"RSS Feed, meet reader. Reader, Meet RSS Feed."
Feeds are a way for websites of all sizes to get news, articles, blogs, podcasts and other content to your readers. They are also a great way to help out your search engine ranking. To the right is the "universal feed icon" or the "chicklets". When you see that image, you most likely can pick up an RSS feed of that page's content.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Syndication in this context means exactly what it means to the television industry. (ie: NBC airs a great episode of "30 Rock". A few years later, another network picks up the show in syndication and plays it to death.) RSS syndication works on the same principle, only it happens in near real-time (minus the playing it to death part).
The power of syndication is three-fold:
- Your reading audience can get instant updates via their mobile phone, email client (Microsoft Outlook), web browser or 3rd party RSS feed reader.
- Other websites and news outlets can pick up on your feeds and your content gets a second life somewhere else on the internet.
- RSS feeds can greatly improve your ability to be picked up by search engines.
Instant Updates
Users can get instant updates on your news, articles, blogs, podcasts and videos instantly on their PCs or mobile phones. Most of the RSS feed readers can even filter results by keywords to give the user the content they want to see. For instance, I have a feed reader set up to notify me of any information about "Blackberry 8900". It's dorky, I know…but I like my blackberry.
This is a great article on RSS feeds from the user prospective.
Give Your Content a Wider Reach
Exchanging RSS feeds with other websites can be an effective way to bring new users into your site. Quite often there is a significant value added agreement between two websites to display each other's feeds. This will not only extend the reach of your content, but it will also help you out with our next subject, search engines.
RSS Search Engine Optimization
The RSS feed alone will not improve your search rankings. You need to develop a strategy that helps you make the RSS feeds work for you.
This article, RSS Search Engine Optimization, offers some great information on setting up RSS feeds. Specifically, #5 is what we should pay careful attention to. If your goal is SEO, then you need others to pick up your feeds with keyword rich links. #7 also offers some great tips on using feed aggregators. Feed aggregators combine a large amount of feeds into one giant feed and give users very targeted reading material that matches their tastes.
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