RSS Feeds and Search Engine Optimization

I have been asked many times if adding RSS feed content to your web site helps improve page rank and web site placement in the free search listings. First we have to look at RSS and if it's right for your web site.

RSS is basically Really Simple Syndication written in XML code. It allows a script to run in a RSS Reader or on your website that allows updated content that you subscribe to automatically become up to date as soon as it is published.

It is an alternative means of accessing the vast amount of information that now exists on the world wide web. Instead of the user browsing websites for information of interest, the information is sent directly to the user.

The great thing about this is that you can always have fresh content on your site without having to do any updating or babysitting.

Search engines have been known to eat up RSS feed content on web sites. They love to deliver new information to visitors. One thing to remember is that the feed must be displayed in HTML format. Search engine spiders do not read java script as plain text, so it is essential to better placement that HTML code be placed in your site instead.

There are several programs that do all the hard work for you. RSS Equalizer is easy to install and lets you customize your feeds to fit your particular subject content you need. It all works on your web server backend. You log in, set up the categories of feed you want, test them, and place them on your site. No need to update, it's all automatic.

Next, does your site have an area that you can ad RSS feed content to? You can ad some to the home page. In the setup, you can set how many topics you want listed on a page.

It is only relevant to the engines if the keywords you are trying to place with also reflect in the RSS content. So the keywords must be in the title tag, keyword tag, description tag, page content, and RSS feed content for best results.

Try testing a secondary page that is not your home page. Optimize your web site for best placement, and then add the RSS content. MSN will pick it up very quickly, Yahoo, and Google will be soon to follow. If certain content doesn't work, go back to the sites where you pulled the RSS feeds from and see if there is more keyword relevant content.

For example you can pull an SEO related feed that will have SEO in every topic. Ten topics to the feed, that's 10 keywords added to your page content.

Keep an eye on it for the first few weeks. If it is getting you into the listings, you are doing great. You have a robotic editor keeping your site in great position.

Good luck and have fun not matter what you do.