RSS Brings The News To You
I was just watching CNN and they were running a story on how many websites were losing major chunks of traffic. Sites like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, along with Fox and CNN are losing traffic. They are asking why, but the answer is right in front of them.
People no longer need to visit those sites. Everything you need to know comes to you via RSS right on your Google or Yahoo home page. A few years ago I discovered that My Yahoo allowed me to insert content from just about anyplace that had a feed. I didn’t know what a feed really was, but went ahead and created my first Blogger blog. It was very cool to see my words right there on my Yahoo home page. That blog about hard drive recovery is now syndicated worldwide and has hundreds of subscribers.
So if you are not on the RSS bandwagon, you better jump on, or you will be left behind. By easily allowing your sites’ visitors to subscribe to your news, you are going to be in constant communication with your audience. It is true, your site’s traffic will suffer, but by placing ads in your feed, you can still turn a profit if that is your business model.
The fact is sites like Bloglines, News Gator and Technorati have extreme page rank which means Google feels they are authorities on just about every subject. By planting your feeds, and submitting to directories you can reach an audience that just isn’t using search engines the way they used to. Why else would Google buy FeedBurner and start adding news and blog results in the SERP’s? Google’s implementation of Universal search is just a beta test of how it is going to integrate feeds into natural searches.
As a user, RSS has eliminated around 75% of my search activity. I scanned my history for the last 4 weeks and was shocked to see how few websites I visited. I live in Florida so I am keeping an eye on Hurricane Dean, but you know what, I never leave my iGoogle page. Everything I need is brought to me through RSS.
As a business man and a person responsible for the livelihoods of hundreds of families, I need to stay on top of the way people use the Internet, to better prepare my clients. You see, all my clients rely on the Internet to survive, and I am their Internet Presence Manager, so that makes me responsible for their employees as well as for myself. For those of you who are like me, I suggest you track your Internet usage, how you search and shop online. To be able to help your clients, you need to understand how visitors actually use the Web.
RSS truly brings the news and the world to you!
Related Posts:
RSS Overview
RSS Syndication Services
RSS to Email
