Using RSS feeds to add content to your site.

New to RSS

[neveremail]

I'm playing with the idea of using RSS feeds to add content to my site.

For those of you that have done this before how worthwhile is it and what things should I be careful of?

Do the feeds just disapear as it is replaced by the updated article or can you archive them?

[Gargen]

yea they will diseaper and personal i recomend feeds as a supplement for content you are unable to provide (example: i have CNN - Technology news and CNN - Latest News on my site as well as a few others because i dont provide news i write tutorials but still while someone is surfing my site my news ticker may provide them with useful info) but i suggst you do not use them as your only content

[neveremail]

what about if you wrote a script to archive the feeds - providing you got permission from the feed owners would that be okay?

[biggles338]

I use rss on many of my pages. My pages have an include statement that calls a php file. The php call is to a program that selects content from a newsfeed that allows a searchword. That way I get keyword rich content that the search engines find, and that is constantly changing, and unlike js they can measure the content there.

It sure works for me!

[edited by: jatar_k at 4:12 am (utc) on Aug. 14, 2005]
[edit reason] no urls thanks [/edit]

[Chef_Brian]

Hey Guys,

Yes I have been playing around with some scripts that pull in rss feeds and then publish them to php pages. I am wondering if I could hire someone to write a program to take content from places like Amazon.com and have it formated into an rss script that I can access.

My idea is that I could have the script written to pull in some customer reviews of products to enhance page content. I have found some people that have already done this will amazon however if you use their script you "give them" some of your impressions for the free use of the tool. They also have one written for ebay ....

Hmmm ....

Brian

[biggles338]

oops! sorry about the url - thanks for the quick removal.

[graywolf]

I've mixed RSS into content sites with really great results. Mixing evergreen content with "news" gives you the best of both worlds. I've tried pulling in others RSS but didn't like it, as it was all over the place style wise and lacked keyword focus.

I wrote my own script to pull in news feeds. I pick and choose the ones I like, rewrite the summaries focusing the keywords and topics, and publish them with links to the source. My solution takes 10-15 minutes per day so, it takes longer than an automated script, but it helps me keep up with industry news, and keeps me away from dupe penalties.

[stef25]

graywolf,

you touched on something interesting - is content fed into your site by rss seen as duplicate content by SE's?

[graywolf]

I tried just copying straight new feeds it brought in extremely minimal traffic, when I tried my own 're-mix' it brought in much more.

When you use broad term news searches, you see how things get syndicated fairly heavily, so much so it's hard to see how you wouldn't be flagged as dupe.

To be clear I was ultimately giving each news item it's own page.

[neveremail]

so the RSS feeds that you pull in you then store on your site on thier own page - are you allowed to store these feeds permanently without permission from the site they belong to?

[graywolf]

Each feed has it's own policies. There are all sorts of free feeds with no stipulation on re-use such as some from the US Government. Chances are everyone one, his brother, and his brothers cat is already scraping it, so the chances of you being tagged as the original and not the dupe are not that good. So you've either got to come up with a way to 'uniqify' it programatically, or do it by hand.

[stever]

Thanks, graywolf.

As the icing on top, do you then provide an RSS feed from your site(s)? (A la Topix.)

[graywolf]

If any human effort goes into it, I publish a feed.