RSS Feeds are critical to your SEO strategy.
RSS? Really Simple Syndication. Bet that helped… 
RSS is the juice that keeps the Web moving...
RSS is the “juice” behind Web 2.0. As we discussed in the first part of this article on leveraging the web, in today’s Internet there are two types of businesses, those that use new technology to push their messages to their customers, and those that are still trying to figure out how to do that. RSS is part of the “how you to that.”
Now, we aren’t going to go get all technical here. You don’t need to “know” a new coding language (don’t go run out and buy “RSS for Dummies“… yes, that is a real book). Here’s what I want you to do:
- Become RSS “aware”: It’s all around you. Look for the RSS Icon. You might even click on it. You might be a bit confused by what you see, but we’ll get to that in a second. The point is that RSS is “everywhere” these days (except on your site, right?). Now… if we could just figure out how to leverage RSS to OUR advantage…
- Get an RSS “reader”: This is the important part. You can read most RSS feeds directly in your browser, but then you’ll have to open each feed EVERY time
you want to see what is going on with that site. That isn’t very efficient, is it? No. And that’s sort of the point of all of this… LEVERAGING the tools… So go grab yourself an RSS reader. You can Google “RSS readers” and find something that works for you. I personally recommend Google’s Reader (http://www.google.com/reader) as that allows me to keep track of my feeds from pretty much any browser.
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Subscribe to at least TWO RSS feeds using your reader: Start with the RSS feed for this site
then add at least one more feed. Remember, we’re talking about using the tools here. Subscribing to just one feed is certainly a start, but the real benefits of will become apparent when you are keeping up with multiple feeds at the same time from one location. This is the power of Web 2.0.
I should also note here that you can pull RSS feeds into other sites as well. If you’re on Facebook (FeO is!) you can import feeds directly to your profile using several methods (Google for more information). Again… that’s the “magic” to all of this… you can read this data from pretty much anywhere you already are… now… if there were only a way for YOU to get YOUR information out to YOUR customers in such a manner…