If you’re using GeekLog you’re probably
aware of the Content Syndication / RSS Feed feature. It will automatically output the stories from your site, or a topic, into a standard RSS XML file that can be polled for updates.
With more and more blogs coming online, search engines like Google are starting to build specialised blog search engines.
In order for the search engines to add your RSS feed, they need to be able to find it. And it’s pretty simple to make that happen.
Most important of course is to link to your RSS feed on all the relevant pages of your site. Seeing as mine is site wide, I created a new Block and placed it in the left column. I called it RSS and filled it with this code:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” href=”/backend/julian-kuiters.xml” />
The first part basically makes a visible link the visitors can click to get the feed. I created both a .xml and .rss feed, as some people were having troubles with the .rss one because the filetype hasn’t been setup in the webserver.
The <link rel tag basically creates a meta link to the rss feed, that saves spiders from having to crawl more than one page. They can see this link and know what it is for, without even crawling that file.
You can verify that your RSS Feed can be discovered using the rss auto-discover tool.
Pinging
Once you can be discovered, its time to let everyone know you have updated stories on your site. “Pinging” is the best way to do this, and seeing as GeekLog currently has no plug in for it yet, try using some auto-pinging websites. Enter the url of your website (not the url of your rss feed!) and let them do the work for you.
Remember to ping everytime you add a new story. This will allow them to know you have fresh content, and the blog search engines should update.
You could try these pinging sites to get started: