Using Your RSS Feed to Drive Traffic Back to Your Site
I’m sitting here realizing that there are a number of blogs out there that have repurposed content from one of my blogs on their site. Without asking my permission and without giving proper credit.
In most circles, this would constitute some serious plagiarism charges and would make most people really mad.
But not me, and it shouldn’t really bother you, as long as you’re taking the right steps to combat the content scraping menace.
Why, o fearless reader, do I not fret when someone reuses my content on their own blogs, surrounding said content with Adsense ads and affiliate links?
Because I’ve got my own links in my feed.
Suddenly, it’s no longer an issue of content scraping. Now, I have someone else providing links back to my blog, or a product, or one of my own affiliate links.
Do you think I really care that they are reusing my content without my permission?
Nope. Nada. Zilch.
They’re promoting whatever I’m promoting and I’m not having to lift a finger to do it. It’s just like having a great bio box in an article that you submit to any of the major article directories. If people want to use the article, they have to include the bio box.
If people want to scrape my RSS feeds, then they’re going to have to take all the links to the best computer podcast and my Internet Marketing and Podcasting blog, which you just happen to be reading right now.
So go ahead, all you content scrapers and swindlers. Reuse my content. Give me some more links back to my stuff. I don’t care.
We’ll both get some benefit out of the deal. I’ll just be the one that sleeps better at night.
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Five Free and Easy Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
There’s a lot of talk online these days about writing great content. And I’m totally 100% in agreement that if you’re not creating good content for your sites, person or business, stop wasting your time and move on to something else. Great content compels people to action and you need it on your site to grow and accomplish your goals.
But if no one sees all of your great content, does it really matter?
If you have no traffic to your website, is your content really that great?
Yes, your content is that great, but the Internet is not a “build it and they will come” type of environment. If it were, we all would have gotten very rich a long time ago and I probably wouldn’t have to sit down and write out this article for you.
But, since we have to drive traffic to our sites and since “drive” is one of those terrible, horrible words we affectionately refer to as “verbs” (you know, the ones that generally indicate that you have to do something), we’ve got to get off our rear ends and do something to get more traffic.
Otherwise, you can take that great content and stick it in a barrel, no one will ever know it exists.
5 Ways to Get Traffic to your Website
At this point, there’s only about 365 million ways that you can get traffic to your site, but I’m only going to cover five with you right now. All of these methods have a proven track record and are completely free. Well, they don’t cost any money, just some of your time and hard work.
(Yes, you still have to work to make money online, contrary to what the last five messages in your inbox just told you.)
1. Optimize Your Website for Search Engines. I’m no SEO expert and please don’t take this short little blurb as the definitve guide to SEO. There’s many more people far better able to tell you the ins and outs of SEO, but let’s just get some of the basics down. You want your site optimized for the search engines because search engine traffic is always and forever FREE. Give your web pages or blog posts descriptive titles that contain the keywords you want to target. If you want people to find your page when they search for “New York City defense attorney”, make sure those words are in your page title. Include those keywords throughout your article, but don’t make it sound silly. And make sure that when someone links to your site that they use your keywords in their link to your site. That one tip will help you get better search engine results and more free traffic.
To get more in-depth knowledge on search engine optimization, stop what you’re doing right now and go pick up a copy of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. Aaron is a great copywriter and knows his stuff about SEO. The best part is, you get updates for life when you buy the book as SEO techniques change all the time. Go now and get your copy, then come back here and finish reading. I promise I’ll still be here when you come back.
2. Exchange links with other websites. Now, before you get all goofy, don’t go and get yourself wrapped up in one of those “link farms” that charge you a fee to link back to your site. Not good and you’ll get penalized for it. Find some other websites that are similar to yours or are related and ask for a link exchange. Just make sure you follow through on your end and put a link back to their site.
You also need to work on getting backlinks to your site from other sites. The more sites you have linking to you, the better your search engine rankings will be. Again, stay away from the “link farms” and get some help from Michelle MacPhearson and her 30 Minute Backlinks video tutorials.
3. Look for Joint Ventures. Joint ventures can be very powerful if done in the right way. Give your partners some really good reasons why they should promote your site. By providing them with the right promotional tools such as e-mails, signatures, articles, etc., he/she would no doubt accept your request. To ensure that your website gets better results, look for website owners that have the capability of sending a lot of traffic to you.
4. Join online groups, forums, etc. that could help you with promoting your website. For example, you may post your sites URL in your signature file for the users to see. So you can be a known member by the discussion groups you join, simply participate in discussions that interest you and contribute your knowledge and expertise to the rest of the members.
5. Get a free blog. Blogging is another free method that generates traffic to your website. Post some high-quality information regularly and don’t forget to ping all your posts as it can help in driving traffic to your website. You can sign up for a free blog at Wordpress.com or Blogger.com.
Now, this list is not exhaustive by any means. But it’s something to get you started. Whether you’re wanting to drive traffic to your personal site or your business site, these tips will get you on the right track. But they will don nothing for you if you don’t take action! Get started today and start seeing more traffic come to your website, see more clicks, and see more money coming to you!
Popularity: 3% [?]
Live creation of Home Theater PC Search Page on Mahalo.com
OK, gang. I’ve just seen one of the greatest collaborative efforts I’ve ever been a part of. Jason Calacanis of Mahalo.com just got a bunch of people to create a search results page for Home Theater PC. No spam, no junk, just good people working together to make a great search results page.
The great thing is, you can do the same thing. Anyone can create a search page on Mahalo.
I’m definitely going to make use of this more often.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Apple trying to sneak Safari onto Windows boxes - it’s for your own good
Hey, how are ya? If this is your first time here, welcome! You might want to think about subscribing to our RSS feed to get the latest updates, or you can even follow me on Twitter. I’ll even follow you back, I think that’s the very least I can do!
For those of you in the barren wastelands of Windows World, please take heed. If you’ve got either iTunes or Quicktime on your system, you should be getting some sort of notice from your software update that you’ve got another piece of software to download. And that software is Safari.Full disclosure time: I’m a Mac guy. I bought my first Mac two years ago and haven’t looked back. I’m actually going full out in a few days as I bequeath my last remaining HP desktop to my little brother before I move into my new place. Then I’m done with Windows, I miss nothing and I regret nothing.
Some folks are saying that what Apple is doing with this latest software update borders on spyware-like infiltration. Others say it’s just plain wrong.
I disagree. Apple has to do something to get more Windows users to switch. They first gave them the majesty of Quicktime. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. Then, along came iTunes. With this little piece of wonderment (and a little help from the iPod), some more folks crossed over into the promised land and bought a Mac. Thankfully by this time OS X was there to greet them and a fun time was had by all that joined.
But there’s still a few of you Windows knuckleheads that haven’t figured it out yet. Apple probably thought that Vista would be enough of a disaster to make you switch without having to put forth any extra effort, but no. You refuse to see the truth that lies before you.
You still want to stick with Windows. So, Apple has no choice. They have to shove one more piece of software down your throat to make you see the error of your ways and show you the light.
I only have one question…
Why the hell did they choose Safari to be said piece of software? I mean, C’mon! Why couldn’t they have ported Keynote or Pages over to Windows? Did it really have to be Safari? The crappiest web browser on the planet?
Sorry, Windows peasants. The overlords have chosen poorly with this one. Next time we decide to install software on your computers without really telling you what we’re doing, we’ll try to make it something worthwhile. My apologies from everyone here in magic Apple Land for trying to deceive you. We’ll do better next time.
Or, we could just give you TextEdit.
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Join the PikeMall Tech Community - however you like
Just a quick note to any new readers out there to let you know the many ways that you can get involved in the community here at PikeMall Tech and with 42 Media in general. You pick the options, I’ll give you as many as I possibly can.
1. Hop on over to the PikeMall Tech fan page at Facebook
2. Follow me on Twitter and now on FriendFeed. You’ll get all kinds of stuff here, including website updates and what music I’m listening to as I’m working.
3. Join the PikeMall Tech community at MyBlogLog or the neighborhood at BlogCatalog.
I’ll update this list periodically to give everyone more options to join our community.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Convert web pages, RSS feeds, Office docs and more to MP3
ReadTheWords.com is a service that allows you to convert web pages, Office docs, and even RSS feeds to MP3 files. I’ve heard of other services that are available on line that will convert your files to audio, but I’ve never been too impressed with any of them. I even get a little annoyed with my voice choices on my Mac and that group is just about the best I’ve ever heard.
I’ve always been concerned about the quality of the voice being produced by the reader. I know that a computer is going to be generating the voice, which is pretty much always a detriment to the audio quality. It’s very hard to produce an audio from a text reader that someone can’t just listen to and say, "Yep, that was a computer."
After just spending a few minutes over at the ReadTheWords website, I’m pretty impressed with the voices that they’ve put together. There’s a fairly wide variety, with several US male and female voices, along with some international flavor including French and Spanish speakers.
ReadTheWords is primarily designed for people with disablilties, providing a way that they can have access to information that at this point is better than any service I’ve heard before. And it’s free.
The service is easy enough to use. After signing up for a free account, you can create your first 
reading. You select what type of input you want to record, be it a text file, document, web page, or RSS feed. Choose your voice from the available list, decide whether or not you want the recording to be public, and click "Read".
I tried the service out using the RSS feed from this site (which you might want to subscribe to yourself) and overall, I was impressed. I don’t really recommend that you use a RSS feed as the input unless you really have to. The reader doesn’t just read the post, but all the information in the feed. Things like blog title, links at the top of the page, and any other text information in the RSS feed are automatically converted. And some words are not in the vocabulary of our new found speaking friends, like "iPhone".
Try out some of your documents or a web page with ReadTheWords.com and let me know how your experience was.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Charlie Rose bashes face to save MacBook Air
OK, I’ve officially got to start watching Charlie Rose on a regular basis. I’ve watched some bits and pieces of his interview show over the years, but have never been dedicated enough to the cause to sit down and watch full shows.
That ends today.
Apparently, Mr. Rose is quite the fan of his gadgets. That wonderfully large black eye and bandaged head are compliments of a meetup between poor Charlie and a stretch of pavement. Mr. Rose decided to sacrifice his mug in order to spare his MacBook Air from smashing into the pavement after taking a misstep through a pothole in Manhattan.
Apparently, his face didn’t fare nearly as well as the MacBook Air.
That’s some serious gadget love right there, people. 2 points for Charlie Rose in my book. Gotta start watching more of that show.
Tags: charlie rose, macbook air, black eye
Popularity: 13% [?]
Breaking News: AOL buys Bebo for $850 million
So I wake up this morning and Twitter is all a-twitter with the news that AOL has purchased social media site Bebo for the nice sum of $850 million. Wish I had that kind of money lying around…
AOL, the online arm of mighty Time Warner, has paid a little more than $20 per user (Bebo has roughly 40 million) for the right to throw some more advertising in their faces. Randy Falco, AOL CEO says,
What drew us to Bebo was its substantial and fast-growing worldwide user-base, its vision of a truly social web, and the monetization opportunities that leverage Platform-A across our combined global audience. This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.
OK, cool. I understand the raw power of having access to over 40 million people that spend around 40 minutes of their day at Bebo. That’s really a staggering number and shows the sticking power of a good social networking site. Just how many hours a day do you spend watching videos on YouTube or playing some silly quiz on Facebook? I will only admit to 15 minutes, although it’s much more than that.
So how will this affect Bebo? I’m not sure as I can’t make a judgement call on a site that I’ve never really spent much time at. But folks in Europe will soon be able to tell us how AOL is screwing up this company like they have so many others. Bebo is very popular on the other side of the pond and I’m fairly sure that if the suckage level gets too high, we’ll hear the shouts here on the Western hemisphere.
Photo credit: Business Wire
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Unleashing my little brother on the world…
OK, so there’s no tech news or commentary in this, other than to say check out bitstrips.com. Way too much fun. You’ve already seen a short comic I did, now it’s time for me to feature my little brother who just happens to be a great deal funnier than me.
Hang on to your pants, this might get good…
Popularity: 10% [?]
100,000 iPhone Developers competing for your hard-earned cash
Apple has announced that over 100,000 people downloaded the iPhone SDK in the first four days of release. I knew the numbers were going to be incredible, since it took me nearly 8 hours after the announcement just to be able to reach the download page, and then I still had trouble downloading the SDK.
Amazing.
And at first glance, it seems that gaming companies are going to comprise the bulk of the first apps available in the App Store for the iPhone. We’ve already seen companies like Sega and Electronic Arts showing off their wares at the SDK announcement event last Tuesday, but now some other folks have announced their initial offerings.
Namco states that they are working on iPhone versions of Pac-Man and Galaga. (Yes, I’m already drooling over Galaga, quite possibly the greatest video game ever invented. If I can have it on my iPhone, I won’t have to buy the full-size arcade game. My fiancee will be happy to know this.)
Not to be left out in the cold, PopCap has announced that they’re working on iPhone versions of Zuma and the immensely popular Bejeweled. Now if we can get someone to get Tetris on the iPhone…
I’m wondering if any of the WordPress folks were paying attention when Six Apart announced that they will have a native iPhone interface for TypePad users. My first blog was hosted on TypePad, but I’ve since moved on to WordPress on all my sites. I’d love to see someone create a useful interface for WordPress on the iPhone, true blogging on the go. Sure would make my time much more productive.
Best of luck to everyone working on apps for the iPhone and sending in applications to the iFund. If you’re a new company and you want to talk about what you’re working one, we’d love to have you on iPhone Developer Radio when we launch. We’ll be taking interviews soon for a launch in early May. Might even have a few “beta” episodes out before then. If you’d like to be on, head over to our contact page and drop me a line. We’re building up a list of interviews and sponsors as we speak. Check back at iPhone Developer Radio soon for our launch.
With possibly 100,000 developers already onboard, Apple has definitely made a great start at turning the iPhone into a platform and not just a product. Are we seeing the beginning of the end for the notebook computer? Not sure, but we’ll have to wait and see.
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