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| RSS Is Good For Search Engine Visibility |
Branding has been called the most powerful idea in business, yet few companies realize just how much their brand is affected by search engine visibility today. Studies show that searchers regard the companies that are placed on page one in the search engines as the major players in that field.
Search engine visibility can seem like voodoo to many marketers. Business owners and entrepreneurs throw their up hands in despair at the idea of ever getting page one search results. But there is an online marketing tool that will give you a marked increase in search engine visibility and brand lift, if used correctly - RSS.
RSS - Really Simple Syndication - is a technology that allows you to syndicate your content online and reach a much wider audience. People are moving over to reading in RSS format because it has no spam and it's like TiVO for the Web - it let's you control the flow of information and read what you want, when you want it.
The number of people reading RSS feeds is growing by leaps and bounds
Feed Burner reports that subscriptions to the feeds they manage is growing by one percent a day. USAToday.com and the NYTimes.com say they see double-digit increases in their RSS subscriptions every month. And these are the people you want to reach theyre opinion leaders and early adopters.
RSS is the perfect way to meet the needs expressed by consumers in the recent Ponemon Institute study. Over 80 percent of respondents said they want to be updated on news and offers from companies if it is relevant to them and 64 percent said theyd trust the marketer more if they were in control of how the message was delivered to them.
Search engines are paying a lot of attention to RSS feeds right now. Yahoo and MSN have baked RSS readers into their sites. RSS got a huge boost when Microsoft announced late last month that its next-generation Windows platform, code-named Longhorn, will include support for RSS technology.
Google, Yahoo and others have said they will be working with advertisers to market on RSS streams.
Microsoft plans to add RSS as an integral part of the next version of Internet Explorer and it's already in Firefox and Safari - the browser for Macs.
Why RSS feeds Increase Search Engine Visibility
The purpose of a feed is to deliver content and news to your public. So by its very nature a feed has constantly updated content. Its focused on a narrow subject matter (your business/industry) so it tends to be keyword rich. This gets the attention of the search engines and they index your feed more often. When your feed is picked up and used by other sites it creates links back to your site, which also increases your search engine visibility.
Every aspect of an RSS feed fits right into the search criteria. AL you have to do is write relevant and interesting content that is focused on your keywords and your site will start to climb in the search results.
Case Studies
BTI Communications, Limited is a privately held company in the business telephony space. In August 2004, when Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones became such a hot item, BTI was faced with new competitors with deep marketing budgets. They had no online visibility at all and had to make their presence known fast on a tight budget.
BTI started a blog called VOIP Insights using the Myst Technologies Blogsite platform. One of the features of this platform is that it utilizes RSS feeds to the hilt. Here are just some of the page-one positions BTI now has in Google. As a result, the traffic to their corporate website is up by over 70 percent.
#1 Voip vs traditional phone system
#1 VoIP solution provider
#2 VoIP small business
#2 VoIP architecture
#5 VoIP phone equipment
#6 VoIP benefits
#7 VoIP Small Business costs
Search results like these depend to a large degree on making your feed known. PRESSfeed has a great list of sites where you should register your feed.
Naturally Painless developer Judy Cutler's site was not performing at all. She had very little traffic and no search visibility - even on the name of the product.
Culter chose to use a very simple RSS service -PRESSfeed that is perfect for entrepreneurs with a limited budget. With this service you can upload your content to your site without knowing any technical skills. The content is added to your own site instantly as well as being syndicated in an RSS feed.
"The first month I started to see an increase in my visibility and my traffic. This is the second month and I am now getting a steady flow of sales every day," says Cutler. She is now setting up a secnod feed.
RSS Brings Media Attention
The BTI RSS feed on Voice Over IP for Small Business was picked up by an Hispanic website about VoIP. A reporter from Hispanic Business Magazine, looking for information for an article, saw this feed and called BTI for an interview.
BTI did not even know there was a magazine called Hispanic Business, let alone that they were doing an article on VoIP for small business. Thats the power of RSS.
Success in online marketing depends on being found in the search engines, getting qualified traffic to your site, marketing to the visitors who have been to your site, delivering relevant messages to them in a way they can control to build trust and relationships.
RSS feeds do it all.
About the author:
Sally Falkow is a partner in Expansion Plus
Since 1999 she has concentrated on the use of online technology to improve corporate communications. She is the author of The POWER Brand Strategy and WebSense - effective web strategies for entrepreneurs. She speaks internationally on Internet Marketing Strategy. Read her blog
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