Hi Guys, I saw that many of the directory owners are using RSS feeds on their site, mainly from Yahoo on the homepage & also on the sub categories. Now my question does by doing so really helps in terms of SEO ? I know that this fresh updating content, But that also means 5 (depends on the number of the news items) outgoing links from the site ? So just wanted some views on this ? Amit
True.. but it will alays the refresh the page. I have used my own blog RSS to on my home page (http://www.leadingdir.com) that looks much better.
I was going to use RSS Feeds on my directories but after reading and getting concerns about duplicate content etc i changed my mind, cant honestly claim to fully understand it, i see some use RSS and are fine with it. Most likely i still wont include it in my own.
Well I think that If they are from our own RSS feeds then the traffic stays within our own n/w, But what I wanna know is it of an SEO significance on directories as the content is updating regularly ?
Im guessing if its news feeds, that not many read them on a directory? i know if i want to read news online that i only read it on msn, and i dont actually look for it, i stumble upon the odd story or 2 that grabs my attention while on my way to reading the daily horoscopes. The feeds are mainly for filler content and spider bait?
I run some feeds on Directory Share, few weeks back I got sent over 200 uniques from MSN in a day because I got ranked up in 2nd place for a rather unique keyphrase which came through the newsfeed. There are other benefits besides fresh content.
Sounds good, nice results from that. As bizarre as it sounds, im still not going to use RSS Feeds, with all of the recent talk of being unique i think its best to keep branching out and not have hundreds of us copy. What works on one directory/site or blog isn't guaranteed to work on all, plus people forget that some of you guys know how to fiddle and twiddle with things in the back to customise things.
I have an idea, I don't know If it is possible, Can the url's of the RSS feed be made no-follow this will surely help with the updating content & SEO ! But I am still not sure if this can be done ?
Feeds are good - it improves caching times. However you need to check with some techies first. I see people adding javascript powered RSS feeds which like adsense, googlebot will ignore...
Pretty easy to do, but depends on the feed as some of them like to embed links directly into the feed content. But for the most part (if using the mods I have available) it is just a case of editing the template and adding the nofollow tag to the href. Last time I went through them all of mine were no followed.
There was a similar thread relating to the this topic not long ago. Someone pointed out that if you take away all the SEO related benefits, then news feeds can only serve one purpose. That purpose being benefited towards your site viewers having the option to view news headlines.
Yep, it's easy to add 'nofollow' even to links embed within content. No matter if it is smarty or pure php.
*gasp*... and to think, people bitch on my directory for having rss feeds. hahaha ahhh, the joys of people not knowing sh*t and always talking it!!! (aka pooptalk, the-phony/pheonix, paidhosting(my favorite fan. thats why i mention) etc. etc.) edit: here is one of my little mods for one of my sections of the homepage:
The more I use it the less likely I will keep using it. I have been testing some mods specially this one and in terms of SEO is very unclear at least with me if there is any. Probably you need to have your directory at a certain level and it might be of some use having rss feeds. I more inclined to think that it is just an extra service for your visitors.
Although the rss content is most likely not going to be the original content it will still keep the spiders coming back to your site to check for changes. If you don't want to pass any link juice then just put a nofollow on the feeds. The seo advantage of using rss is very small but it helps. It is also good for your visitors as they may see something in the feeds that will catch their eye and want to read. I always find good articles for myself when I few the directory, so I'd have to say that using rss is a good thing. Of course you could just go with adsense if you really think that having rss on your site will cause problems.