Toolbox Activity 8: Exploring RSS & promotion and analytics

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

November 26, 2008 [2966 views]

It’s time to get your site some traffic! You need to promote your site manually by submitting it to search engines, linking it from posts and forums and automatically using an RSS feed. Manual submission takes time but is valuable in getting search engine spiders to start crawling your site. RSS submission will allow your site to appear on sites automatically every time you write a new post.

Deadline: Midnight, Tuesday 2nd December

This activity will help you:

Find sites that might provide you with visitors
Help you explore why links from other sites are so important
Explore the RSS feed for your blog
Research and add your site to some directories
Help you measure (and analyse) your visitors

Part 1: promotion and RSS

Keep good notes as you work through this activity.

Site promotion

Start by researching the difference between web directories and search engines.
Find a search engine submission site and submit your site
Find several site directories and submit your site to them too.
Try to find some interesting blogs or forums and leave a comment with your URL (only available on some forums/blogs)

Add a comment to my site leaving your URL and you will automatically (once approved) have a link to your site. (which Google will eventually follow)

RSS promotion

Make sure that your Wordpress theme supports RSS feeds and if not learn how to add RSS to your home page.
Install an RSS application on your PC (see below) and check that your RSS feed works
If you have mobile internet access then find a mobile RSS reader and check that your RSS feed works on your phone. (optional)
Find some sites (like Technorati and Syndic8) where you can list your RSS feed

Questions you have to answer

Which site/service did you use to submit your URL?
What directories did you submit your site to? (list at least 3)
Why do you need to submit your site to search engines?
What is the difference between a search engine and a search directory?
Try and explain RSS feeds in non technical terms
Which sites have you listed your RSS feeds with?
What other ways will you promote your site (suggest at least 3)?

Here are some useful links:

Technorati: include your RSS feed
Search for services to submit your site free to search engines
Introduction to WordPress Feeds
SharpReader (RSS Reader for Windows)
NetNewsWire (RSS Reader for Mac)
Google Reader

Here is the survey link to feedback your answers to Part 1

Part 2: analytics

Who is visiting your site and how will you know if your efforts at promoting your site are being successful? If you have hosted with cPanel then you already have a host of tools to help you find out and by installing Google Analytics you can do even more.

Take a look at Webalizer, Analog and AWstats (inside cPanel) and try to work out all of the information presented. Your implementation of cPanel may provide you with different tools and you should explore what is provided.
Research using Google the difference between the following terms (and keep careful notes). Don’t worry if you find them confusing.
a. Hits
b. Pages
c. Visits
d. Files
e. Unique visitors
f. Referrers
g. Agents
Install Google Analytics inside your site. It will take a few days before you can start to explore these statistics but they are generally much more useful than logfiles
Why do you think analyzing your visitors is so important?

Questions you have to answer

Which log analyzers did you use?
Explain the following terms making it clear what is the difference between them in relation to the stats you have looked at for your own site.
a. Hits
b. Pages
c. Visits
d. Files
e. Unique visitors
f. Referrers
g. Agents
Which of these numbers will be most important to you?
Why?
Why do you think analyzing your visitors is so important?
Have you installed Google Analytics?
Are there any questions you have about these programs?