Hello there, SEO heroes and warriors! Here at Search Engine Academy, we need to keep up with all the latest and greatest in SEO processes, techniques and strategies to teach you in our SEO class. One of the best ways for me has been through Google Reader. Well, unless you’ve been hanging out in a cave in Tora Bora, you know that on July 1, 2013, Google Reader goes “buh bye!” for good. Damn!

There are a lot of alternatives out there. I’ve tried just two, and I’m going to talk a little bit about the one I’m leaning towards  using as a replacement. It’s called The Old Reader. It’s old school, alright. It’s plain and simple to use, just like Google Reader. That’s probably why I will stay with it after July 1.

You can easily import your Google Reader feeds by following The Old Reader’s simple instructions and screen shots. It took less than five minutes for me to see all of my feeds. So, here’s what it looks like to add subscriptions and feeds:

They’ll show up on the left hand bar:

Click on “All Items” on the left side bar to get the current items you haven’t read in your feed:

What I like the most about the Old Reader is that it looks a lot like Google Reader. I’ve tried one that shows me images as previews, but I’m a fast reader, and I prefer to scan titles or headlines to decide if I want to click on an item. The simple line layout with bolded titles works well for me.

I’ve used the Old Reader on my Android mobile phone, and it works pretty well. I’ve had to fiddle a little bit with the text size, because when I’m on the cross trainer at the gym, I need a slightly larger text size on the small screen to adequately read items that interest me, but otherwise it’s pretty good.

But here’s my biggest gripe – my Nook color ebook reader is another matter altogether.

There’s no app I can download from Barnes and Noble (dammit all! I KNEW I should have gone with Kindle, bwahahaha…sob!) If you use the Nook color ebook to browse the internet, you know what I’m about to say. But before I unload, you may wonder why I’m using the Old Reader if it’s so sub-standard on the Nook. There are a couple reasons – I haven’t yet found one RSS reader that works well and has apps for all of my devices that is 1) free; 2) uses a simple text interface like Google Reader. I know, I know…I’m old school. Get over it.

So, my lovely Nook does not display the website very well; it freezes up and is slow to respond on commands to mark all items read, etc. I don’t have to scroll horizontally, thank the whatever, which is the saving grace. I found out that even though I click on “Mark all read” I still have to also hit refresh to get the damn button to work. Bad, bad, bad mobile experience. But I’ll deal with it for right now.

The other thing I’m not overly fond is that once you mark all items as read, if you want to go back and re-read something, you have to click on “Show All Posts” to get them back. Argh!

What’s your replacement RSS vehicle? Let me know in the comments, will you?

Until next time, keep it between the ditches and be well, umkay?

All the best to you,