In an interview about the future of search and outdated SEO methods, Matt Cutts of Google said it is useless doing traditional SEO on a site unless you also have enough good content and the reputation in your field to be a challenger.
Building a reputation by third party endorsement is one of the most basic PR strategies and now it has to be done online. How can this be achieved? Provide content that will encourage relevant and authoritative websites to link to you.
One of the tools that helps a business build content and establish a reputation is Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Adding RSS feeds to your web content gives you the opportunity to distribute your news across the Internet, where it can be seen by new audiences and related websites.
Adoption of RSS as a preferred method of receiving content is growing by leaps and bounds and since the personalized pages of sites such as MyYahoo, My MSN, Google and Earthlink have incorporated RSS readers into the page, use of RSS has shot up.
Most PR and marketing people are not technically trained – they are not web designers or programmers. But the Web 2.0 tools now available can overcome this hurdle. 50 million Americans go online to get their news, says the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
"Distributing your news content on the Internet offers new marketing and PR opportunities," says Sally Falkow, President of PRESSfeed, a content syndication and RSS feed service created specifically for marketing and PR purposes. “There are many untapped opportunities in online news distribution and it's vital for PR, marketing and SEO professionals to be able to RSS enable their news content.”
A year ago Forrester Research urged companies to RSS enable their press releases. A recent survey from Jupiter Research shows that 30 percent of the companies implementing RSS are doing so because of customer demand. Making your content available in an RSS feed is no longer something you should be thinking about – it’s something your customers want. It will raise your online visibility, build your reputation and increase your search rankings.
