RSS, Blogs and Search Marketing:
Leveraging the Power of RSS
© 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
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Slashdot
headlines
syndicated
on
Nanodot.org
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
The top result
was thanks to
syndication via
RSS
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
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Work RSS to the limit
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Give it away
Make it easy to subscribe
Track subscriber behavior
Personalize the content
Capture the link gain
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, …
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)
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
search results
on MSN Search
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
search results
on Yahoo! News
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
deals with online
retailers
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
articles
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe
to
podcasts
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Blog software
like
WordPress
embeds
podcasts into
RSS feeds
automatically
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. <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3"
href="http://feeds.stephanspencer.com/scatterings" />
– Make your listings in the Yahoo! SERPs display the “Add to
My Yahoo!” link
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
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. <img
src="http:www.company.com/cp/.5424Cafaa903cf09ecafb231
662ca053c4c56” border=0 size=1 width=1>
 Clickthroughs through clicktracked URLs
– e.g. http://www.company.com/rss.php?
88288Cafaa903cf09ecafb231662ca053c4c56
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.
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
a feed
personalized
to you
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
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
CONFIDENTIAL © 2005 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com