For many people, the RSS feed of your website will be the only way that visitors regularly engage with your content (and, therefore, what products or services you have to offer them). Did you know that, if your feed is properly optimized, it can be highly beneficial for your SEO strategy? Not only is it useful for generating external links (when visitors ‘share’ your information), it can also improve your search engine ranking.
• Strong titles
Generally, your RSS feed will be given the name of your website – if it is ambiguous or begins with the letter Z, you may find that it doesn’t doing much in the way of SEO. Instead, try to start your feed with a letter that occurs earlier on in the alphabet and that the title includes keywords you use in other areas of your SEO strategy.
• Content
By using descriptive keywords in your post titles, adding ‘ALT’ descriptions to links and tagging your content properly, you are boosting your SEO strategy by encouraging the search engines to index your pages faster.
• Separate images
For an SEO blog that focuses primarily on art or related content (such as photos), consider removing images from the feed or only providing a thumbnail. This is great for an SEO strategy that is mobile-device-friendly and will drive interested visitors to your main website.
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to implementing an SEO strategy for their website is forgetting to optimise their RSS feeds. There is actually plenty of SEO value in the RSS feed, providing that you know where to include keywords, images and links. And remember – unique and interesting content is more likely to be shared, giving you the external links your SEO campaign aims for.
