In addition, I learned how to call an XML feed and display it on a web page using a php script last evening. Using the php script brings dynamic content to your page. It is searchable and indexable by the search engine spiders. This means that you have new content on the page whenever the spider, or a visitor, stops by. From the search engine standpoint, there is more and new content to index. It is suspected that the spiders will visit the page more frequently because of the frequent change. If they visit more frequently they are likely to tell more people to come and visit.

I think that I will put a feed box from this blog on the personal home page. I found a good motorcycle related feed for the Rally site. Tech feeds are no problem for the computer and software related sites. I will look for a feed, preferably a review feed, for the Gallery site. I have several ideas of what I would like to find for the various sites.

I have learned already that I have to check for the quality of the feed before putting a page on a site. I established a directory on my web space to use for that purpose. The address for the feed goes in an include file, so upload is minimal. I copied the page a couple of times with other names and a different include file, so I can test three feeds at a time. I was hoping to have multiple feeds on a page, but the script that I am using complains about that, so I will probably use a page per feed for now. It is easy to do, because the pages can be copies with only one small change for the name of the include file. The include files can also be copies with the exception of the feed url.

I did find a site that was selling a script to do this. The customer reviews indicated that the search traffic to their sites doubled or tripled when they added the dynamic content. That software may have some bells and whistles that my barebones script does not have, but the major benefit comes from having the dynamic content.

In other news, the preliminary indication is that the rebuild to Symmetrical Backgrounds and Web Pickups are having an effect on the number of pages viewed per visit. There is really not sufficient data yet to call it a trend, but there are some indications that what I have done is helping.

I had thought about my methods of making the images and was able to cut out several steps in producing the images. That saves quite a bit of time in making the images. Together with my modified gallery software to build the pages the process is now much faster.

In my travels on the web I ran across a site called Ice Rocket that has a free RSS feed builder. I had been thinking that I should have an RSS feed from several of my sites, so I signed up for the service. I registered several of my sites, and will probably add some more as I go along. Since I was updating the site Symmetrical Backgrounds is my first site to use the service. I have two entries in the feed for my two most recent galleries of background images. You can check out the new images HERE.