RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is one of those technologies that seems to mean different things to different people. To online publishers, RSS is a great way of getting their content headlines syndicated through more channels, and thereby getting more page views. To ecommerce companies, RSS is a constant connection to their customers through a medium that offers advantages over email. And to some RSS syndication is a way to help boost their organic search rankings.

How does RSS help increase search rankings? There are a couple of methods that can have a significant impact, depending on how you leverage RSS. The most common method we at USWeb use is to help create content easily on the site, and get that content as much visibility as possible. This is done in a couple different ways. First, by adding content often (we suggest at least 3 times per week), you offer up fresh content for search engines to crawl. The more often your content changes, the more often the search engines will crawl your site. And by having more unique content on your site, you increase your chances of ranking for new terms. The more relevant content you have index on your site, the more search engines consider your site to be an authority on the topic. Adding new content on a regular basis gives you the ability to add cross linking to other pages within your site to help those pages rank as well.

Also, by getting this content syndicated through channels like Feedurner or IceRocket, you gain readers who may find your content valuable enough to link from their website, thus generating additional PageRank and Link Popularity through the natural popularity of your content.

USWeb helps clients with their blog and RSS marketing efforts by providing a turnkey blog solution, Blogitive.

The other method of using RSS to increase your search rankings is to add RSS feeds from other Websites to help boost the content on your Web pages. This is the method most common on the Web, and it’s unfortunately become one of the fastest ways to spread search engine spam across the Internet.

Search engine spammers will often open a free blogging account through Blogger or another service and add RSS feeds from other sites. Occasionally some of the more work ethic driven will add a paragraph to the page to give it some unique content. The next step is to register their blog with a couple blog directories, or swap links with a couple other blogs. The final touch is to add an AdWords box to the top of the page. They then have a fully functional Web publishing business. They have a site that is indexed into search engines, fresh content that they never have to write themselves, and very targeted ads that generate revenue. These pages are sometimes referred to as “mash-up” sites, and most offer very little value to readers. But, if someone is dedicated to this, they could make a decent living doing nothing more than maintaining these types of sites.

It’s obvious that Google will easily figure out a way to place those sites where they belong. But that doesn’t mean that using external RSS feeds to help boost your site is always a bad tactic. There are legitimate ways to leverage RSS. Adding an external RSS feed to your page is sometimes an appropriate way to help your search engine optimization efforts. The key is to make sure that there is still unique content on the page, and that the RSS feed is enhancing the content on your page. For example, if you have a page that you would like to have ranked for the term “financial advice”, having RSS feeds from MarketWatch, The Street, or The Motley Fool, would be a good idea. As long as the RSS feeds are in addition to your own unique, relevant content.

To learn more about the benefits of RSS marketing, you can listen to our Podcast on the subject. And check out our corporate blog management platform.

search engine optimization, google adwords, google adsense, rss marketing, blog marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 10:47 amand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.