Shrushti – SEO blog

RSS is one the latest buzzwords flying around the internet, constantly referred to, but hardly ever explained its use. To quickly define, RSS is short for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication. To put it plainly, it is a way of distributing content information (usually blog/news headlines) an an XML format. Do note that RSS is also referred to as RDF (Resource Description Framework).

RSS delivers information as an XML file, and this XML file is called an RSS feed. This feed contains information as designated by the site’s owner. So back on topic, RSS is used to distribute content to whoever wants it. By requesting the appropriate RSS feed, an end user can quickly find out the latest information posted on a website.

An aggregator (also known as a feed reader) accumulates RSS feeds for you, and distributes that information to you as you want. Some require a program to be uploaded, some do daily emails, and others integrate right into your browser.

In the end, RSS is about distributing content quickly and easily. It also increases efficiency – instead of having to visit a site every day, by using RSS, you can automate the process and be notified when an update occurs.

Lets use a few examples to elucidate how RSS works.

Example 1

Your name is Mr. Joe, and you are a fan of five different blogs. You also end up wasting a lot of time visiting these blogs. So you turn to an RSS feed aggregator, and add their RSS feeds. Now, once a day (or however often you want), the reader will check the RSS feeds for each site, and notify you when there is an update.

Example 2

Your name is Mr. Joe, and you live in Britain. You have a little website, and would like to have the latest sporting news on your website. You of course do not have time, so you turn to BBC, and use their sports RSS feed to incorporate sports news into your website.
In order to make life easier for you, each blog entry includes quick links to RSS subscriptions for the most popular tools. This way, while browsing our directory, you can simply click and easily subscribe to a feed.

What are dynamic websites?

Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when a user triggers an action through that particular page.

Here is what Google says about indexing dynamic websites

Reasons your site may not be included: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index.

(Source – http://www.google.com/webmasters/)

What are the problems that search engines face in indexing dynamic URLs?

1. Search engines often consider a dynamic URL an infinite set of links.
2. Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session ID to a particular page in the site. As session IDs of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a Herculean task for them.
3. Indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines from showing the most relevant information in the fastest possible time.

What are the options to make a search engine index your dynamic URLs?

1. A static page linked to an array of dynamic pages
   1. Place links to the dynamic pages on the static pages, effectively submitting the static pages to the major search engines manually and according to each search engine’s recommended guidelines.
   2. This technique is easily implemented with a site map that fully displays all the links to the dynamic pages across the web site.
2. Use software – Change the dynamic URLs to static ones with the help of various software’s.
3. Use CGI/Perl scripts – Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information). In order to fix this problem, you’ll need to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable. You can then use this variable in your URL address.
4. Re-configuring your web server – Your web server enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index.
5. Optimize this static page for search engine rankings – Include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate “alt” tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business. Submit this static page along with all the dynamic pages in various search engines, conforming to the search engine submission guidelines.

The term “search engine” refers to a software program that searches the Web and Usenet groups to find documents containing one or more specified keywords, and returns a list of documents in which the keywords were found.

Broad-based search engines such as Google or Yahoo fetch very large numbers of documents using a Web crawler. Another program called an indexer then reads these documents and creates a search index based on words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its indexes so that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each query.

We see from the study above that horizontal search can’t always do the job. Clearly this is what is driving the quietly exploding vertical search revolution.

But what really is the limitation? The problem is that search engines often do not know what you want based on your search query. For example if you type in “diabetes”, the search engine does not know if you are a doctor looking for research data, or a patient looking for treatment information or tips on managing the disease. Slly, say a dentist is looking for information on ceramics, a common material used in dental work. If the dentist performs a Google search on the keyword “ceramics”, Google will serve up millions of results, but most of the entries on the first few pages will concern hobbies like pottery. On the other hand, if the dentist performs the same search on a Vertical Search Engine, it will return much more relevant results.

Search engines are trying a number of initiatives to address this problem, such as search query refinements that allow users to focus their searches more quickly, such as Yahoo Shortcuts or the Google Onebox. However, these refinements are not entirely scalable, as it requires human editorial input for each query to make them accurate.

Vertical search engines address this problem by allowing the custom design of search engines for a specific purpose. The human input is built in from the beginning, and is provided by motivated people who are not on the payroll of the vertical search engine platform provider. If you decide to use a search engine which says it’s a “health information search engine for doctors”, instead of one that is labeled a “health information search engine for patients”, you have already helped to reduce the ambiguity of your search queries even before you type in your query.

In addition, traditional horizontal search engines cannot always determine the target audience of a page or site. Vertical search engines naturally address this issue, because the sites included in the results have been selected according to more specific criteria, and perhaps even by human input.

So what does this mean for the world of search engine marketing?

Traditional SEO link building will get you nowhere for any custom search engine built on the vertical search platforms, because they rely on humans to decide which sites to include. Among the many vertical search engine start-ups that do not use one of these vertical search platforms, there are some that do their own crawls of the Web. Traditional SEO should help here, although the nature of the algorithms they use will vary from engine to engine, and may not be at all link-based.

Vertical search engines that match up with your business will most likely offer you a higher conversion rate than a horizontal search engine, since users will have implicitly self-selected themselves as interested in your vertical. PPC campaigns with these search engines should fare better as well. It should prove worth the effort to seek these vertical engines out, and develop a relationship with each one individually.

Advertisers on vertical sites are able to reach potential customers who are much closer to making a purchase decision than the average user on Google or Yahoo.