Build an RSS Feed for your site -

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a good way to get content that is frequently updated out to users (e.g: special offers, news stories). It also helps build more visibility in natural listings, as many sites will link to this content. The feeds can either be subscribed to by visitors or can be syndicated by other webmasters.

Therefore, the text used for the titles and link text is important. Link text should target important keywords which should also appear in the text of the article that the feed links to.

The description also follows the same guidelines as with web pages. They can be used to improve click through and so should be made enticing and use a 'call to action'.

How to create an RSS Feed -

Formatting the XML file: Main configuration -

1) Open a new notepad file. When creating a new feed, the first line always has to be an "XML declaration."

Based on formatting, here are the two most common versions.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?>

2) Enter a version tag, most commonly noted as <rss version="2.0">

3) Enter a channel tag to open the feed contents <channel>

4) Name the feed - Do this by entering a standard title tag as you would any page - for example: <title>Latest news on RSS Feed Optimization</title>, then enter the root domain on the next line as a link <link>http://www.nameofsite.com</link>. Follow this up with a description tag such as <description>This RSS Feed contains the latest news about optimizing your RSS Feed.</description>

5) (optional) Add a category tag <category>Marketing</category>

6) Add an image tag; this will put a logo into all feed readers.
Example :<image><url>http://www.nameofsite.com/locationofimage.gif</url>
<title>Name of RSS Feed</title> <link>http://www.nameofsite.com</link></image>

Individual Articles -

7) After this, you will need an "item" tag for every single article. The layout for each article is

<item>
<title>name of article</title>
<link>url of actual article</link>
<description>either a manually written 2 line description of the article, or scraped content from the original page. Many sites with automated feeds scrape content and/or use a ![CDATA[ command, which you will need to discuss with your web team in more detail. Don't forget to close the description tag and the end of it.</description>
<pubdate>Tue, 23 Jul 2007 11:01:10 GMT</pubdate>(NOTE - Dates in RSS feeds should comply to RFC 822. In CFML the DateFormat mask would be ddd, dd mmm yyyy and the TimeFormat would be HH:mm:ss. Dates should be offset to GMT)
</item>

Repeat this for every article (known as "items"). This can be done via a spreadsheet at first, with data added based on commands. There is no one exact way to do an RSS feed - but additional details and options on how to do so are available on http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html

8) To End the feed - Close the "Channel" and "RSS" tags - </channel></rss>

Next Steps -

9) Upload the XML file to your server and validate the feed - places online provide free validation, such as http://www.rss-specifications.com/feed-validators.htm

10) Once this is ready, the feed can be submitted and sent to be picked up. However, the sites that read newsfeeds will only take what is on the actual feed. If your site adds content, you have to update the feed too. This can be done by manually editing the feed, or by developing an automated script in-house.

11) You also want to make the feed readily available on your site, whether as an option on certain pages, or a site wide button or link labelled "RSS NEWS FEED" or something similar to that.

This and other SEO tips are available on evolution search marketing. Please contact us if you have any question and would like a proposal for your search marketing needs.

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