Difference between RSS Feed Module & News Mod by Maffo

[dawyatt]

Okay... can anyone tell me the difference between these two mods (RSS Feed Module & News Mod by Maffo) other than one is free and the other is $25...

Not to pit the two against each other, but I want to add feeds to my site and need a simple method of trying to accomplish this... basically I am looking improve my rankings...

I do not mind paying at all... just want input to preferences... also what is " Larry's sitemap" that is referred to in the following post:
MAFFO News Mod & Page Rank Questions
Is this something I should use? and why?

trying to figure all this out...

[juven14]

Well, the RSS Feed Module just gets feeds from other locations, to bring in external news and other sources of content.

The news module made by Maffo is to create internal news, more closely relating to your content. Not every article is availible via RSS so the two should work together very closely.

[Lhotch]

I cant comment on the 2 mods above since I dont use either but sitemap is a google specific tool used to help google index your site.

Here is a link to the thread which originally covered it for the current release and there are links in there to google and what it is.

Sitemap.php

[juven14]

I wouldn't count on the RSS module to increase your site rankings, unless you are bringing in feeds that match your content. It is just a way to provide content via RSS vs the news module allowing you full control of what is in each article. This also allows you to generate articles found elsewhere that are not availible via RSS.

I would highly recommend the sitemap feature, I noticed very large increases of my pages being indexed.

[Maffo]

Just to confirm what Juven has said, Rss is an external source and the information isnt on your website, just a link to it. Outgoing links do improve your site ranking as long they are links that have a relevence to your web content.

The news mod gets search engine results in a completely different way. The articles are on your website.

To try and explain a little bit more.

For example..
Lets say you sell cars and motorbikes. You have a news article on your website with 300 words, all about cars. You also have an RSS feed to a 300 word article motorbikes.

If both articles have been spidered by google and google has the 300 words from each in its database, if somebody performs a search about the cars, google will send them to your site, if its about motorbikes, it will send them to the site you are getting the feed from, the one that holds the information.

Bgordon has just placed a heck of a lot of information on his website, all to do with exactly what he does and the industry he is in. I have no doubts he will start being found for all kinds of word combinations his pages contain.

I hope that explains the difference

[dawyatt]

so let me see if I understand...

In the case of you example site by Bgordon, the news displayed there is created and maintained by Bgordan? And the way search engines and the like find this site is via something like the sitemap????? In other words... Bgordan is putting new news out there periodically in reference to his content whereas RSS feeds brings fresh news to you....based on the rss feed you choose to include...

still somewhat confused, but I am going to plug away at it today... Right now I am test the rssfeed (advanced module) on my test site, but where do I change how it is displayed... I have tried variouse changes in my layout template, but it still displays like this (click below):
http://www.buckeye-classifieds.com/testsite/

what am i doing wrong? and is there anyway to ignore the pic/logo that the feed(s) bring in?

thanks.

[juven14]

each feed you create is given the default templte - i.e. rss.tpl.php, if you modify this template then all future feeds will have the modification. If you want to edit just one feed then edit feedname.tpl.php all of which are located in the module templates folder rss_mod/templates/rss_mod/

Then you display the feed on any page you want with the smarty include as you did at that site.

[Maffo]

Dawyatt,

Bgordon will attract more visitors to his site because he now has more site content. Once the search engine spiders have a look through his site they will pick up on the 5000 new words he has on his site.

When a user of the internet types in a combination of any of these words, Bgordons site will be amongst the results. Where he is in them results is unknown and depends entirely on what has been searched for.

With the Rss feed, you dont have any of the words on your website.

Rss feeds are more for providing information to your visitors where as I have built the news mod, specifically for getting higher search engine rankings.

If you need more help the explanation , just ask.

[dawyatt]

Thanks Maffo... you have been very helpful... I am going to try your mod for sure!

Thanks for taking the time to explain...it helps!

[Maffo]

Check these out as examples my friend.

This site has been up and running for around a month.

This site has articles posted most days, google and msn now visit constantly.


MSN

Google

Try cutting and pasting a phrase from one of the stories into google or msn and see where the site appears.