SEO Tycoon

**bjornh** · 09:09 AM

Hey guys, my first post here and I've got a question please.

I've been searching all over the web for a solution or clarification to this. Tried tons of search combinations but I really can't seem to find a good answer. No real solutions to be found, or perhaps I just need to learn to google ;]

I'm using feed2js for my RSS needs. This works just fine and I don't have to rely on using a third-party site for channeling my RSS content. I'm currently testing out a couple of feeds on my homepage: www.bjornh.com if you'd like to check. Still learning.

But what's on my mind is the fact that every now and then, while browsing around the web, you see people claiming that you shouldn't use Javascript-based RSS scripts if you want search engines to recognize the syndicated content.

So I guess my questions are:
1. Does this still apply? Or is this changing perhaps?
2. If this still does apply, does anyone know of an "SEO-friendly" way (that really works and isn't some half-commercial, third-party, slow-loading, multi-channeled addon)?

Thank you

**chrishirst** · 06-05-2010, 09:09 AM

If it needs javascript, search engines won't see it.

RSS feeds need to be republished as HTML to be "SEO friendly", whatever that may mean!!

If you want to see what a search engine "sees" view the source of the page in a browser.

**bjornh** · 06-05-2010, 10:11 AM

Quote:

If it needs javascript, search engines won't see it.

Thought so but thanks for clarifying.

Quote:

RSS feeds need to be republished as HTML to be "SEO friendly", whatever that may mean!!

Yes, which brings me back to my questions. Just can't seem to figure out how or what service to use for that :/

Quote:

If you want to see what a search engine "sees" view the source of the page in a browser.

I understand. And I guess one of the reasons why they (the search engines) don't parse much Javascript is that there's so much malicious code around.

Still in the dark!

**ThailandForum** · 06-05-2010, 10:45 AM

I use a lot of java scripts on some of my pages, obviously they are of no use to the search engines, but hell, one of the pages has had over 26,000 views in just over a year, no unique content at all, infact absolutely nothing going for it at all, organically got pr of 2, I didn't bother promoting the page at all apart from a couple of nofollow links, suprised me.

**chrishirst** · 06-05-2010, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Yes, which brings me back to my questions. Just can't seem to figure out how or what service to use for that

Some thing in whatever serverside code your host supports.

**ThailandForum** · 06-05-2010, 11:17 AM

Isn't it normally brought from php to html?

**bjornh** · 06-05-2010, 12:49 PM

Thanks guys, this makes some sense although if someone could be specific about what kind of software to use, that'd be even better. But at least you've pushed my way of thinking about it in the right direction. Thanks again.

**chrishirst** · 06-05-2010, 12:56 PM

No Problem! Here is something specific

http://bytescout.com/products/develo...using_asp.html

**bjornh** · 07:18 AM

Ty, now to wrap my head around this ASP stuff ;P

Edit: ASP is of course Microsoft technology and closed-source as they are, they won't let my webhost's Linux server run the scripts :/ Well, I'll keep looking and if I find any solution I'll update you. Looking at a PHP script right now.

**chrishirst** · 06-06-2010, 08:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Some thing in whatever serverside code your host supports.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bjornh

Thanks guys, this makes some sense although if someone could be specific about what kind of software to use, that'd be even better. But at least you've pushed my way of thinking about it in the right direction. Thanks again.

AHA!! SO!! You wanted something specific in PHP then (see first quoted post in this thread!!!!

**bjornh** · 06-06-2010, 02:22 PM

I guess so then :] Apologies if I wasn't being clear about it but I really wasn't sure.

Well, I promised to update you and for the sake of others reading this thread looking for the same thing;
For the past few hours I've been fiddling around with another RSS2HTML PHP script. Took some time to figure out exactly how to do it but it worked out in the end, except that my webhost doesn't seem to allow this sort of PHP file inclusions. So, problem solved I guess for anyone reading this thread (but for my part I'll have to either change web host or persuade them to allow this).

**chrishirst** · 06-06-2010, 02:36 PM

Try using the SimpleXML, XMLReader or XML Parser

**ThailandForum** · 06-06-2010, 07:29 PM

^Blimey all that looks complicated, what about just using magicrss, type in the feeds and it does all that stuff for you, either php or java script.

**bjornh** · 06-07-2010, 07:42 AM

Thanks for helping out guys. The XML-solution looks complicated, yes. Although I'm willing to learn, using PHP-scripts would of course be a better alternative. ThailandForum's recommendation looks very good, and I've set it up and test-run it. But like the PHP-alternative I tried earlier, I'm still getting the [an error occurred while processing this directive] message. After some googling and reading I've realized that we're still talking about non-support for SSI (Server-Side Inclusions). I've written to my web host and asked them some questions regarding this.

I'll update you on the replies but for now it seems that I'll be stuck with the Javascript (feed2js in my case) solution that I mentioned in my first post. Thank you both so much for your help. I hope this thread can be of some help to someone else out there who's wondering about the same thing.

**bjornh** · 08:49 PM

Update: Yes! Here's the solution to enabling SSI:

Add these lines to the .htaccess file :

Code:

Options +Includes
AddType text/html .html
AddType text/html .shtml
AddType text/html .htm
AddHandler server-parsed .html
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .htm

I believe this is specific to Apache servers but hey, that's what seemed to be the problem in the first place. ASP didn't work because it wasn't a Windows server, so we had to search for more solutions. The PHP scripts seemed to be working except that the server didn't have Server Side Inclusions activated. This should fix the problem in most cases.

For the record, I landed on using Feedforall's RSS2HTML (PHP) script (there are several 'RSS2HTML').

Thanks again for the help and pointers.