RSS Feeds
Article by Rod Bradley
Jan 20, 2013
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering Internet content that changes regularly. However, syndication is defined as an organization that publishes numerous articles simultaneously, and therein lays the problem. Many online publishers such as weblogs and news related websites syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to anybody who wants it.
There was a time when RSS feeds solved many problems for people who used the Internet regularly. At first, the idea seemed great. RSS feeds permitted people to easily obtain the newest content from the websites that they were interested in and therefore stay informed. By not having to visit each website individually, people could save some time. By not having to join each website’s email newsletter, people’s privacy was ensured. At one time, there were numerous websites who offered RSS feeds. These days, that is simply not the case.
There is News Aggregator or Feed Reader software that permits people to obtain the RSS feeds from many different websites and display them for people to read and use.
There are several different of RSS Readers that are available for several different operating systems. Some of the popular feed readers include NewsGator for Windows, which integrates with Outlook, Feedreader, for Windows, and Amphetadesk for Mac, Linux, and Windows. There are also some feed readers that available that is Internet based. Some popular Internet based feed readers includes the Google Reader, Bloglines, and My Yahoo.
Once a person has a Feed Reader, that person only has to find websites that syndicate content and add the RSS feed to the list of feeds for their Feed Reader checks. There are several websites that display a small icon with the acronyms RDF, XML, or RSS, to inform the person that the feed is available.
The problem with RSS feeds is they are quickly becoming outdated by Google’s Panda and Penguin Algorithm. Google considers RSS feeds to be questionable SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactics. It seems that many people were using RSS feed sites to generate a plethora of inbound links. They published articles that weren’t newsworthy and relied on other republishers to proliferate these articles as a tactic to garner inbound links. That is one reason that the Internet had so much garbage that populated search results.
Many unscrupulous SEOs were using websites such as articlesonline.org to publish numerous articles just for the purpose of creating backlinks regardless of the quality of the content of the articles. Many of these RSS websites are no longer in business. The resulting republishing of these articles simply generated hundreds of millions of copies of this worthless information on the World Wide Web. This link philosophy has proven to be a disaster because it is nothing more than a way to generate automatic links with no regard for the content. Therefore, RSS feeds will soon become a thing of the past. Being penalized by Google is no way to improve the ranking of a website. That is the reason that LinkHelpers has never subscribed to this philosophy of link building. We build links the old fashioned way by using scientific techniques such as advanced econometric modeling that involves the use of integral calculus in order to understand the ranking algorithms that Google uses.
Creating links by using RSS feeds are a sure way to have a website penalized by Google. There are enough ways to get a website penalized by Google, so don’t make the mistake of trying to create automatic links using article submissions via RSS feed sites. Let LinkHelpers build your links the right way to ensure your website will be ranked high on the major search engines.
