Half’s SEO Notebook

If you’re looking for a way to submit your blog to Google co-op, I just wrote a script that you can use. It makes your blog posts appear on top of Google SERPs, using categories under which you submitted your post. For example, if a post was submitted under “SEO” or “Google coop”, it’ll show up for those keyword searches. Assuming Google recrawls your submitted link occassionally (it seems to recrawl every few hours for me), the results will refresh automatically as you publish more posts.

Just a warning: this is a BETA script I wrote an hour after I woke up without coffee. I’m also not convinced submitting your blog posts to Google co-op is really productive, but no harm done until somebody loses an eye.

Anyway, back to my script. All you have to do is submit a link to Google Co-op using this format:

http://seo4fun.com/php/rss-parser.php?url=YOURRSSFEEDURL

The URL you submit must be RSS 2.0. The source is written in PHP 5, in case you’re wondering. There’s a ton of features missing (e.g. I’d want it to scan for technorati tags embedded in posts, though that requires full feeds) and it ignores some guidelines (80 chars per text1 line, no http:// in url, etc). Let me know if you’re interested in looking at the source code. Submit your subscribed links here

Updates:

• The script might timeout if your feed is huge, but I doubt it.
• posts with tabs/carriage returns (\t\n) in description fields weren’t getting parsed [fixed].
• Some feeds like seomoz.org that lacks categories won’t work.
• If your blog doesn’t run on Wordpress, chances are my script will choke on your feed.
• If your post urls use a ‘?’, it won’t parse [Fixed].
• Barfed on titles with commas [fixed].

Blogs I’ve tested:

• First blog to go under the knife: My SEO notebook.
• SEO By the Sea (bulky category names but it seems to work): Google Co-op XML. Searches: (design, search engines and directories, usability, search engine optimization, culture, internet advertising)
• SEOMoz (doesn’t work, found no categories).
• Matt Cutt’s Blog works, but his categories are wacked (i.e. “weblog/blog”). searches: (”weblog blog”,”google seo”, “personal”, “productivity”, “web net”,”how to”…)
• SEOBuzzbox uses <dc:subject> instead of <category> [Fixed] Searches: (marketing news, dmoz, blackhat, matt cutts, v7ndotcom elursrebmem, internet marketing, google news…)
• Jim Boykin’s Blog seems to load without a hitch. Searches: (places, jim’s crazy ideas, yahoo, “CEO, not SEO stuff”, jim boykin, google, internet marketing tips, seo research, link building…)
• Damn Jezebel’s Dairy searches: (conversations, randomness, bitching, what the fuck?)

Subscribe to my profile instead of submitting those feeds individually, and run a few Google searches to see what happens.

Notes

• I see every damn RSS has its nuances, so it’ll take a while before this script can handle 50% of the blogs out there.
• What’s the point of subscribing to multiple blog feeds with Google Co-op? (I luv my Google Reader). SER type subscribed link display is cool, but individual blogs? Plus you need to remember categories to pull up results. Not practical.
• Only one match per account. Say I’m subscribed to 10 links, and 5 of them match a search for “yahoo.” Only one will show in the Onebox. There’s also no ResultSpec timestamp element, so there’s no way to make the most recent item to show. Also, subscriptions complete for the same keywords (e.g. for Google, digg/sew/and ser compete for the same onebox space), something that would steer me away from running a generic search like “seo.”
• Some blogs use long tail categories or throw several words under one category (i.e. weblog/blog). I prefer using data objects to handle synonyms.