© 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts RSS, Blogs and Search Marketing: Leveraging the Power of RSS

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts RSS, A “Killer App”  Better than the Inbox –Unspammable content delivery channel to individuals –Viable replacement for enewsletters  Web-wide Syndication –Propagate deep links that drive traffic and link gain

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Slashdot headlines syndicated on Nanodot.org

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts The top result was thanks to syndication via RSS

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts 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

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

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

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts 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, …

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts 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)

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to search results on MSN Search

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to search results on Yahoo! News

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to deals with online retailers

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to articles

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to podcasts

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Blog software like WordPress embeds podcasts into RSS feeds automatically

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Make It Easy to Subscribe  1-click add to your favorite aggregator –“Add to ____” buttons –Link tags for autodiscovery e.g. –Make your listings in the Yahoo! SERPs display the “Add to My Yahoo!” link

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts “Add to My Yahoo!” link in SERPs  Add your feed to your My Yahoo! Page  Ping Yahoo! with your updates –e.g. u= –Or just use Pingomatic  More info at –

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts 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.  Clickthroughs through clicktracked URLs –e.g Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts 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 , 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.

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Subscribe to a feed personalized to you

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Capture the Link Gain  Encourage links through RSS directories/engines submission ( 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

CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Taking It Further  Great ebook: Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS (Marketingstudies.net)  MarketingProfs.com’ Thought Leaders Summit on blogs for marketing – me for a free copy of the executive summary, podcast, and transcript:  Download the Powerpoint from –