I don't get RSS

[brandondrury]

I must be missing something. I don't understand this whole RSS thing. To clarify, I don't see how I benefit by putting someone else's feed on my site. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the 3 times I've added RSS to one of my sites, it seams that all I'm really doing is putting 5 outbound links to their site.

It's certainly a great deal for the site being syndicated. 5 quality links with ideal anchor text. Sounds like a winner.

It seams that many people are selling that sort of space for real cash (depending on the power of the site), but RSS seams to just give away the Pagerank.

I can understand putting an article on my site from another author and then shooting a link back to their site. In that case, I get content and another page for my site.

What am I doing wrong?

Brandon Drury

[sarahk]

Hi Brandon

Alot depends on the vitality of your own site. Feeds give frequent visitors a central point for their information (on that subject).

They are a good way of keeping a page fresh for the search engines as the content would change with no effort on your part.

Yes, you are giving away links but they are providing you with keyword rich content. If it suits your business need - ie keeps your site users happy - then use them. Otherwise don't worry about it.

[brandondrury]

Okay, I think you made a good point about the strength of the site being an issue.

In my case, my site is growing, but still small. It's unproven and it does not have a large base of faithful readers that visit me first and foremost. So at this time, maybe RSS is just going to possibly steal away the few people who give my site attention (but maybe not).

When my site has an established audience, it would be useful to give out links to other sites as this could do visitor a favor.

I just have a problem with taking my traffic and giving it to a site that is currently kicking my butt. Even worse, I hate calling this concept "content".

Brandon

[sarahk]

You need to find an RSS feed provider where the deal can be mutually beneficial!

[Romanos]

Find some different ones.

[noniman]

I just added a news feed to my health related website. It simply shows the latest Google health news updated every hour. Had several customer feedbacks telling me they come and read the news every day. For me it’s not so much optimising the site for the search engines and I am not worried about passing on PR but it’s a service for my customers which will result in sales at the end of the day.
Only problem I encountered, it slows down the page load sometimes which can result in a time out. Using CaRP at the moment but will look into other options soon.

[dvduval]

Yes, if you have ever visited Google News, it is a great example of an application that allows you to view news pulled in from different sources. An example that uses actual RSS is Topix.net. Recently, I have created an application that allows you to create a site much like Google News or Topix.net.

[noniman]

Yes, if you have ever visited Google News, it is a great example of an application that allows you to view news pulled in from different sources. An example that uses actual RSS is Topix.net. Recently, I have created an application that allows you to create a site much like Google News or Topix.net.

Looked at your site and like layout of the news displayed. Any chance for a trial version?

[brandondrury]

Okay, so there are actually RSS feeds that will display news on my site? I'd have no problem with giving them the link half way through the article, but it just seams silly to me to send another site my visitor when I haven't had a chance to convince them to come back to me tomorrow.

Brandon