Today RSS feeds are abundant on the web and can be very useful to add content to a site without any work being required by the owner. But as this content is by its very nature a copy of some words on (many) other sites, is it good for your rankings??
I have always been sceptical of the use of RSS feeds, suggesting that original content must be better and that if our customers want their site to be truly "interesting" they should start thinking about putting some budget aside for this area. IOM in fact offers a "news" service that places (old) news on a site, but re-works the news item so that it is different. This adds to the sites stickiness and has brought in conversions (the news items themselves being found in the Search Engine rankings and briniging in customers, something that a duplicate content RSS would not do).
But for those "sold" on the idea of wanting RSS feeds to their site, will it harm their rankings. It seems there are two camps here, one saying that placing "full" feeds (the entire news item) on a site can damage the rankings (and thus support "partial" ie just the headlines feeds), whilst the "full feeds" brigade say that the user gets a better experience if the whole item is there.
There is however no answer, so IOM is still taking the view of not using RSS feeds, as as I say the content is not unique and if it stands a chance of damaging the rankings then we don't see the point.
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