The importance of RSS feeds in SEO

An RSS Feed is a method of content distribution, Really Simple Syndication. As a web publisher, or blog writer, when you create a new piece of content, you want regular readers to know about it as fast as possible. An RSS Feed is basically an XML document that describes your page’s content. When this is updated, people who have subscribed to it can see the change in their browser without even visiting your site. They can read the new article from their Feed Reader.

An RSS Feed Reader is a plugin that we talked about that you can use to create a bookmark of content. Everytime you check for new content, instead of visiting all your favorite sites, you can merely click a single button and it checks for you. New articles show up with previews and the ability to see the content in your browser without visiting the site.

Beyond being a source of information to your users, RSS can be a vital part of your SEO strategy. RSS feeds can be optimized for search engines and can therefore generate significant amounts of traffic showing interest in that content. They also cache very quickly, allowing the search engines to index your site much faster, thus boosting your web site’s SEO strategy. If you create your RSS feed properly, Google’s spiders will more easily recognize new content and you can leverage the posts as content through linking opportunities.

There are 10 easy ways to integrate an RSS feed into your overall SEO strategy:

Use common search terms in your RSS headline titles.

Integrate your RSS feed into your site, displaying them prominently.

Use full path links within the internal and external links and use the links to emphasize the most popular keywords.

Create accounts on major search engine sites then post your RSS feed on a page within your account. This will help your RSS feed be recognized easier and faster by those engines.

Use themes for your feeds to ensure that content gets linked back to the publishers site.

Submit your feed and feed links to popular sites and directories.

Create descriptions of your feeds to let the user know what each feed is about. Put just enough teaser content to peak the users attention but not enough to summarize the content.

Subscribe to your own feed to ensure that your content looks the way you want.

Reinforce your brand identity by using corporate images in your feed. (and use alt text on your images!)

Use alphabetical lists (or make your first feed start with the letter a) so that when your feed displays amongst other feeds it will be displayed first alphabetically.