Im sure the title sounds a little akward but hear me out... Is it better to have RSS feeds incoming to your site rather then no updates on your site for say a week... Im sure for the sake of "freshness" it will look good especially since my news columns are on EVERY page. However, for the sake of dupe content and SERPs, is there any point to it?
what do you actually mean by this? Your RSS feed subscribers will only come to your site if there is fresh content..i meant atleast most of them will follow this. So freshness is important for not only being good in SE but being good with your subscribers. If your subscribers feel your site is not updated they will immediately switch to another better option. Trust me world is too fast to think and wait and act..I learnt the hard way to get 2000+ subscribers in less than 5 months..
I don't see any difference. The RSS feed will yield nothing new if you don't update the site so it's basically the same as not updating the site at all.
I also display blog posts at the main page in my seo directory via html. It mainly for the regular visitors. Unfortunately google analytics doesn't show the robot activity but I also belive in the power of fresh content.
Im not sure that I made it clear.... Currently I only make updates about once a week on my site... I was curious if I added an RSS feed from CNN, or Yahoo Personal Finance if that would help with Page freshness, maybe SERPs a little bit or if it was pointless because it would just be seen as dupe content.