Q and A: Should I add a newsfeed to my landing pages?

Dear Kalena...

I have a blog and RSS Feed that has industry news for "usability". My primary landing pages are optimized and validated and they rank well in Google for the main keywords.

I now want to add an RSS Feed for news items on these primary landing pages. The purpose is to add fresh and relevant keyword content to those pages. I could do this by adding a general news source for "usability" or I could use the last five headlines from my blog. The benefit of a general feed would be completely new wording. The benefit of using my blog feed is that all links would go back to my blog but I worry about duplicate content. Do you see a preference here?

A second issue is the method of doing this. Of course, it has to be in PHP vs Javascript so the keywords appear on the landing pages. I found a simple way to do it at http://www.rssfeedreader.com/ . This is an easy to implement method and it is either free with an ad or $95 with no ads. What do you think of this service or do you know a better way to do this?

Do you think this whole effort is worth the trouble from an SEO point of view?

Thanks so much
Bob


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Bob

I don't see a problem with adding a newsfeed to your landing pages, as long as your primary motive is to provide relevant, related content to your visitors. It would probably make more sense to include the last 5 headlines from your own blog, simply to keep visitors at your site, but it all depends on whether you think visitors to these landing pages are already aware of your blog or have already seen them.

Then again, if it makes more sense from a usability perspective to provide a feed from external sources, then do it! You could always post a poll asking readers what they'd prefer.

In terms of implementation, I could've pointed you to a lot of free Javascript options, but I don't know many PHP options. FeedBurner might accomplish what you want. But don't get caught up doing something because you think it will give you an SEO advantage, particularly when you already rank well for your pages. Don't fix what ain't broken! Think about changes more from a user perspective and you'll make the right decision.