13 replies to this topic

[star1]

I have recently employed the services of a publishing company to write news for my niche, they are writing 50 news arctles a month for my site which is delivered via an xml feed to my website. The news is specific to my industry and unique in that it is only writen for my website. I have an RSS feed for this news on my site also and each story aslo comes with social book marking icons in the xml feed.

The goal of this is to provide automated high quality content for the website and to offer something new to my niche that doesnt currently exist to promote stickyness.

I have zero knowledge of how to promote news and RSS feeds.

I have heard of Google news and is it possible to submiit my rss feed to them?

If anyone has any pointers in how I can go about promoting my news and or RSS feeds I would be very gratefull.

Thanks for any replies in advance

Star

[Blogologist]

Google News is not likely to take your content. They are pretty careful about ensuring the "quality" of their sources, meaning that you'd have to prove to them that you were a valid and worthy news agency/source in your own right.

Further to that is the fact that you rarely see blog content in Google News. The blogs that do get published there are few and are the "exceptions" that Google deems to have similar authority and quality to the main news sources like WSJ, the newspapers, etc.

-Alister

[star1]

Hi The quality of the news is very high as it is written buy a publishing house that write news for many blue chip companies sepcific to their sector. I have invested healvily in the service both for seo purposes and to provided my visistors with the latest up to date news about my niche that is not avaiable elsewhere - at least all in one location or source.

[Blogologist]

Then by all means pursue it with Google.

I for one (and I'm sure others here) would be very keen to know what you can sort out with Google News.

If you can get your content on Google News, it opens up all kinds of interesting discussion here about content optimization, traffic generation, traffic levels, etc.

Do please keep me/us up-to-date!

-Alister

[star1]

The company who write their news said that some of the contnet is included but i know nothing about how to promote news or blogs etc but am interested in learning. Each news story comes with social bookmarking icons is there any way i can utilise this?

[ragesw]

Are these articles being posted on a blog or some kind of custom CMS system?

If you are not currently using a blogging system, such as Wordpress, I would suggest you start now. Then, submit your blog to Technorati.com and Google's blog search as well as other blog search engines and blog networks that you are able to find online.

Technorati gives you instructions on how to set up your blog to automatically tell them when your blog has been updated and they will automatically add it to their index. I have also found that blog posts get picked up quicker by some search engines (at least this has been my experience.)

I am not sure what kind of articles that are being written. But, if you would like to get your web site or some of your news included in Google News, the easiest way is to write a press release and send it out via a PR newswire such as prweb.com. For example you can announce your web site, a new resource section on your web site, etc...

One of the best ways to drive traffic to a blog is by talking about other companies, people, products etc... in your industry with links back to these third party blogs/web sites. When these blog owners see traffic from your blog they may link back to you in a similar fashion which can help your blog gain exposure.

[Jill]

For example you can announce your web site, a new resource section on your web site, etc...

Those really aren't "news" so to speak, and probably don't actually need a press release because it's stuff like that which clutters up the press release sites so that actual news doesn't get noticed as easily.

[Randy]

I have to admit I'm still puzzled by the original question. Perhaps if I dissect part of the opening paragraph you can clear up my confusion, star.

I have recently employed the services of a publishing company to write news for my niche, they are writing 50 news arctles a month for my site which is delivered via an xml feed to my website. The news is specific to my industry and unique in that it is only writen for my website. I have an RSS feed for this news on my site also and each story aslo comes with social book marking icons in the xml feed.

First, are they writing News or are they writing Articles? It sounds like they're writing Articles but someone (you? them?) are trying to mask the Articles as News.

Second, they're delivered via an xml feed to your web site? If so, this menas the News/Articles/Whatever (hereafter known as N/A/W) aren't being delivered to you to upload to your web site? If that's the case, you probably don't own the N/A/W, so don't really have the legal capability to change the content or submit it with links to your site. I have to be missing something, because this doesn't sound very good to me. It sounds more like content rental than anything else. What happens if you don't continue to pay them? Do they cut off your XML feed?

Like I said, I'm confused. I'm not at all sure what kind of deal you have with these N/A/W providers. I'm not even sure what they provide. Or what actual legal rights you may or may not have.

[star1]

Ok let me clear your confusion Randy,

The company write industry specific news for my website which is current, they are a news publishing company. The news they write for my site is only for my website and no other and I own the copywrite to this news. It is delivered to my website by an XML feed and is displayed on dynamic pages as static content on my website. According to my developer he has created a database so that even if the XML feed fails I still have the news.

The only reason I have purchased this service is to give my website more content in an automated manner that is unique and industry specific and more importantly make my site "stickier" for the visitors. The agreement I signed states that I own the news / articles. If I stop paying them at the end of our agreement then they just stop writing news but i can continue to display the news that I have on my site. For me it was 50 new pages of automated unique and relavant content that attracted my to it.

I have also just set up a forum on the site as I want to encourage people to stay and talk about the subject matter / niche of my website.

The goal of this site for me is to attract more visitors but quality traffic I dont want traffic for the hell of it, id rather have less traffic of higher quality.

Now my only question is can I use this rss news feed from my site to attract more users by any other channels OR is it purely going to provide my with more content rather than attact more visitors?

For some reason i do not have PM fucntion anymore otherwise i could send you the url to look at.

Thanks for your assistence in advance

Star

[Randy]

Okay, that helps.

I still don't get why they're providing the content as an XML feed, but as long as you're making sure nothing relies totally on that being active you should be okay.

Now my only question is can I use this rss news feed from my site to attract more users by any other channels OR is it purely going to provide my with more content rather than attact more visitors?

My sense is it's going to be more the latter than the former. Places like Google News simply aren't going to pick up the feeds and consider them News. Real News Feeds provide thousands of stories/articles per month, so I rather doubt they're going to include your feed.

However this doesn't necessarily mean that other real News organizations might not pick up on your feed and use it. Or use it as an idea for a story of their own, where they reference your site as a source.

If it were me I wouldn't put much effort into trying to get the feed itself into the search engines directly. I'd instead concentrate on using the feed to get the word out to other places who already have a captive audience. In this way getting the word out to more people who might be interested in what you have to offer. If the search engines pick it up, great! If not, that's okay too since the goal it to get it in front of real people, not just the search engines.

[star1]

Thanks Randy,

I guess the reason they are sending me the news articles on an XML feed is so that the news is automatically added to my site without any work on my behalf - its an automated process - my knowledge here is very minimal so i am not aware of any other methods of doing this but they told me its the best way.

Star

[Randy]

The XML feed bit does make some sense on the automation side of things. My only concern with it was what happens if you stop paying. eg Renting the content rather than actually buying it and retaining your rights as the purchaser/owner.

It seems you have already addressed this issue.

Just make sure you check the content being provided from time to time to make sure they're not sneaking anything into it that you wouldn't want there. I don't want to disparage your provider without cause, however you need to realize that some unscrupulous content providers have been known to use such so-called automation methods to start sneaking things like hidden links and such into the content so that they or someone else gets a link pop gain. It's a horrible thing to say, but you really can't trust anyone fully if they're able to put up content on your site without prior approval of each and every thing they add.

[Jill]

Randy brings up a good point. Do you review and approve each article before it is uploaded to your database and added to the feed? I think that might be something worthwhile for you to do.

[star1]

Randy brings up a good point. Do you review and approve each article before it is uploaded to your database and added to the feed? I think that might be something worthwhile for you to do.

thanks for that info Jill and randy I had not thought of that. I will look into this