Today we’re lucky enough to have another Guest Blog by Alison Cross from AlisonCross4Webs.co.uk. Its all about getting more from websites by using RSS.

What is RSS?

You may have noticed a little orange radio symbol on your journeys through the various plains and jungles of the internet. Usually on a blog or news site it winks at you from the corner of the page, inviting you to click it.

But what is it?

It’s an RSS feed link, that’s what it is.

‘What in the tarnation is RSS?’ I hear you ask! Truthfully, I didn’t actually know what RSS stood for, but I am reliably informed that it’s short for ‘really simple syndication’. And it is just that - a really simple way to share information.

Let’s look at a normal working day. Do you log on in the morning and visit your usual sites - perhaps the BBC for news, maybe WebEden’s blog to see what Ken’s telling us about today, maybe a couple of sites to do with your business? Twitter?!

What often happens is that you go out looking for those new links. With RSS, you tell the sites to send the new stuff in to you.

Sounds Good! So how do I use RSS?

What you need to get your hands on first of all is an RSS Reader.  This acts as your central gathering point for the RSS information that you want to read.

It will not surprise you in the least that I’m about to point you in the direction of the Google Reader. You can sign up to Google Reader here. You’ll need a Google account for this, which you will already have if you use their Analytics or Webmaster Tools. There are load of alternative RSS readers – just search for ‘RSS Reader’ on Google.

Google Reader

Once you’ve activated your Google Reader, you can add feeds to it in two ways.

The first way is within Reader itself. In the top left hand corner of the Reader screen you’ll see a box that allows you to add a new subscription. Here’s what it looks like:

You can either type in the actual URL of the website you want to subscribe to, or you can type in a search term and browse about until you find one that you really like the look of and then subscribe.

The second way is to click on that little orange radio button (like the image at the top of this post) while you are on the site that you want to subscribe too.

When you click on that button, you’ll probably find that you are offered several Reader subscription buttons - and Google is usually one of them. Click on that feed button and next time you log in to your Reader page, there will be the fascinating feed!

Get a Bundle

Subscribing to RSS feeds can save you a lot of time. In fact, Google has even bundled together lots of different RSS feeds for people who haven’t got time to go hunting for relevant feeds.

As of today’s date, there are 449 different bundles available to you - from news feeds..coffee ..crochet…surfing…yoga…everything! If you can’t find a bundle that interests you, why not create a bundle of YOUR niche favourites and submit them to Google for other people to subscribe to?!

Finally

Why you should use RSS? Because it brings your internet world to YOU, you don’t need to go rootling about to find it and best of all, you’ll never miss an update from your favourite site again.

About Alison Cross
Alison Cross lives on the Isle of Bute where she has built over a dozen websites using our software. She also helps people use Twitter to market their business. For more info or advice about social media or web design, visit her website alisoncross4webs.co.uk.

A few weeks ago we blogged about how to put your business on the map with a Google Local Business listing. This is a great way to make sure that you appear when people search for your sort of business or service in Google local or Google Maps.

Google has just enhanced the local business listings so that you can now get great statistics about how many people view your listing, and how they found it.

To recap, once you’ve signed up to Google local business listings, this is what your listing looks like:

People can find these listings by doing a search on Google.co.uk or in Google Maps. Once they find your listing they can click on it to see your details, reach customer reviews, and get discount coupons . They can also get directions to your location.

All good so far.

But what would be really useful for you is to know how the people looking at your listing found it. Did they search for ‘taxi in edinburgh’ or ‘i want to go to the airport’ to find your taxi company listing? And if you do some advertising in the local paper, do you find more people searching for and finding your listing?

If you knew the answer to these and other similar questions, you’d be able to make better decisions about how to send more traffic to your listing, and what sort of information to include on it. And that, ultimately will lead to more customers.

Well now you can do just that thanks to a new feature that Google have launched in the local business center. They’re calling it a ‘dashboard’.

All you need to do is claim your listing and go through the verification process.

This is the kind of information that the dashboard will give you:

•    Impressions: The number of times your business listing appeared in the SERPs on  Google.co.uk or Google Maps search in a given period.
•    Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.
•    Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing. Was it ‘taxi in edinburgh’ or ‘fastest way to the airport’?

You also get access to a load of lists, maps and graphs which displays your data. Here’s what it looks like:

All the stats will get updated every day.

Those of you who are familiar with Google Analytics will recognise these graphs – they’re very similar. If you don’t know about Google Analytics, its a free tool from Google that lets you see exactly where your website visitors are coming from them and what they’re looking at on your website. Here’s a video tutorial on how to set up Google analytics for your WebEden website.

To find out more about accessing using the dashboard, take a look at the video below and then visit Google’s Lat Long Blog for a more in-depth overview.

Some of you might have noticed a logo on the left hand side of the blog that looks like this:

This means that we have offset the carbon emissions produced by the website WebEden.co.uk.

Its a little known fact, but PCs and web servers consume a vast amount of energy. Whilst your own PC uses plenty of electricity, all websites sit on servers in datacentres. Each server is basically a computer that is on all the time. And a data center is a vast room full of servers, which requires huge levels of air conditioning, due to the heat created by the servers.

All these factors combine to make sure that each website consumes a not inconsiderable amount of electricity. And of course where there is electricity consumption, there are carbon and CO2 emissions.

Most recent estimates are than a single server produces over 2 tonnes of CO2 every year. When you consider that the average UK household produces 5.5 tonnes, you can see the size of the problem. In all, the Internet is thought to consume 5% of the entire world’s electricity.

So we decided to offset the carbon emissions of WebEden.co.uk through the COCO2.org service. For a small annual fee, you can offset the emissions from your website. This means you get a nice COCO2.org logo to put on your website, which shows your visitors how green you are. In addition, you get a listing in the COCO2.org directory of carbon neutral websites.

The great thing about the directory is that you get a link to your website from a highly authoritative website, in a category that’s relevant to you. And as anyone who has read the link building chapter of our Search Engine Optimisation Guide will know, that can really boost your website up the Search Engine Results Page.

So how do you sign up to COCO2?

1.    Follow this link to start to offset your carbon emissions.
2.    Click on the ‘make my website carbon neutral’ link on the right hand side.
3.    Fill out the form about you and your website. At the bottom of the page you get the option to choose, shared, VPS or dedicated server. It looks like this:

Choose Shared.

4.    Pay using your credit or bank card.
5.    When filling out your entry in the directory of carbon neutral websites, be sure to concisely describe your business or website. Not only will this help boost you up the SERPs, but its also useful for people browsing the directory looking for carbon neutral websites.
6.    At the end of all this, you get a access to the logo to put on your website. You’ll need to use the HTML widget to display this logo accurately.

And that’s it! Good luck offsetting your website’s carbon emissions. And let us know if you have any problems.

Ever since we started selling domain names, the most common support queries we have concern setting up email services on a domain name. WebEden gives away 5 free email addresses with every domain, which means you can send and receive email with your own personalised website address. You can access the email service either through webmail or using a desktop client such as Outlook.

For those who prefer written instruction, please see our earlier posts.

This is how you set up your first email address.

This is how to set up your webmail.

And this is how to set up your email using a desktop client such as Outlook.

For those who prefer a video tutorial, check this:

Let us know if you have any problems

We’ve talked a lot about Search engine optimisation here on this blog. Boosting your website’s rank in the Search Engine Results Page is an important way to increase relevant traffic to your website.

But what about your own personal profile? It’s not widely appreciated, but ‘people search’ – searching for people online – makes up a large amount of search queries on all the major search engines.

This is another opportunity for Search Engine Optimisation. If you’re well known, or even moderately known – in your industry, your local area, or your business, then people may well be searching for you rather than your business.

But if they search for you, will they actually find you? The thing is, unless you’re called Zaphod Beeblebrox, the chances are that you share your name with a few other people.

Worse case scenario? Lets say your name is John Smith. Here’s what happens when I search for John Smith.

Am I looking for the Book Shop, the Beer, the Folk singer, the Admiral or the Politician?

So how do you make sure that people who are looking for you are able to find you?

Enter stage left: ‘Google profiles’. Google profile is a single web page created and edited by yourself that includes information about who you are and what you do.

To set up a Google profile page for yourself, you will need a Google account, which you can sign up for here. Once you’ve got one of those, click ‘create a profile on the upper left hand side. You can now start creating and editing your personal information.

You can include personal information such as a short biography; your interests; links to your social profiles on place such as Twitter and Facebook; facts about yourself; and even a few photos. Your profile also offers a way for people to contact you without giving out your email address.

If you want to use your Google profile to help people find your website, then it’s important to include links to your website. It is of course an opportunity to promote your website too.

Once you’re happy with your listing, hit save. It should look somthing like this:

It will take a couple of weeks for Google to index your Google profile page, but once it does so you should see it appearing in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) when you search using your name.

Since it is Google itself who are providing this service, you can expect a ‘Google’ profile page to appear high up the SERPs. So unless you share your name with a celebrity of other high profile industry veteran, you can make sure that people searching for you will always be able to find you.

Set up a Google profile, use it to promote you Sitebuilder website, and leave your comments below!

Having done a few tutorials of a really complex nature, its back to basics this week. This tutorial shows you how to extend your page length. It might seem quite simple using our website creator, but you’d be surprised how frequently we’re asked how to do it. Have a watch:

Let us know if you have any problems.

Lots of you have grabbed to new social networking features of the WebEden Website making system with both hands. Last week we showed you how to send out membership invitations to your website. This time around we show you send updates from your WebEden website to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This really is exciting stuff!

How did you get on? Leave us a comment below

Judging from your feedback, our new update that turns your WebEden website into social media hub has been a big hit. We’ve tried to explain why its good to create members to your website, and lots of you are taking full advantage. Our previous tutorial showed you how to add members to your website. This time around we’re looking at how to send membership invitations to people.

Follow the tutorial and let us know how you got on.

How did you get on? Leave us a comment below.

We’ve been speaking quite a lot recently about how you can introduce things on your site that make it more interactive. These include things like adding a poll to your website, or adding a forum.

All these features are part of a website movement that the media have dubbed ‘Web 2.0′. In the original (Web 1.0!) vision of the Internet, websites were places where a 1-way process took place. A company would give out information about themselves, or a newspaper website would tell the news.

In web 2.0, the interaction between visitor and website is two-way. Not only does the website distribute information, but the website visitor also contributes to that information. The communication is two way between website and visitor. And the communication can also be between one website visitor and another.

One of the principles behind Web 2.0 is that if a website visitor contributes to and interacts with a website, then they are more likely to come back to that site later. It improves the ’stickyness’ of the site. In addition, if a website visitor contributes to a website they are more likely to feel ‘part of it’, and will recommend it to others.

One of the great new features we introduced with our most recent update is the ability to create members to your website, and allow those members to add to and sometimes edit your site. This is another fantastic Web 2.0 feature.

Members have their own login that they have created by signing up and getting an account with your site. These members have a close relationship with your website, and are highly likely to both return to the site, and also recommend it to others. One of your main objectives should be to look after your members, so that they in turn will sing your website’s praises to other people.

In order to get members to your site, you need to give website visitors a good reason to sign up. This could be exclusive access to members-only pages on your site, pages that have unique and valuable information on them. You might want to grant them editing privileges for some pages, so that they can shape the content there. Additionally, it might be that they can join in on certain discussions. Another idea is that they can get a regular newsletter that gives them access to valuable new insight. Most importantly, you need to give them unique information, advice or ideas that they cannot get elsewhere.

Whatever you do, however, don’t force people to sign up: the last thing you want to do it alienate them.

Here are the four main rules to follow in order to grow your site membership:

1. Give your members access to unique content and information that they cannot get elsewhere

2. Give your members MORE than general website visitors e.g. members-only content, discounts or communities

3. Communicate with your members using newsletters, Facebook & Twitter…

4. Listen to what they say, and given them a forum for their feedback. This helps them feel valuable and valued..

Have any of you managed to create lots of members so far? What pitfalls or successes have you encountered? Leave us a comment below.

Last week we announced the launch of a range of new features of the WebEden website making system. These features put your WebEden website at the heart of your social networking sites. The feedback so far has been very positive. However every new thing always takes a bit of getting used to, so we’ve put together video tutorial that shows you how to add members to your site.

Have a go and let us know how you got on!