Free ISP moves down a couple of places

Our Free ISP 12Free has dropped 2 places in the Google index over the last 2 days. Does that signify an update is happening at Google or is something else to blame? It's got us scratching our heads at the moment but as with all these instances it's best to let the dust settle before looking for something to apportion blame to.

We'll continue to employ all the good SEO techniques we've learnt and build content and links in the hope that the drop is a minor glitch. We're getting very good at all things SEO and SEM and our sister company PushON continues to grow.

Having just checked Google sitemaps I noticed that the sitemap for 12Free had moved to a status of "pending" which is very odd. It's been re-submitted and is showing a status of OK again now. I can't see that being the reason behind the drop though.

The top Free ISP

Rather annoyingly the site currently enjoying the number one spot for the term Free ISP is a frames based site with very little content which as far as I'm aware hasn't changes in about 4 years. That really hurts when we go to the trouble of building our sites to W3C standards and keep the content fresh and new as much as possible. I've seen old badly built sites return to the top of Google results on a number of occasions recently and I'm begining to question just how good the results Google are offering really are.

Tags: Free ISP SEO SEM Google

More Podcast related chinanigans

After testing out RSS2Podcast my initial enthusiasm has been dampend some what. You can checkout the result of turning our blog RSS feed into a podcast with RSS2Podcast here. You'll notice if you play it that the podcast is split into mini sound bites for each headline post and contains little more than an advert for RSS2Podcast and the title of the post. It's a bit disappointing but perhaps the paid version will be much improved.

Feed2Podcast

Eager to quash my disappointment a quick search of Google for an alternative offered up Feed2Podcast. Another Free resource for converting RSS feeds to Podcasts. The result, although not perfect is much improved on RSS2Podcast. The link opens it's own Podcast player (bit squashed in FireFox) and the Podcast inlcudes titles and the full post body.

Try our Blog Podcast created by Feed2Podcast

Tags: Podcast RSS

RSS2Podcast

When I heard about RSS2Podcast I just had to give it a go.

Sound Clash Podcast

We've been talking about creating a Podcast for fun for a while now, just as an exercise in understanding the technology. It was going to be nothing more than an eclectic mix of tunes that me and Simon like which considering our diverse tastes should have been fun. After discovering that RSS2Podcast can take your RSS feed and turn it into a Podcast we're thinking we might remix the output into a mashup of informative work related posts and summer tunes, so call back later to see if that happens.

Features of RSS2Podcast

There's a basic Free version of RSS2Podcast which allows you to create a sinlge podcast which automatically updates. We all like something for free so that's what we're trying out.
$9.99 a month means you can have multiple podcasts with the ability to equalize and select male or female voice types, add effects and track stats to see just how well your Podcast is spreading.

Accessibility?

I'm thinking this could be used as a great accessiblity tool. Providing your page content via RSS and then in turn via a Podcast will mean visually impaired users get great access to content.

What do you think?

NB: I had tried posting the link to our Podcast within this post but for some reason it made all the formatting go wobbly. You can listen to a Podcast of our blog at http://www.virtuaffinity.com/podcast.htm


Tags: Podcast RSS

Blogs, Blogging, RSS Feeds

I was down at SES London last week and sat in on the Blogs and RSS feeds session. Keen to implement the tips I picked up, I've been working on Blog related things over the weekend in an attempt to improve the rather drab ammount of traffic to our Blog.

Burn your feed with Feedburner

I'd never heard about Feedburner before and it was only mentioned very briefly during the seminar but I noted it down as something to investigate when I reurned.

So what does Feedburner do?

"FeedBurner is the world's largest feed management provider. Our Web-based services help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web."

In real terms what it does is turn your RSS feed from an XML or Atom feed into their own "SmartFeed" format. With some RSS readers favouring either XML or Atom and no standard imminent on the horizon SmartFeed turns your RSS feed into a format readable on any device. It also makes the feed look much prettier than the standard XML or Atom feed. This is our RSS feed in standard Atom feed format, and this is our RSS feed formated by SmartFeed, the Feedburner format. Actually it does a lot more than that and I'll try to cover as much as I can over this multi-part post.

Chicklets

I didn't have a name for these but after SES London I do. Apparently these,





little graphics are called "Chicklets". I'd always called them, "the little graphic things" and I find Chicklets to be a bit feminine but if that's what it's been decided they'll be called who am I to change that. Particularly given that I don't have any other ideas.
You'll be able to see that below the navigation on the right hand side there's now a long list of Chicklets for various different RSS news readers. This one, is now the standard RSS feed icon. The idea behind showing the various different Chicklets is that you are making it as easy as possible for end users to subscribe to your RSS feed. They simply click on the Chicklet that is relevant for their news reader and instantly subscribe to your feed, and that's what we want to happen.


Tags: Virtuaffinity RSS Feed Virtuaffinity Blog