It is very important to optimize the feeds and it not only involves using the Feed Burner ‘activate’ buttons. There are a number of things that can be done to optimize the feed

Some of these things are the same that are used to optimize any normal web pages. They include:

* The use of keywords – the keywords should necessarily be used in the various feed items and the channel titles, anchor text for external as well as internal links, blog posts as well as channel description.

* Properly working links – it is important to make sure that the links work properly. For the purpose it is important to use the full path while linking to make sure that the links are rendered in a proper way.

* The use of H1 and H2 tags – The use of heading tags for channel and feed titles is very helpful in feed optimization. They help to emphasize the titles’ importance. However, if the key items are not inserted in the title then it will simply lead to the emphasis on words which are not meant to be used for the purpose of optimization.

There are some other “feed specific” tips for feed optimization:

* The submission of feeds to the right type of directories.

* Feeds have to be offered for a number of different categories. This is especially important if the website is designed to cover a wide range of topics. In case your blog/website is very specialized, it may not be required. This proves useful for the subscribers who avoid being deluged by the unwanted blog entries but. It is also useful for the syndication entities, interested in certain specific topics.

* Using MyMSN and MyYahoo – In order to get the feeds indexed in a faster way and to make sure that it is frequently crawled by the two major search engines, Yahoo! and MSN, the RSS feed has to be added on the owners’ MyYahoo and MyMSN pages. According to Yahoo, this helps the feed to be indexed approximately within a period of just 48 hours! This tactic may also be used on iGoogle. The simple way to add the feed to iGoogle, one has to just click on Add Stuff and click on the Add feed or gadget link, which is located at the bottom left sidebar, then the feed URL has to be pasted on the box.

Tags: Feed Burner, feed optimization

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 6:12 am and is filed under Blogging, Google, SEO, Social Media, Twitter, Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.