Can Someone Explain RSS for SEO In Plain English?

[packerfan]

I'm an RSS idiot. I use it to send email updates to my subscribers, but I don't do anything at all with it for SEO.

Can someone explain in plain English how it works, if it's effective, etc?

I'm talking specifically about SEO, I understand it's intended to easily syndicate content. But the whole submitting to RSS directories, etc I don't understand.

[packerfan]

Guess I'm not the only one?

[Louie Sioco]

RSS submissions isn't necessary in SEO, but it helps especially in early stages.

It helps the search engines index your sites faster so you don't have to keep on pinging your pages every time you post a new one.

Does that help?

[zabalex]

There is just one thing that you can do with RSS if SEO is considered. Submit it to different RSS directories, this will help you get more back links. When you submit a RSS into RSS directories all the URLs of your blog fetched by them along with the title of the post and a snippet of the description. All your new posts will also automatically get backlinks as soon as they go live.

[Louie Sioco]

Originally Posted by zabalex

There is just one thing that you can do with RSS if SEO is considered. Submit it to different RSS directories, this will help you get more back links. When you submit a RSS into RSS directories all the URLs of your blog fetched by them along with the title of the post and a snippet of the description. All your new posts will also automatically get backlinks as soon as they go live.

For the backlinks, I'm not so sure if Google puts much value into it. My RSS feed submissions doesn't usually appear in Google Webmaster Tools. But if it does, then that's a good bonus.

[Stevetyler72]

Got to admit that I don't get this either

[packerfan]

So basically there are big directories of RSS feeds, and they take a post and link the title of the post back to the URL on the site? So if I have a feed with 50 posts, I'd essentially get 50 links?

I guess I still don't get it. Maybe I'm just to old at 32 to understand it...

[ButterflyGarden]

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

RSS is a standard format for syndicating content on the Internet. The content can be anything!

Users can choose which feeds they wish to subscribe to, if at any point they are unhapy with the content contained in the RSS feed they simply unsubscribe and no longer receive feed updates.

RSS feeds are usually signalled by a small orange icon or if you are using Firefox and the website has an RSS feed available an icon will appear in the URL box. You can click the icon to see the contents of the RSS feed.

More Information on RSS:
RSS Specifications and RSS Feeds
RSS Tools
FeedForAll Newsletters and Articles

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by packerfan

So basically there are big directories of RSS feeds, and they take a post and link the title of the post back to the URL on the site? So if I have a feed with 50 posts, I'd essentially get 50 links?

I guess I still don't get it. Maybe I'm just to old at 32 to understand it...

You're getting closer...

There are big directories for RSS pheeds which index the pheeds.

The major search engines (Google) spiders these directories pretty often, almost constantly. So links included in RSS pheeds will get spidered pretty quickly.

Many autoblogging software products scrape these directories. IMO, this is the main goal: To have your RSS scraped and posted on these blogs, so you'll get links from their sites this way.

Some sites you need to submit your pheed to. Others you just ping when you have an update and others you do both. Submitting is a one-time thing. If you have an auto-submitter, use it. And update your blog ping list. The pinging is automatic.

As you create more cyber real estate, many of these resources will also produce an RSS pheed. Submit and ping them too.

A little RSS submit and ping won't do much other than get your links spidered/indexed quickly. But over time, as you create more and more sites with more and more RSS pheeds, the strategy can have a big impact.

For WP blogs, I use: Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger

The default WP pinger will ping every time you make an edit. Pinging too often can get our site banned. Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger only pings when a new post is created.

I use this ping list...Not too big to slow WP down, but covers all the major ping services:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.blogs.yandex.ru/RPC2
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.myblog.jp/
http://ping.rss.drecom.jp
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.bloggerei.de/
http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/
http://rpc.odiogo.com/ping/
http://rpc.reader.livedoor.com/ping
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.feedgy.com/
http://zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php

[packerfan]

Many thanks sir, so it's less about the backlinks that are generated, and more about getting your links indexed?

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by packerfan

Many thanks sir, so it's less about the backlinks that are generated, and more about getting your links indexed?

That's correct. I would say the main reason to ping an RSS pheed is to get Google to your page as soon as possible. And the faster Google visits a new page, the faster it can rank.


The building of links through takes some time and effort (and a little luck).

Having said this...I'm thinking that Google's new "Fresh" update, which ranks new pages for "news worthy" queries looks at the time stamp in RSS pheeds and uses them as for ranking. Just a guess at this point, but something to think about.

[Kurt]

Let's take it a step further...In my list of ping services above, you'll see a URL:
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

The URL above is the site WebLogs' ping service. When you "ping" that URL, it tells Weblogs.com to visit you page.

But instead of using the ping URL, check out Weblogs.com home page:

Weblogs.com : Weblogs

Notice how it keep updating? This happens as it is pinged.

Also notice the RSS buttons. Some are gray and others orange. The gray ones are from pages that were pinged but don't have RSS pheeds. Click on an orange one. You'll see the RSS pheed.

Notice how much more info is included in the RSS than just the link to the site. All the info in the RSS pheed will (likely) be followed by Google.

Any page can be pinged, but those pages that also have an RSS pheed have a big advantage.

In web pages, there's a meta tag called an "autodiscovery tag" that tells spiders that there is an RSS pheed for the page. In your browser, if you go to a page with an RSS pheed an icon will turn orange.

Wordpress takes care of this automatically. It adds an autodiscovery tag to each page/post added. You ping a post and a site like Weblogs or Google comes to the page, sees the autodiscovery tag, then also checks out the RSS pheed.

Google spiders hang out at sites like Weblogs so that Google can find the lastest updates. You ping sites like Weblogs so your page is on their homepage, even if just for a few seconds.

[packerfan]

Kurt,

Really appreciate all the info! It's starting to sink in slowly but surely.

[tobi1kanoby]

Kurt, That's a great way to explain RSS.
One other method of using these feeds, is by syndicating your posts, videos, articles, ecs.. to your social networks. You can set a free ping.fm, pixelpipe, hellotxt and other services to push your content to social accounts you set through them. I personally gather different feeds through HootSuit and connect it to ping.fm.
This way my content is widely spread with little effort.

[packerfan]

Originally Posted by tobi1kanoby

Kurt, That's a great way to explain RSS.
One other method of using these feeds, is by syndicating your posts, videos, articles, ecs.. to your social networks. You can set a free ping.fm, pixelpipe, hellotxt and other services to push your content to social accounts you set through them. I personally gather different feeds through HootSuit and connect it to ping.fm.
This way my content is widely spread with little effort.

Man maybe this will all click one day...