bloglines which is a web based reader. It's a shame Bloglines does not have an affiliate program as I would love to promote it, purely because it is such a great tool. Unfortunately for me but fortunately for you this tool is free and everybody loves free internet tools. The main reason I am writing this is because I feel I need to give something back to Bloglines and I also want you to benefit from such a great RSS reader. Lets start by looking at the main benefits of using Bloglines. Firstly it is fast to use. Now usually web based tools are a lot slower than there desktop counterparts, in this case because Bloglines has a cache of feeds because of its large user base the feeds are already on the Bloglines server. With desktop reader you would have to download the feeds when you start up your reader, if you subscribe to a lot of feeds like me then you will end up waiting a long time. As it is a popular web based reader you have the advantage of the social side of RSS. There is a directory of all the feeds it there readers have subscribed to and if the reader chooses to make their list of RSS feeds public you can see what everyone else is reading. Another great spin off from this is the ability to see how many Bloglines users are subscribed to each feed. As you know everything has its down side and Bloglines is no exception. The main negative is that if Bloglines is ever down then you will not be able to access your feeds. Now this is certainly a big potential problem especially if you really heavily on being able to have access to your feeds. Since I have been a user I have as yet not experienced any down time. As a precaution you can export your RSS feed list as an OPML file so you can import into another RSS reader should Bloglines go belly up or experience any serious down time. I am happy to say Bloglines is a tool I would gladly recommend to an RSS user. It is easy to setup, easy to use and it is at the moment totally free. So why not try it, I promise you that you will quickly become addicted and you will be checking your feeds more than your email. Allan is the webmaster at http://www.newsniche.com/ an RSS resource for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.
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Besides, getting clicks from people who read comments, or visits from search engine spiders through your comments, isn't necessarily your direct objective, though it's definitely a plus.
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Or lurk to find out where your target market typically hangs out when they're online ? you'd be surprised at how many inexpensive and targeted advertising sources you can find through this method.
(If you're looking to get linked, there's another way that we'll go over next.)
This tip alone has earned me a few dozen links from prominent blogs in the past four days alone.
These links are worth ten times a reciprocal link because they send targeted traffic from established sources, and come from experts with records of proven results.
You can be sure these kinds of people will check you out before they linked to you, since they may be judged by the quality of the information they share.
The second method to more blog traffic is the most confusing for newer people, and this is probably the reason its benefits remain overlooked.
In the simplest of terms, Trackback is kind of a remote commenting system that incorporates linking. It allows the reader to follow a topic around the web to see other bloggers remark on the same subject. It enables the publisher to remotely cite references to the issue on which they've written.
Once you've made yourself familiar with the blogging community you have entered, you can often pick up the pulse of conversations within your site's theme. Then, when you see issues that you want to expound on, you can send the other site a notification to let them know you cited them on your blog. That link will appear on their site, and often draws visitors to you.
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So why don't more people use Trackback?
One reason is that what is arguably the most popular free blog system, Blogger, doesn't have Trackback. However, Haloscan.com can remedy this with their free service ? it's a cut and paste away.
Many new bloggers don't get what it is and how it differs from commenting. And of course, the dynamics of it are a little more complex than I've stated. But learn to use Trackback properly, and you won't need to beg for links to your site ever again.
It's harder to estimate an exact number of visitors that come as a result of trackback links. But if you posted five days out of seven, and was able to get a trackback link to your site three times a week, by the end of the year you'd have almost 150 topical links back to your site, which are more valued by search engines than a typical link trade with an unrelated site.
The most overlooked source of traffic for a blog is through article submission. To start with, turn your longer posts into articles and submitting them to ezines or directories. Look especially for directories that ask for the direct link to the article on your own site, and input the permanent link to the post on your blog.
Make sure that your Auto-Discovery tag is in place and it can mean hundreds more prospects, links and subscribers.
It's a shame this is the one of the least used traffic methods for most sites, let alone for blogs. In four days, this method generated just over 1000 visitors. 157 newsletter leads, 98 new feed subscribers, and 206 links to my site. You may not get these same results right away, but using these simple strategies can still get you more exposure than you have now.
These aren't normally the highest quality links, as they rarely make sure of anchor text. However, bloggers are citing me using Trackback, sometimes in lieu of linking to the site where they originally found the article.
To see this in action, do a search on "Can A Ping Really Help Your Blog Get Top Search Engine Rankings", the title of an article I submitted earlier this week.
That article was published within a week of this one- the results speak for themselves. Many of these sites aren't the ones where my articles are normally published.
There are, of course, plenty of other ways you can leverage the content in your blog or RSS feed to increase the traffic to your site. The methods outlined here may be a bit outside the norm, but, as you'll soon find, that's part of the reason they are so effective.
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