Want to create a way to draw more traffic into your site, leveraging the same potential that makes Google Maps, YouTube video embedding, and the RSS phenomenon so effective?
What is that potential? What’s going on in each case?
Google Maps
Google allows you to embed a map within a web page at any dimensions you need. The web page then shows a fully functional, tiny map that can be scrolled or zoomed. It can even include a pin illustrating a specific location. Awesome. I want one on my site. When you double-click on the map it launches another window from Google.com.
YouTube
Upload a video into YouTube and you’ve got a video streaming and sharing solution that’s essentially free if you don’t mind ads and one other minor cost: When the viewer clicks on the video itself, they’re taken off of your site and onto YouTube.
RSS
RSS allows a blog, a website, or any other information generating device connected to the internet to package its information in a manner that’s easily digestible by other devices. This has allowed a whole niche of content publishers called aggregators, for example Huffingtonpost.com and Drudge.com (mentioning both just to be fair and balanced). Original content publishers allow these aggregators the ability to re-use the content, as long as the content retains the link back to the site. The aggregator promotes their site and in turn increases the traffic to the content publisher.
Each of these mechanisms give a little of themselves in exchange for a hook back to their bucket, getting some visitor to become their visitors by giving the other sites something they can’t give themselves.
Bravo Google, Bravo YouTube, Bravo any blogger who knows how to leverage RSS to their advantage.
