RSS, Blogs and Search Marketing: Leveraging the Power of RSS

RSS, A “Killer App” Better than the Inbox Web-wide Syndication Unspammable content delivery channel to individuals Viable replacement for enewsletters Web-wide Syndication Propagate deep links that drive traffic and link gain

Slashdot headlines syndicated on Nanodot.org

The top result was thanks to syndication via RSS

Client-side vs. Hosted App Web-based aggregator Bloglines (owned by Ask Jeeves), My Yahoo!, MyMSN, Google Reader, MyFeedster, etc. Installed application NewsGator (Outlook plug-in), Sage (Firefox plug-in), Pluck (IE plug-in), FeedReader, etc. IE7 supports RSS natively

Work RSS to the limit Give it away Make it easy to subscribe Track subscriber behavior Personalize the content Capture the link gain

Give It Away What will help subscribers keep their finger on the pulse of your business/industry and compel webmasters to disseminate to their visitors? News alerts, latest specials, clearance items, upcoming events, new arrivals, new articles, new tools & resources, search results, a book’s revision history, top 10 best sellers, project management activities, forum/listserve posts, recently added downloads, … For blogs: latest posts, latest posts by category, latest comments per post, …

Give It Away Full text, not just summaries Watch out for SEOs using your feed content as search engine fodder and hoarding the link gain (through href rel=nofollow or by stripping out your links)

Subscribe to search results on MSN Search

Subscribe to search results on Yahoo! News

Subscribe to deals with online retailers

Subscribe to articles

Subscribe to podcasts

Blog software like WordPress embeds podcasts into RSS feeds automatically

Make It Easy to Subscribe 1-click add to your favorite aggregator “Add to ____” buttons Link tags for autodiscovery e.g. <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="http://feeds.stephanspencer.com/scatterings" /> Make your listings in the Yahoo! SERPs display the “Add to My Yahoo!” link

“Add to My Yahoo!” link in SERPs Add your feed to your My Yahoo! Page Ping Yahoo! with your updates e.g. http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping? u=http://www.whatever.com/rss) Or just use Pingomatic More info at http://my.yahoo.com/s/publishers .html

Track Subscriber Behavior Subscribers from User-Agent field in log files e.g. User-Agent: Bloglines 2.0 (182 Subscribers) Reads through “web bugs” e.g. <img src="http:www.company.com/cp/.5424Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56” border=0 size=1 width=1> Clickthroughs through clicktracked URLs e.g. http://www.company.com/rss.php? 88288Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56

Personalize the Content Best practice for users Subscription form with interests tickboxes Allow the user to stay anonymous if they so choose Give them the option of subscribing via RSS, or email, or both Personalized feeds not ideal from an SEO standpoint Because you’re not reinforcing the same items across multiple sites. Offer standardized feeds for your affiliates, other webmasters. Make keyword-rich as a value-add.

Subscribe to a feed personalized to you

Capture the Link Gain Encourage links through RSS directories/engines submission (www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/), trackbacks, pings (Technorati, Pingomatic,…), Clicktrack your links and pass the link gain 301 (“permanent”) redirect, not 302, or link gain may not flow Most ads and affiliate links suffer this fate Warning: Feedburner and Simplefeed use 302, not 301 Pay attention to each item title; it’ll become link text Keep your RSS feed URL at your own domain

Taking It Further Great ebook: Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS (Marketingstudies.net) MarketingProfs.com’ Thought Leaders Summit on blogs for marketing email me for a free copy of the executive summary, podcast, and transcript: sspencer@netconcepts.com Download the Powerpoint from http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/rss.ppt