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

2. 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

3. Slashdot
headlines
syndicated on
Nanodot.org

4. The top result was thanks to
syndication via RSS

5. 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

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

9. 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, …

10. 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)

11. Subscribe to
search results
on MSN Search

12. Subscribe to
search results
on Yahoo! News

13. Subscribe to
deals with online
retailers

14. Subscribe to
articles

15. Subscribe to
podcasts

16. Blog software like WordPress embeds podcasts into RSS feeds automatically

17. 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=" />
Make your listings in the Yahoo! SERPs display the “Add to My Yahoo!” link

18. “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
.html

19. 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=" border=0 size=1 width=1>
Clickthroughs through clicktracked URLs
e.g Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56

20. 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.

21. Subscribe to
a feed
personalized to you

22. 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

23. 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