Search Engine Marketing Conference : RSS benefits & feeds management

Lee Odden, President of TopRank Online Marketing, reports day two of the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference included a session on RSS, Blogs and Search Marketing moderated by Danny Sullivan. Here’s the highlights.

Benefits of RSS

• Build stronger customer relationships
• Avoids email spam
• Easy to maintain
• Proven traffic generator

Uses of RSS Feeds

• Affiliate
• Syndicating your content
• Product announcements, uses, tips, articles
• Customer communications
• Press room
• Career channel
• RSS drives traffic – 6.8% CTR on RSS feeds to site (simple feed)

Optimize your feeds

• Use keywords in the title < 100 characters
• Write description as if it were for a directory < 500 characters
• Use full paths onlinks and unique URLs for each item
• Each feed should have a keyword theme
• Include images for branding
• Submit your feeds
• Claim your feed at Technorati and subscribe to your own feed
• Make your feeds available for syndication – FeedRoll
• Use media specific feeds for iTunes and Yahoo! Media
• Measure circulation, viewership and readership