How RSS Makes Your Site Attractive to Search Engines: RSS Tutorials and Tips - Utilities for RSS Continued

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Here are the rest of the utilities available:

1. Podcast Creation Tools – In order to publish a podcast feed, you need to record an audio file, and then use a tool to convert it to RSS. There are a few podcast tools out there that do both of them for you in one step, while there are some that will simply convert MP3 files, too. You can find a list of these on PodcastingNews.com.
2. Podcast Receivers – Invaluable tools for listening to podcasts. Some RSS readers are incorporating podcast reception directly into their programs. These can be anything from desktop applications to iPods, which have become very popular.
3. Google Sitemap generators – Google lists out a few third party sitemap generators on their site, even telling you in what language they are in; if they are free, or you have to pay for them; and which you can download, and which are used online. You could start by checking into some of these. NucleusCMS Google Sitemap is a Linux-based tool to help you generate your Google sitemaps, without having to have full knowledge of CSS. This is a very limited program, however, and relies upon your site’s config.php file, which some may not have access to on their web host. SitemapsPal and XML Sitemaps are online tools that generate a sitemap once the URL of the site to be mapped is entered. There is also a Windows-based program called gSiteCrawler that will generate a sitemap for you as well. It is a free program, and it works very well. It allows you to choose which pages you would like indexed, ban URLs, and their priority rating, and the frequency the page is updated. It also can store many projects, and keep them all separate. Very useful!
4. RSS Validation Services – It is very important that your RSS feed be presented in the correct syntax. One of the best places to validate your RSS feed is w3.org. The W3C sets the standards for XML and RSS, so it makes sense that any site that accepts syndicated content should abide by those standards. Another good one is FeedValidator.org.
5. Forum Syndication – Many popular forums, like phpBB or vBulletin have modification scripts available to syndicate forum posts. You should look in your forum’s documentation, or on their support website for more information on how to do this, since every forum script works differently.

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Comments On: How RSS Makes Your Site Attractive to Search Engines: RSS Tutorials and Tips

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