RSS: Cool Tool for Search Engine Marketing

Increase traffic and get inbound links by the use of RSS files.

By Paul J. Bruemmer

(April, 2005) This could be the year RSS comes of age. While it's been around for a number of years since original development by Netscape, RSS is not yet widely adopted.

Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs publish content summaries in an RSS feed, but there are billions of web pages on the Internet.

RSS makes it easy to publish content without using HTML, enabling it to be updated and aggregated in real time. It gives users the opportunity to opt-in for information, accessing it through an RSS reader (also referred to as a news aggregator or newsreader).

Each item in an RSS feed has a title (headline), a brief article summary and link to the online article, making the info quickly scanable.

As RSS gains wider acceptance, it will impact the way companies communicate online and the way users get information. RSS not only provides benefits for publishers and users, it also enhances Search Engine Marketing programs.

• RSS enables publishers to reach niche markets
• Facilitates corporate communications without spam filters
• Shelters users from email spam
• Saves time and facilitates data retrieval
• Drives more qualified traffic to sites with SEM programs
• Provides more inbound links to sites with SEM programs

What Is RSS?

RSS, an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, is an XML-based format for content distribution (source CNET). The RSS code creates an XML file describing the content of your RSS feed (website content or other communications).

A new breed of Internet search crawlers, also known as aggregators, stop by to visit and read your RSS feed periodically.

When you provide new information, the aggregator retrieves the new data and sends it to opt-in users worldwide. Information about your site's content, such as articles or press releases, can be syndicated or publicized to a potentially large audience.

How many people are using RSS?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 6 million Americans have RSS readers. RSS is growing at a similar rate as web pages about ten years ago.

Feeds are estimated to be in the millions now, whereas they were only in the thousands a couple years ago.

Communication Tool for Publishers

The beauty of RSS is that it provides a non-intrusive way for site owners to draw attention to new articles and content, as well as other communications like press releases, customer notifications and event announcements.

Information in the RSS feed is easily syndicated, increasing content distribution and reach, giving publishers more exposure in niche markets. It allows publishers to communicate with targeted user groups, reaching potential customers through a new communication channel. RSS automates content delivery.

Today, many people rely on the web, at work and at home. Organizing your computer and the data within it can be a challenge because so much information is available from different sources.

A lot of people have gone to newsreader applications like Pluck to manage their online information. Visits between browsers, email, search engines, and now RSS readers, enable people to control their own information center.

Since the launch of such tools to manage online activities, RSS has become fashionable, resulting in quite a large audience for RSS feeds containing your syndicated content.

RSS simplifies communication between publishers and users. Now that it's gaining popularity, marketers are using RSS feeds to deliver content. RSS readers aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy to quickly scan data within each feed. The feeds also have themes, so you can opt-in by topic of interest.

A significant benefit of RSS is its opt-in feature, which gives users control over the information they receive.

RSS could eventually rival email as a communication tool for two major reasons: (1) the technology is appealing because of its simplicity and (2) because content is delivered based on user choice, it can eliminate publisher burdens such as maintaining email lists, avoiding spam filters and establishing privacy policies.

Timesaving Tool for Users

Users can quickly scan article titles to read information of interest. Because the feed data is centralized, users can review a lot of information quickly or click for more. Users choose the information they want without spam anxiety. If the content is disappointing, just remove it from your reader.

A major advantage of RSS feed data over search engine data is its timeliness. The XML documents used in RSS can be indexed from millions of sources several times per hour, providing updated posts to existing content.

The HTML documents used in traditional search engines are also indexed quickly, but they can't deliver the same depth of information or provide immediate updates to existing content.

RSS readers provide easy navigation for classifying and categorizing data. This maximizes your time and facilitates later retrieval. The readers constantly update your feeds and indicate unread feeds. In fact, a reader functions much like an email client.

Next to Pluck, FeedDemon is user friendly and also allows for quick scanning and indexing of topics while viewing content in a split-screen web browser.

To find topic-specific feeds, search Feedster, the RSS search engine that indexes XML feeds. You can conduct a search and also retrieve and submit feeds. Feedster has “a fresh index across over 6 million feeds several times per hour, adding millions of new documents daily.”

Cool Tool for Search Engine Marketing

I can see two major benefits of RSS syndication for search engine marketing: (1) you can significantly increase qualified traffic to your site, and (2) this syndication tool can result in obtaining quality inbound links. Many webmasters will add RSS content and corresponding links to their website if they find the content to be fresh and of interest to their audience.

You can get links directly to your RSS feed the same way you get links to your traditional web pages. The RSS feed provides an additional component that is linkable.

Create Your Own RSS Feed

Using RSS, publishers can create keyword-rich content, establish trust and reputation, and generate ongoing communication with prospective customers and target groups.

The Yellowstonepark.com site owners are journalists and have traditionally published many content-rich articles offline. Once I suggested RSS, the offline articles were shifted online via RSS feed.

These articles now have broad distribution to niche users seeking the latest information on Yellowstone National Park. To see the XML icon and Archive News link on Yellowstone Park's main News page, click here and look in the bottom left-hand corner.

You don't have to be a techie to publish your RSS feed. For more information on how to create an RSS feed, I found the tutorial by Stephen Downes to be the best and certainly the most entertaining. Another excellent RSS resource can be found in a blog at Harvard Law.

A good resource for RSS information, including an RSS Feed Creation Tool, is RSS Specifications, listing over 50 sites for submitting RSS feeds.

Google employee Thomas Korte provides a tool that submits your feed to 15 feed aggregators including Daypop, Technorati, Google and Yahoo Search. For premium RSS submission services, try Nooked or Simplefeed.

It's a Win-Win

RSS is a valuable marketing tool that is effective for reaching niche customers and prospects. You'll also catch the eye of the journalists monitoring these feeds, as well as your business partners, affiliates and investors.

Users will love its timesaving, information-centralizing and spam-free quality. Websites will enjoy the extra traffic and inbound links. RSS will impact many aspects of the Internet space.

TrademarkSEO is a search engine optimization firm based in Santa Ynez Valley, California and serves clients nationwide. His company provided search submission services to over 10,000 websites, including many of the most prominent names in American business.

Information on Pandia's own RSS-feed.

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