The art of RSS Feeds can be seen in many places, acording to Amanda G. Walthingon. 

    • how man feeds are appropriate?
    • how much content is needed to keep the feed fresh and attractive?
    • how much of each content piece should be included in the feed? (too little and no one might want to click on the feed - but too much and should i click at all?)
    • Will the feed include multi-media content, audio and video?
    • How to propagate the feeds and how often to update?

RSS is not just for blogs

    • Affiliate communications
    • syndicating your content on other sites
    • new product announcements
    • security alerts and bug fixes
    • product uses tips and articles
    • customer communications

It’s not just the feed because they are garbage

How do you optimize a blog and it’s feed

    • optimize the blog and socialize your blog and optimize the feed
    • customize the templates, CSS, H1/H2/H3, Titles, Permalinks and add robots.txt and favicon.
    • Validate it, tweak, validate and then stay put.

Use Plugins to improve an increase functionality (P and MT have many plugins); WordPress has plugins including a Google Sitemap plugin, another creates tag clouds).

It’s all about content - build keyword lists with writing posts, don’t use graphics where plain HTML will serve, focus category names with keywords and write powerful keyword-rich copy often, and give every post a theme.  Use keywords in anchor text with links and if your post links to a valuable resource such a publication, link to the citation - chances are it’s an authority on the topic.

Socialize your blogs by inbound links - cross link to your websites, notify other bloggers about your blog via comments and e=mail and join the conversation by writing posts that reference other blogs.  Become a link hub, an authority site, by making your blog a real resource.   Have faith your creating meaniful content

Submit your feeds by hand or using tools like RSS Submit and make sure pinging is turned on.  Claim your feed at Technorati and subscribe to your own feeds. Use MyYahoo!  Use Chicklets, and bring on more chicklets while including bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us.

Enable Autodiscovery and burn your feed with FeedBurner for easier management.

Optimize RSS Feed by using keywords in feed TITLE (less than 100 characters) and write your DESCRIPTION as if for a director (less than 500 Characters) while using full paths on links and unique URLs for each item.  include images for branding, etc.

Measuring Results by using FeedBurner, FeedCraft, SimpleFeed, Nooked, MeasureMap, SiteMeter, Technorati ratings - sophistication of measurement tools should be getting better.

Thursday at Harvard, Thursday, 7PM Blogger Meet-up ant Berkman Center on Harvard Campus

Harvard Law SChool - Baker House