SEO Part 3 : What is RSS feeds and how we can benefit from RSS

This is my third article following the earlier “Proper SEO Implementation” and “how can we benefit from top social media sites”. The intend of this blog entry is to share with you some basic idea about RSS and how to use it for our marketing purposes.

I would say not many marketers understand RSS well. Yes, we use it in many occasions, but we don’t really know and comprehend on how to use it properly. Using RSS for marketing purposes requires different approach.

Let us start with what is rss?

RSS is a short form of “Really simple syndication”. It is a technology where we can broadcast our articles, blog entry or news trough a network which send the information directly to the readers. One main advantage for RSS service, Readers don’t need to visit the website for the update.  All the latest information will be send directly to subscribers’ email/RSS readers. So if we are interested in information from 10 different sites, we don’t need to visit each and every sites. What we need to do is to subscribe for the websites’ RSS feeds.  All information from the website will be send to us directly through our email or RSS readers.

What is its advantage?

There are two major benefits of using RSS.

One important advantage, RSS is fast in transmitting our website update, almost instantly. It won’t use much of our server power, as all the processing part is done by the RSS networks and readers. We don’t have to worry much about our server limitation and capability.

RSS also capable of sending back the much needed links juice. Some readers will also store our website update in a certain directory.  So when the search engine sprawl the site it will also follow our RSS links. Indirectly search engine will also consider it as a link pointing to our website. It is good for our SEO.

The disadvantage

Unfortunately RSS is also one of the most difficult systems to monetize.  Event top bloggers have a very low conversion rate. I don’t have the exact answer why this is happening. But I’m sure we can improve the odd by providing quality articles or information.

How can we use it?

Here are few recommendation on how to use RSS effectively.  Of course you can always improve the method to fit your needs.

-          We need to provide full article rather than a snippet. Most of RSS subscribers are only interested in the information that we provide. So in order to make sure they are loyal to our website, we have to provide what they are looking for.

-          Optimize Feedburner usage. Feedburner provide details information of the RSS feed which is critical for our analytical purposes. WordPress RSS don’t have such facilities. So what we need to do is to feed our website RSS feeds to Feedburner, and offer the Feedburner feeds instead.  Let me know if any of you have difficulty in setting up the Feedburner feeds. It is not that difficult.

-          We should also submit the RSS feeds to RSS directories. It will provide additional back-linking without much effort on our side, except for the RSS directory submission. We can always free ourselves from the mundane task through outsourcing.

-          As mention earlier, RSS is difficult to monetize.  Fortunately nowadays we can integrate ads along with the feeds. It can easily be done through Feedburner. Based on information that I gather, the conversion is not that attractive. However it is good an opportunity and we should optimize all the opportunities that we have.

Conclusion

As conclusion we should incorporate RSS as one of our marketing strategy.  It provides opportunity that we should use and optimize.

Related posts:

1. SEO part 2 : How can we benefit from Top Social Media Sites?
2. Article marketing Part 1 : Fundamental
3. SEO part 1 : Proper SEO implementation
4. Article marketing Part 2 : Keyword Research



One Response to “SEO Part 3 : What is RSS feeds and how we can benefit from RSS”

1. Sandeep Mishra says:

   February 22, 2012 at 11:39 am

   nice post..keep it up