Understanding RSS And Search Engine Optimisation
RSS and search engine optimisation are becoming powerful tools to attract web traffic to your site. Just like a regular HTML web page must be optimized for search engines, a RSS feed must be optimized as well. The first step of this optimization is to have your feed convey a powerful theme consistent with the overall theme of your site. Here are some other tips to garner the full benefit of this important tool.
One of the most important elements of a RSS feed is the channel title. The channel title is the first thing a website visitor will see so it should make a first good impression to attract the visitor’s interest. Put many keywords in the channel title that are relevant to the general theme of the RSS feed. This will also help search engines to properly categorize your feed. If you are going to use a company name or brand put it at the end of the RSS feed channel title not the beginning.
Use the channel description field to elaborate on the general theme of the RSS feed. Make the channel description rich in keywords and phrases for search engine spiders but also make sure it written for human readers. Take some time to compose a description that provides of an overview of the RSS feed’s content.
RSS feed item titles should be written like a newspaper headline, about 50 to 75 characters long, and should contain keywords. Leave HTML out of titles. A well written title will attract readers.
Grammar and spelling errors will chase potential visitors away. Take the time to carefully proofread your work. Your objective is to get readers to click through to your site. Therefore, make the items easy for humans to read. It is fine to have it optimized to a certain extent but not to the point where it is not friendly to human readers.
Optimize your anchor text with specific keywords and phrases. This will help in getting your feed syndicated and being re posted by other publishers. A properly optimized anchor text will help in search engine website ranking.
Old items in your RSS feed should be deleted. Feeds that are too large will slow down RSS readers or not display. Perform regular maintenance on your feed items to prune old items.
Use header tags, H1 or H2, to display RSS feed’s item titles. It will help optimize the page if you use keywords in the header tags. When using URLs in your feed, try to use keywords separated by hyphens.
If you use images in your feed size them at 88×31 and use a full URL to avoid broken links. Images add an attractive and sophisticated look to your feed. Images will add to your brand recognition.
If you use a favicon in your domain’s root directory, RSS feed directories will display your site’s favorite icon. This will focus attention on your feed over those feeds that do not use a favicon. Employing optimization methods will make your RSS feed an effective marketing technique. Taking the time to implement RSS and search engine optimisation techniques will have a great payback in increase web traffic and revenues.
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