Before Google Reader I would visits websites and blogs on a daily basis to get the latest news on whatever interests I most wanted to read about that day.  If I came upon an article or site that I wanted to save for later I would either bookmark it or add it to my del.icio.us bookmarks.  And if I wanted to share it with a friend I’d send it via e-mail, IM, or through another social website, but with the introduction of Google Reader that has all changed.

I realized the other day that the features available in Google Reader have changed my internet habits in such a way that I am now using fewer outside sites or services to read my feeds, share articles, bookmark articles, and comment on things people are sharing.  Google Reader has for the most part become a one stop shop for me, which is great for me, but could have a negative impact on the sites I read.

Google Reader: My One Stop Shop

First off Google Reader allows me to read blog updates directly in reader, assuming that the feed is displaying the complete article.  As long as the complete article is being shared via RSS I never have to actually visit any of the sites which I regularly read.

Second I find myself using social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us a lot less than I did in the past.  Instead I can simply star the article in Google Reader and reference it from my starred items at a later time.  I’ll admit this isn’t as organized as something like del.icio.us, but being able to search my starred features makes retrieving things fairly simple.

Third I find myself sharing fewer blog posts through social outlets like Twitter, because I can share with my friends interesting articles directly through my shared items on Google Reader.  Not only can I share with them, I can also add comments about the article that aren’t limited to a 140 characters.  That’s not to say that I’m not sharing articles through other sources, but I am finding that only articles of the highest quality are getting this extra attention.  Articles I feel are informative and useful to people, but aren’t really anything over the top incredible will most likely make it through with just a share in Google Reader.

Lastly Google Reader has moved some of my interactions and conversations about articles away from sites like Twitter and into the new Google Reader comment feature.  This was a feature that I have wanted from a long time, mostly because if someone shares something I find useful or interesting I want to thank them for it, or sometimes give them my thoughts on it.  The ability to comment directly to the person who shared the item in Google Reader is quick and efficient and it doesn’t require me to login or open another service just to comment on the item shared with me.

For me the ability to do all of this in one place is a blessing.  It’s much more efficient and it still allows me to store and share information I find useful.  However I feel that this comes as a disadvantage to some of the blogs I read.  I’m not going to sites anymore, which means I am not seeing advertisements.  I’m not storing articles on sites like del.icio.us as much as I have in the past and therefore not passing the value of a network like del.icio.us in terms of links and traffic.

Similarly I am not sharing sites the way I used to.  Sites I have to physically visit to read an article will more often than not get a Digg, Stumble, Mixx, or the like because from the site I can use my Shareaholic toolbar to quickly spread the item.  I understand that I could consciously do this regardless of whether or not I read the article in reader or not, but for some reason it just doesn’t click for me to do this all the time.

Finally my means of conversation about articles has changed drastically, which greatly reduces the number of people who see my comments about a certain article.  Commenting about or sharing comments on articles through means of Twitter and other social websites allow for a great number of people to potentially pick up on the conversation.  On Twitter I have 496 followers that could pick up on the story and potentially share it, link to it, bookmark it, etc.  In reader I am sharing with 18 people, which is a significant decrease in the number of people which see my shared article.

The Remedy

As a blogger or webmaster this is something to consider when it comes to your RSS feeds.  I’m sure I’m not the only person doing this, meaning you are potentially missing out on some great opportunities.  To remedy some of these issues I would suggest the following:

1. Don’t provide your complete article via RSS.
2. Plug ads into your RSS feeds for those who don’t come to your physical site.
3. Develop reader call to action. Ask for feedback or peoples’ thoughts at the closing of your posts to entice readers to comment on the post. Commenter’s will be required to visit your site to share their insight.

These are just some ways in which you might improve your visitor traffic and better visitor interaction, but I’m sure there are other opportunities out there.

What are your thoughts? Do you use Google Reader or a similar feed reader?  Have you found that it changes the way you interact with some of your favorite blogs and websites?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

(The Following is a guest post from Kristina Sanchez)

It all started when my best friend Ali lured me out of tame Orange County to Los Angeles with magic words like “delicious sushi” and “Jackson Rathbone”. An impromptu night on the town!

Fat Fish

The set up at Fat Fish is fairly simple. Delicious sushi goes by on a conveyor belt on color coded plates. The plates are anywhere from $4-$10 and contain the simple sushi pieces to ornate, mouth-watering rolls. Miso soup comes with every meal. Soda and tea are available to be served, but if you want to bring something from the alcohol store across the street, they will gladly ice it, pour it and serve it to you. At the end of the meal, they add up your plates to see how much you pay.

Stick with me, my story gets better. After 7, it’s happy hour! This means everything is ½ off. If that weren’t enough, after 9 it becomes what I’ll call REALLY happy hour. This means everything is available for $2 a plate. Special dishes, such as urchin, are available for a flat $8 fee, regardless of the hour.

The setting of Fat Fish is contemporary and relaxed. The wait staff are warm and friendly. At a price that ended up being cheaper than what I usually pay for at, and with a selection that surpasses the all-you-can-eat places I’ve been to, Fat Fish is wonderful, scrumptious experience. I’d say the only downside here is the embarrassing stack of plates you end up with by the end of your meal!

100 Monkeys

After dinner came dessert in the form of Jackson Rathbone’s band, 100 Monkeys performing live at Crane’s Tavern.  Rathbone is most known for his role as Jasper Hale from last years blockbuster film Twilight. While I knew that Jackson had a band, I hadn’t had a chance yet to check out their music, so I went in blind. Now, I’m always up for anything even vaguely related to Twilight and its talented cast, but I pondered Ali’s reasons – not being a Twilighter. Jackson, she informed me, was the only “Cullen” she found attractive. Obviously, there’s something wrong with the girl’s eyes (and Jasper is a HALE, thank you very much), but I digress the point.

I had mused that it seemed unwise for Jackson, having been photographed in Vancouver on Friday and slated to begin filming for New Moon on Monday, to be in L.A. performing. As it turned out, he wasn’t in L.A. The very first thing I noticed, peering through tight fairly tight-packed crowd of maybe 50 people, was the lack of Jackson on the stage. The second thing I noticed was the guy in the banana suit dancing in the crowd!

I’m not going to pretend that I know the names of songs I heard. 100 Monkeys was already mid-set, as we walked in shortly after 10 PM. The music was catchy and easy to get into. We caught a couple of basic rock-type tunes before the band, singer Ben Graupner happily proclaiming “Time for a switcheroo!”, switched to a soft ballad-type song. “A swaying song!” the exuberant banana man said happily. I was glad because the little room was hot and I was very surprised that he hadn’t died of heat exhaustion. They ended with a number that showed Ben Graupner’s impressive vocal range. His voice turned to a deep, throaty, sexy rumble that sent banana man, and the rest of the small crowd, into happy, bouncy convulsions.

100 Monkeys is the third band I’ve seen in intimate, bar-type venues and by far the best experience. They have a good flow and a beat you can move to. The members themselves are inviting, enthusiastic and completely in love with their audience. If you can catch a live show, I’d highly recommend the experience.

About Kristina Sanchez

No stranger to Musings For A Darkened Room, Kristina is the author of the witty blog How To Be A Customer and an aspiring screenwriter.  Kristina previously entertained readers with her three part series Debunking The Anti-Twilight Propaganda where she took shots at critics who feel Edard Cullen is an abusive boyfriend, Bella Swan is a wallowing weakling, and the relationship between Edward Cullen and Bella Swan is unhealthy.  The series was a huge success and earned this blog as well as her own a lot of Twilight lover and hater traffic.

(The following is a guest post from Brian Harnish)

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in the quest for nearly perfect SEO is correct coding practices.  From making sure your site works on the latest web browsers on the market, to making sure that your site is viewable on as many resolutions as possible, correct coding practice is the root skill necessary to make sure that all of the above issues are resolved.  So, then, the question arises.  What, exactly, is correct coding and how should you use it to achieve the desired effect:  higher rankings and even better usability?

HTML, or Hyper Text Markup Language, is the language used to build web sites.  CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets language, is the language that’s used to actually STYLE the HTML tags within a web page.  The W3C, or World Wide Web Consortium, mandates that design should be a separate component of each HTML document.  This means that HTML tags should be used ONLY for markup and determining the layout of a web page, and CSS should be used to apply all style instructions to a specific document.

Back in the early days of the web when Yahoo! ruled the search engine world, tables would be used to design the layouts of web pages.  Many web designers would create graphics intensive websites created with Photoshop.  These graphics would be sliced, and tables would be used to put them together as a website.  Many times, depending on the complexities of these interfaces, using tables could result in as many as 60 rows and 100 columns in order to put them together.  Needless to say, this resulted in a lot of useless code that could have otherwise been used to include content on the site instead.

Then Cascading Style Sheets came along, and the W3C concept of separating design from content.  No longer did designers have to be frustrated with what table design would look good in IE, but crap on Netscape, and have to add several extra tags in order to ensure a correct layout.  No longer did designers have to be frustrated with changing a single image in table column 132, row 136, and having to scroll through pages of text in notepad or their favorite text editor.  Instead, all style instructions could be housed within a separate style sheet document that contained one line of code in the actual HTML document.  And, if a site has 100 pages, then style instructions could simply be changed in the external style sheet, saving a huge amount of time in updating the web site.

Now, there are several coding practices that you should be familiar with when writing your code.  First and foremost:  indent your code, please.  It makes things so much easier to read and understand, and you don’t have to spend time hunting and hunting for a particular code element in order to make a very small change.  Next, use very MINIMAL markup.  This means that if you can use one paragraph tag to separate a paragraph and style it, then do so instead of using a paragraph tag, font tag, and a whole bunch of other ones in between.  This practice of minimization will help search engines read your content better, and results in a much lower code to text ratio.  As a result of this practice, you’ll get even better optimized pages, which will make it much easier for search engines to crawl your site.  Next, use all lower case or upper case letters for your HTML tags.  Don’t go from <P> to <p> or <table><tr><TD><TBODY> for your tags.  From a professional standpoint, it makes your code look much less sloppy.

Let’s face it.  Using notepad is all well and good, but there are other text editors on the market that will make your life easier.  For example, editors like Crimson Editor, Edit Pad, and PSPad, all feature highlighted and indented code to make life easier.  For those with a ton of cash on hand, Dreamweaver is the best that money can buy.  For those on a mac, BBedit will be a great choice.  For those who are just starting out with learning correct coding practices, you may want to check out the book Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way Using HTML & CSS by Ian Lloyd.

SEO’s without a good knowledge of behind the scenes practices will not be as successful as those that know how to code like the pros.  Good coding practices are a major foundation to building a web site that will perform well in the engines.  If you’re not familiar with how to create a standards-compliant web site using HTML and CSS, then you need to start there first.  You don’t build a house without first building the foundation, so why would you approach building an optimized web site the same way?  After all, it’s the foundation of a project that will determine its success or eventual failure.

About Brian Harnish

Brian is an in-house SEO and former colleague with an extensive knowledge of W3C and coding compliance.  Dabbling in a mix of both search and social you can view more of Brian’s SEO writing on his blog Prolific SEO.  For the social side of things you can catch him on Twitter via @BrianHarnish.  A huge thanks to Brian for this post.  He was the first of a handful of writers to get back to me in regards to guest posts here on the blog.