TOPIC: Designer says RSS feed content on website hurts seo?

I know your sites have this feature, and I am on the side of it being a good idea but I wanted to share this email and see what you think

Good morning Shane,

So, this was really tricky. The sites that are referenced below aren't using javascript or HTML widgets to build these RSS feeds. They're actually rendering these feed lists using custom software that is programmed into the websites. Drupal is a software development framework like Linux or Microsoft Windows so it's quite possible that a programmer could write software code to produce RSS feed lists like this.

We spent a few hours reviewing javascript-based RSS widgets that should work on just about any website. We couldn't get any of them to work in an Eden website. None of these are warranted software products, they're just free things that are available online, but even the one from Google wouldn't work. I'm starting to think that something in the custom RSS feed javascript just be conflicting with JQuery, a common javascript animation library that is used in Eden, and also nearly every other website on the web these days

So, that said, I think it's possible to use a javascript widget to load an RSS feed of articles on an Eden website. But in order to make this work I think you'd need to pick one of the free RSS widget solutions and then pay a web designer to debug the javascript conflicts between that widget and Eden. This could be minutes or hours of work, it would be hard to tell until a web designer really evaluated what is currently going on.

In closing, I also want to mention that based on your goal of using RSS feeds to pull in fresh website content, there is actually very little that will be gained by this type of solution. Since RSS feed widgets pull in articles from third party RSS feeds, every article that they display contains headline and text links out to another website. You never want to urge your visitors to leave your website and visit another site. Secondly, fresh content that is pulled in from another website will not be credited to your website from the view of the search engines. That fresh content will be credited to the website that the RSS feed forces you to link to. So, there will be very little to no SEO value in using this technique and there will be a small negative impact in that the website will contain a lot more links that will lead visitors away.

All in all, this doesn't seem like a good marketing technique, even if it was easy and quick to implement. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks, Ryan

He's correct that Javascript RSS feeds will not help your SEO. He's also correct that we pull in in as normal text, for exactly this reason. Having constantly updating text on the site definitely helps. You just want it to open in a new window so they don't lose your site. Some of the best places for RSS feeds are to For Sale By Owner and Real Estate Sites. You can't argue with the fact that Home Inspector Pro sites are #1 for almost every major city in the US!!

Agreed makes sense dom the reason why i decided against HIP pro is because the cms was driving me.batty. Aww man does this.mean i gotta come.back and learn it! Boo! Drupal 6 maybe good for.seo.but for an idiot like me its the.devil!

Our system was designed to limit what guys can do in many ways so they can't get into trouble but allow flexibility where it's needed (templates, content, forms, etc). Unfortunately I can't redesign the web as easily as I can create custom software from line 1 of code.

Oh yeah Dom you guys still rock. Only problem i kept having was working with drupal, kept screwing up and having to do stuff over and over again. But thats my fault not yours, you didnt design that cms and many people use it so i know its good. For  whatever reason i didnt take to it easily and found it frustrating. Hmm i just spent hours on my new site and am dreading the idea of having to do it all over again...yarrg!

What happens to the links to my site if i move hosts?