1. © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com RSS, Blogs and Search Marketing: Leveraging the Power of RSS

2. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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

3. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Slashdot headlines syndicated on Nanodot.org

4. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com The top result was thanks to syndication via RSS

5. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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

6. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

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. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Subscribe to search results on MSN Search

12. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Subscribe to search results on Yahoo! News

13. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Subscribe to deals with online retailers

14. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Subscribe to articles

15. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Subscribe to podcasts

16. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Blog software like WordPress embeds podcasts into RSS feeds automatically

17. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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

18. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com “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

19. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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. http://www.company.com/rss.php? 88288Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56

20. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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.

21. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Subscribe to a feed personalized to you

22. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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

23. CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 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