Using RSS Feeds for SEO

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One of the most important factors of getting your web site noticed by the search engines is having lots of fresh keyword-rich text content on your site. Getting this has never been easier, thanks to RSS. RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary,” and it is a way for site owners to syndicate their site content to other sites, sharing headlines and article extracts. Because it is so easy to set up, RSS is often referred to as “Real Simple Syndication.”

RSS feeds provide a simple way to add keyword-rich content to your site that automatically updates itself on a weekly or even daily basis. You can easily add an RSS feed to your site that will continue to provide fresh content for as long as you keep it there, and this kind of dynamic, keyword-rich content will get your site noticed by the search engines. You would not want to create a site with nothing but RSS feeds, as this will get your site flagged as a spam site. However, you can set up a sidebar on your main site to display headlines relevant to the topic of your site next to your own original content, or you can create a “news” section of your site with 2-3 RSS feeds displaying headlines, forum threads, or blog entries on your site topic.

To display RSS feeds on your site, you will have to install software to your server and convert the pages where you would like to place the feeds to PHP. Dont worry-this is far easier than it sounds. The “Lesson Resources” section below includes information on a free and easy to use tool that will allow you to display feeds, as well as several sites where you can start looking for relevant feeds.

To display RSS feeds on your site, you will need to convert the pages where you will place the feeds to PHP. In popular HTML editors such as Dream weaver, you can do this simply by changing the “.html” file extension to “.php”. It is possible to display RSS feeds as Java scripts within HTML pages, but you should avoid this as search engines can not currently read Java scripts. Although the Java scripts will display for human visitors, for the search engines it will be as if they dont exist.

Once you have converted the necessary pages to PHP, you will need to get software that will allow you to display the feeds. Gecko Tribe offers a very easy to use RSS to HTML converter called Carp (http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/). They offer a free version that displays a small ad (“News feed displayed by Carp”) under each feed you ad to your site. There is also a paid version which has more powerful features and doesnt include an ad. Follow their very simple instructions to install the software to your site server. At the end of the set up process, Carp will give you a short piece of code to paste into your PHP page. This includes a placeholder RSS feed URL.

Now that your site is ready to display RSS feeds, you will need to find some feeds relevant to your site. When you find the feeds you want to use, you simply need to copy the URL and use it to replace the placeholder feed URL created by Carp. The following sources will help you search the quickly growing number of feeds that are out there for the asking.

RSS Feed Search Engines

You can search for relevant RSS feeds by going to this search engines and doing searches:

• Bloglines – http://www.bloglines.com
  
• BlogPulse – http://www.blogpulse.com
• Findory Blog Search – http://findory.com/blogs
• Gigablast Blog Search – http://blogs.gigablast.com
• IceRocket Blog Search = http://www.icerocket.com/?tab=blog
• Feedster – http://www.feedster.com
• Technorati – http://www.technorati.com