RSS has been around almost as long as the internet. Most small businesses owners don't use it. Many using RSS have found it useful to scan blogs and news content they like to read and have that content flow into their email. That's OK but these days, most news services have you signup on the site and you'll end up with a daily summary of the news in your inbox anyway. So has RSS become obsolete? HARDLY! Beyond the fact that most people don't even know what it is, even fewer know how to use it in a very practical situation. I'm going to change that!

Motion is a natural attractor to the eye... it's part of our DNA. Use it to create move visual appeal and attract people to your posts. Just taking this moment to wish you all a Merry Christmas. For a free repository of pretty decent animated gif images read on... (these ones are free!).

If your social media bears the fruit then your RSS should be the root. Hey! I just made that up! If you haven't read my last three or four blogs you might consider it. Those blogs got me on the first page of Google with very little effort. They show what I wanted to rank for and how. That's not to say it was easy, there's a bit of planning on the front end that allows this to happen over and over again.

Ok, that's a bit of a parody. I'm not really into self-aggrandizement but I do want to make a point. About I month ago I found a search term in Google webmaster tools that I should be ranking better for: "SEO Agency Dayton Ohio". This is the third blog after a little over a month of simple SEO / blogging and testing. Here is the final result.

I have several clients that want to have a mobile app for their clients. In every case so far, the APP development can be circumvented by showing the client (and his clients) how to use a simple feature accessible to everyone with a smart phone.

I know you've heard it - Blog to rank. Content is king. Rank on the first page or forget it. Well, forget all that for a second. Ask yourself, if I blog - how is my blog going to reach my intended audience? I'd like to flip that blogging for SEO strategy on it's head for a minute. I'm not saying that blogging won't get you SEO traffic, it will BUT, if your intent is for your information to get in front of as many people interested in your products and services as possible then there is a better way to use your blog. Don't assume that everyone is going to find your website. Worse, your current clients may not ever see it. This concept may change the way you blog, why you blog. It may even make you actually WANT to blog.

It's fascinating to me how quickly I can get a page ranked on Google. I'm not bragging here, sometimes it's downright tough! But the things that improve your ability to rank are not necessarily the things a local SEO guru can provide as a service. YOU have to want it. Here's a case in point from my own site, down to the exact detail - you'll soon see that there's no hocus pocus here, just brute force.

HEY! NEWSFLASH! Nobody reads your blog! It's not THEIR fault? Who wants to read about plumbing experiences, my latest dental exploits, what's new in the world of landscaping or heaven forbid, what Google did yesterday to screw up your SEO results! So why blog?

A lot of my clients stumble at the prospect of blogging. It's really the one thing they need to be doing that I can't do for them. Blogging is personal and very relevant to what you are as a business. You don't ask your dentist to give your client a sales pitch and you shouldn't ask anyone not directly connected to your bottom line to blog for you. Here are five simple things to blog about.

All your life you may have been told, "don't act up", "don't brag", "don't be the center of attention". Unless your the guy at the party with the lamp shade on his head, most of us shy away from that kind of popularity. But that is not the person Google is looking for anyway. So it might not seem intuitive to want to be "that guy" when it comes to your website. On the web, THAT GUY is the center of attention (or appears to be). He seems to know a lot. He seems to have good authority and a lot of people seem to be listening. THAT is exactly who you want to be. Google is looking for THAT GUY! You can be THAT GUY!