Mr. Hay is the co-founder and CEO of Expansion Plus Inc, a leading Los Angeles-based Internet marketing and public relations firm. E+ offers full service organic search services including new media consulting, web site optimization, link building, online press releases, blogs, RSS feeds and Social Media campaigns.
1) Please give us an overview of your Searchfest Presentation.
RSS (really simple syndication) is an amazing tool to not only get your message out across the web, it also is a highly effective SEO tool that generates inbound links so valued by Google. Tweaking your tags and on-page elements are not as important as having good content and a reputation in your community which basically means creating relevant back links. A key technique to deploy as part of an Internet Marketing Strategy is content syndicated in RSS feeds.
2) Do you favor publishing entire blog posts within the RSS Feed, or partial posts?
A good blog platform like Myst Technologies or WordPress will have RSS built in and thus the entire blog is RSS enabled. It is a subject of discussion as some users just want a summary not the full blog. A RSS service company, Press-Feed, www.press-feed.com is currently developing a feature which gives the user the ability to select either the full article/blog or just a summary. That way the user gets the choice which is what they want.
3) Please give us your view of placing advertising within RSS Feeds.
This would depend on the strategy of the client. For example it would probably not be appropriate for a business to include ads (especially 3rd party ads) in educational articles published in a RSS feed. For other items being published such as product updates including ads could work. For publishers providing free content, ads can be appropriate. Ironically it becomes the same business model as traditional media—free content in exchange for ad placement.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.