What is RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever may want to subscribe to it.
Some examples of popular RSS feed subscriptions that you might have seen are:
Why should you publish an RSS feed and or subscribe to RSS feeds on your web site?
RSS Provides Your Web Site with Consistently Updated and Topical Information
RSS data feeds are updated regularly. When this information is pushed to your web site, it is posted with the newest articles first. Most web sites will also drop the older articles based on parameters set in the RSS set up. The resulting information that is posted is keyword rich and since the actual feed was hand selected by you, it’s targeted to your audience.
This means your site, set up properly with an RSS feed, will contain relevant content that is updated regularly – giving visitors an ongoing excuse to keep reading and coming back.
If you post a newsletter or other regularly updated information on your site, it can be converted into an RSS feed very easily. An example of one that Wood Street set up for our clients can be seen at MacRo’s Web Site. This RSS feed allows visitors to subscribe to the web site content and view the latest articles through their web browser.
RSS Improves Spidering and Search Engine Rankings
Spidering refers to the process that search engines like Google use to “crawl” through your site’s content and determine your site’s ranking based on what they find. Frequent spidering is a good thing and RSS news feeds keep the search engine spiders coming back to grab the latest content.
Tests have shown that sites using RSS feeds are spidered almost as much as the sites from where the feed is generated. This means your site can really do well for specific terms contained within that feed. Since spider results are a major factor in the ranking process, these feeds will help your site achieve higher rankings.
While all of this sounds technical, it is really quite simple. The more search engines visit your site and see keyword rich content, the better your ranking will be. Targeted RSS feeds with keyword rich content will increase visits by both viewers and search engine spiders, which will boost your overall rankings.
Ready to add some RSS services to your web site?
Wood Street can help you can readily share your content, newsletters and news (publish), or pull feeds (subscribe) from other sites for your web site users and clients. Wood Street can help you publish an RSS Feed of your content that your clients, site viewers and other sites can subscribe to.
If you would like to add and enhance the keyword rich content on your web site, draw new users, and keep people coming back more often, Wood Street can help you Subscribe to RSS Feeds from one or more sources. These RSS feeds can then be embedded and integrated into your site and enhance your SEO efforts.
Contact us today and let us help you with your web and marketing services.