MYTH: RSS feeds are SEO poison

RSS feeds CAN add value to a website from an SEO standpoint.

Sitting down with my morning coffee, reading through my blog comments, I am shaken to the core with a myth I thought was long since dispelled. I came across a comment that basically says using RSS feeds to build site content is valueless. Interesting. Let me start by saying- you cant and shouldnt build your site exclusively with RSS feeds for more reasons than I am going to get into in this post. That being said, RSS feeds CAN add value to a website from an SEO standpoint.

Read also:Generate 100+ More Quality Real Estate Leads per Month by Feeding Your Blog RSS Feeds from the MLS

Why the myth came into existence:

First, the reason people think RSS feeds cant add SEO value to a site is that a long long time ago (Im talking Internet time so that could be last week) when JavaScript was the primary means of pulling feeds, search engines couldnt read or index the feed because they couldnt and still cant read JavaScript.

Why it is a myth

However, most developers today use PHP for feed pulls. PHP embeds content inline so search engines can read it. This enables a spider to read and index the content of feeds pulled with PHP. Translation: search engines can read RSS feeds just like any other text on your website.

Pulling contextually relevant feeds to boost SEO

Now, pulling just any old feed will not necessarily help you from an SEO standpoint. Here is a tip. You are a Realtor, your site is about real estate in area X, you want to be searchable by "real estate in area x," so have your developer write a script to pull an aggregate news feed from Google with search criteria that contains your primary keywords i.e. "real estate, area X."

Synergy between the keywords in on your webpage and the keywords in your feed pull will make your feed pull contextually relevant to your site and help you increase your SEO value to engines while automatically building fresh content on your site daily.

The myth that RSS feeds trip duplicate content filters

RSS feeds are designed to be excerpts from other websites, not total rips of their content. These excerpts are not long enough to trip the duplicate content filters in search engines like Google, so you wont get penalized for using them. Think about it. Sites want you to syndicate their content, if they made it prohibitive, people wouldnt do it.

The myth that RSS feeds drive traffic away from your site

Its true, feeds can drive traffic away from your site, but you can also choose to display feeds in new windows so your site is still open in a visitors browser for an easy return to your site. Besides, the value that an RSS feed adds with SEO and increased traffic to your site far outweighs the cost of possibly losing some visitors.
RSS feeds help you build an automated linking strategy

Relevant offsite links are essential to the SEO of your site. It shows search engines that you "play well with others" and can help you to achieve some backlinks from the sites you are linking to.

Using RSS feeds properly is a trick of the trade that can help you not hurt. So dont be wary of them, just be wise with them.

The science project portion of this entry:

Theory:
If a search engine can index and find content- then that content had some SEO value.

Experiment:
Still a doubting Thomas? Lets prove the point. I wrote a press release last month that contained the phrase "RSS Pieces Launches MyRealtyBlog ..." Many sites have syndicated that press release. Go to your favorite search engine. I am going to use Yahoo! because I like their click new interface. And search for "RSS Pieces Launches MyRealtyBlog."
All 1,151 of the results that came up were excerpts of our press release pulled through RSS or Atom feeds.

Conclusion:
Proper implementation of an RSS feed pull on your site does help your site from an SEO standpoint.