Discussions

Should my RSS feeda alerts link to my site or my blog?

Posted by wandadog13 • 10/17/07 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: blog, linking, rss feed

Hi - You're a knowledgable bunch of nice people so that makes you the perfect people to ask.

I have a blog which I update quite regularly and I have a RSS feed which i usually update at the same time and point new 'alerts' to that particular blog entry.

Result is I get good search engine position but the links all go to the blog.

I'm not sure how much of that traffic converts to visits to the website, how much less converts to a customer. Blog stats suggest a daily visit rate of 30.

What woould you do? Should I link the RSS alert to the page on the website, the blog article refers to or is this bad linking pratice. Also what about the readers experience in all this. If they ar expecting the full story on e.g our first newsletter, will they be content with seeing the actual archive of the newsletter on our website?

It's over to you.

User Comments

10/17/07

RichardNG

Huh ?? It sounds pretty complicated ! I don't really understand what it is you're actually getting at ?

I know RSS is a complex thing. Everybody on Blog-Catalog uses it in one way or another. But externally, I use automatically-generated RSS article lines that display only the day/date/time and Title of a Blog article ( NO description or Body text - I try to make my article Titles as Descriptive and Concise as possible ), and the Feeds are automatically dynamically updated without my intervention. Users click on the article-title to jump to/view the Full article.; I use FeedSweep.com.;

Are you manually creating Feed Titles for your RSS ?
I'd be interested in a clarification of your predicament...

. . . Richard.

[reply]
1. 10/18/07
  
  wandadog13
  
  HI RIchardNG - thanks for stopping by.
  
  I'll try to clarify.
  
  I use my RSS Feed to 'alert' subscribers to new posts on the blog or new pages / updated pages on the website itself.
  
  I understand from an SEO point of view that a good title and description help ratings and relevancy also.
  
  My concern is that I have so many RSS 'alerts' linking back to the blog rather that the website itself that I am missing out on some of the SEO benefits of the links to the website.
  
  Is this correct? There are plenty of links to different pages on the website from the various blog articles.
  
  Also, the dilemma that I'm writing for the reader first, SEO second so if I link RSS alerts to the website page/product rather than the full article on the blog, will i loose readers/subscribers? I rather think I will, but as I say, with a 130+ blog articles and RSS alerts linking back to them, the blog links outway the website links considerably.
  
  Hope that clarify's a bit.
  Jonathan
10/18/07

graphicidentity

I think providing to kinds of RSS (to your blog or your site) on the front page is fine..the number of your feed readers may be split out into two..but I think you just gave them a choice to subscribe. Who knows that they would probably subscribe to all feeds that you provide..
I have 4 different feed links for each blog of mine. My main blog is graphic-identity.blogspot.com. I linked in the other blogs to the main blog as submenus (subblog)
its up to the feed readers to subsbribe on blog that suit them most

[reply]
10/18/07

RichardNG

Jonathan,

I still don't 'fully' understand your situation, however, from your clarification, I think I understand a 'little' better... ; If I understand it correctly, I believe it's more important to have your alerts or links linking to the full blog articles rather than the website, then place a link to the website embedded IN / at the bottom of each relevant Blog article. If I've understood you correctly, that's the way I'd do it - Your Blog and It's articles have First priority and therefore gets the main focus of your alerts/links, NOT the website, which is secondary....

Please Let me know what your reaction is to this...

Regards,

. . . Richard.

[reply]
1. 10/18/07
  
  wandadog13
  
  Hi RichardNG
  
  Thanks for coming back - yes you've about got it there.
  
  My only concern is that by continuing to do as I do now - linking RSS Feed 'alerts' (or updates) to the Blog article it refers to, I'm effectively directing the search engines to the blog rather than the website and possibly missing out on page rank and position.
  
  However, I think that would be a pretty quick way to loose the few readers and subscribers I have don't you?
  
  I don't want to become a victim of my own success and cunning and have the blog rate higher than the website.
  
  I've started to counteract this by publishing the 3 top blog articles on the website and archiving each months top 3 off into a seperate web page etc. Hopefully, the search engines will still pick up on all this relevant, on topic editorial?
  
  Thanks for your continued imput - much appreciated.