RSS Feeds are critical to your SEO strategy.

RSS? Really Simple Syndication. Bet that helped…

RSS is the juice that keeps the Web moving...

RSS is the “juice” behind Web 2.0. As we discussed in the first part of this article on leveraging the web, in today’s Internet there are two types of businesses, those that use new technology to push their messages to their customers, and those that are still trying to figure out how to do that. RSS is part of the “how you to that.”

Now, we aren’t going to go get all technical here. You don’t need to “know” a new coding language (don’t go run out and buy “RSS for Dummies“… yes, that is a real book). Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Become RSS “aware”: It’s all around you. Look for the RSS Icon. You might even click on it. You might be a bit confused by what you see, but we’ll get to that in a second. The point is that RSS is “everywhere” these days (except on your site, right?). Now… if we could just figure out how to leverage RSS to OUR advantage…
2. Get an RSS “reader”: This is the important part. You can read most RSS feeds directly in your browser, but then you’ll have to open each feed EVERY time
   you want to see what is going on with that site. That isn’t very efficient, is it? No. And that’s sort of the point of all of this… LEVERAGING the tools… So go grab yourself an RSS reader. You can Google “RSS readers” and find something that works for you. I personally recommend Google’s Reader (http://www.google.com/reader) as that allows me to keep track of my feeds from pretty much any browser.
3. Subscribe to at least TWO RSS feeds using your reader: Start with the RSS feed for this site then add at least one more feed. Remember, we’re talking about using the tools here. Subscribing to just one feed is certainly a start, but the real benefits of will become apparent when you are keeping up with multiple feeds at the same time from one location. This is the power of Web 2.0.

I should also note here that you can pull RSS feeds into other sites as well. If you’re on Facebook (FeO is!) you can import feeds directly to your profile using several methods (Google for more information). Again… that’s the “magic” to all of this… you can read this data from pretty much anywhere you already are… now… if there were only a way for YOU to get YOUR information out to YOUR customers in such a manner…

It’s time to put the web to work for you.

You’ve built your website. You’ve pasted it on everything that goes out of your office or business, from letterhead, to receipts, to email signatures, to business cards. Your “www” is all around you. But that’s just it. It’s all around YOU. But your customers only see it when they need something from you (you hope). How can you engage your clients in such a manner as to stay on their proverbial radar?

Back in “the day” you would gather your client’s email addresses and every so often send out a mass email about your latest product offering. Or perhaps an actual mailing using the good old “direct mail” method. Maybe you did some cold-calling. Whatever it took to get your message in front of your clients, you did.

And all the while, your website is sitting there. Waiting. Hoping that one of those customers, or perhaps even a new customer, would stumble by and go bananas over this great new product/service/idea/annoucement (you did put this great new product/service/idea/annoucement on your webiste, didn’t you?). If we could only figure out a way to put the information on your site and then instantly inform your customers, and potential customers, of this information. Well, perhaps we can, and it’s Really Simple.

Over the course of the next few posts I’ll be exploring just how to do that. We’ll be talking about things like “Web 2.0″, and RSS, and a bunch of other terms (some of which I’ll make up as I go along, just for entertainment value). So stay tuned…