I have one site which is "blog-type" - many posts organized together. It's not based on any exisiting blog engine (custom build), so it doesnt have built-in RSS. In order to make it more SE-friendly, i created a page "all_posts.php" which has a list of all posts in format of <a href=#POST_URL# alt="#POST TITLE#">#POST TITLE#</a> Code (markup): Now, i'd also like to add RSS feed which obvioulsy will be very similar to above code. Finally, my question: Is it necessary to have both (all_posts AND RSS) or can i just use RSS ? Is RSS page crawled by SE bots, is it replacing "classic" old-style list of links ?
You don't really want newbies to arrive at your RSS feed and not know what they are supposed to do with it. At the very least, add rel="nofollow" to the links that point to the feed.
But if he adds rel="nofollow" to his link to the RSS feed, search bots won't follow the link and spider his feed. I don't see any harm in users accessing the RSS feed - most will prefer to read the original blog instead.
No really? There is no reason why normal users should visit the RSS feed instead of the normal post. His posts will get indexed just fine, he doesn't need an RSS feed for that. All it does is confuse people who don't know what that text is, and there are PLENTY of those around.
I must explain myself better. I do have normal graphical presentation of posts - for users. In addition i have small link to "all posts" page - this one isn't for users - it's for SE. Now, i would like to add icon RSS leading to page with virtually same data like in "all posts" page, but in RSS 2.0 format. The question is if i need both ("all posts" + RSS) or RSS page can do the job - in case if RSS pages are spidered by SE bots as good as usual static links.
It is not the 1st time i clicked on a search result, and it was an RSS feed. I would add a no-follow tag or use any other method DP members suggest.
I shall answer this question a different way: my web site has three sitemaps; HTML, RSS and XML. SE bots are free to use any or all of these sitemaps to the best of their ability. Google with primarily use the XML version, other bots may use the RSS version. Some older, simpler bots will only be able to understand the HTML version. You can even add ROR format to the list, but I've yet to find a search engine that makes use of it. There are other advantages to providing an RSS feed: Firstly, some users may actually want to add your feed to their RSS Aggregator (e.g. BlogLines, My Yahoo). Secondly, RSS feeds can be useful for promoting your blog via many RSS directories and news sites (e.g. Technorati, FeedCat). You might then get additional traffic or backlinks though your RSS Feed. Hope that helps... to summarise, have both your all_posts page and your RSS feed on your site, and make sure they are both crawlable by bots and viewable by users. I see no good reason not to. Cryo.
Even if they are spiderable, does it add any value to your site since it's duplicate content which won't be indexed by Google.
How many items do you want to display in that RSS feed? 100? 200? All? Right, good luck with that. Every site should have a normal archive, where the user can view older posts. So unless you want to put all your posts into your RSS feed, there is no reason to have that spidered by search engines. What do you think the people who don't know what to do with that RSS feed will do when they land on that page through a search engine? They will LEAVE. And don't tell me all internet users are educated enough to use your site regardless, because that's a fantasy. A normal RSS feed only contains 10 to 20 items anyway, so it can't POSSIBLY replace a normal archive. So yes, have a standard archive where the search engines can view your posts. But letting SEs view your RSS feed has no upside and only downsides. Let's say you have 10 items on your normal homepage and then 10 items in your RSS feed. What is the purpose of allowing SEs to index that in the first place? Right, there is none.
thanks all, my conclusion is to have both: all_posts page (Icheb - i will have hundreds of posts there) + RSS page with ref=nofollow solely for RSS readers and sites like technocrati