We finally got an RSS feed for our company blog http://www.autobytel.com/syndication/rss/blogs.cfm and yes we are a bit behind the times!
My question is what shall I do with this feed to drive traffic and to get links?
Good god, people go through that palaver for an RSS feed? If I didn’t have Opera subscribing and monitoring the feeds all by itself without the need for any other application, I don’t think I would bother!
Yet another reason to love Opera :headoverheels:
and I urge you to re-read mine (I’ve made a quick change to it).
Also, as I’ve indicated there, marketing is much more than what you seem to think it is. Ever heard of the 4Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place, Promotion? Some would add a fifth in there Packaging (again, that’s not all, there’s still more like marketing research, internationalisation, franchising, customer management, some say even supply chain management should be in there, well I had it during my Master in International Marketing). So, applying those 5Ps to a website/web service, the content can be part of the product and the layout and design certainly packaging. So if you do your marketing well, your content and layout won’t be forgotten.
Remember though, many people who use external feed readers require you to manually enter a URL for the software product to pick up the feed (and therefore add it to the subscription list), if it’s manually on the page you have to navigate using the browser to the link and copy paste it (rather than having it in the head and simply typing the website URL without needing to visit the website). I would argue that it being in the head is more important than within the body as most people use feed readers that are based outside the browser (like Google’s own service), and having to actively seek out a feed can make things more difficult. 
PS: c2UK, please re-read what I said, my post stated what your first comment above repeats. I stated that the web browser will not notice the availability of the feed if there is no reference within the <head> elements of the document. Though I would also argue if you have poor content and an ugly design, you can do as much marketing as you like but you’re unlikely to receive many genuine backlinks from people who enjoyed what you provided or offered - it’s a two way street.
Doesn’t quite make sense, the RSS icon is seen on every page which has the link in the head, and browsers can see it on those. Of course, on those pages that don’t have that link in the head, the RSS icon isn’t there, but to say it can’t be seen on the whole site, i.e. all pages, is untrue - I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but it could certainly be interpreted in this way. You might also question the necessity of including the link on pages like the sitemap and terms & conditions.
I have to disagree again, it’s not the purpose of the website to attract more links and traffic - you can have the coolest layout and best content, if nobody knows about it, you don’t get any traffic. That purpose serves, as you point out later:
Marketing is a bit of a misfit there actually, as marketing means everything else you mentioned there and a whole lot more.
Might I also mention that you can incorporate your feed in your social networking activities, i.e. in your Facebook fan page, your twitter stream, etc. and that would drive traffic to your site and does so for Sitepoint, though it shouldn’t be your only content on those.
Partly true, but you may be overstating the case a bit. If you have an RSS icon and link embedded in the page content, rather than in the head (which is an equally valid method, and is in fact more robust in terms of support by older browsers), you’re still providing readers with a way to subscribe, and because it’s within the reading flow of the page, you might find they’re more likely to see it and act on it than when it’s just an icon up in the address bar. (Or is it just me that behaves like that?). And it doesn’t have to be on every page - if it is on the common pages that most people are likely to visit then you’ve got a fair chance of people spotting it - although I agree, putting the link on every page gives you a better chance!
As for getting more links and traffic… that should be the aim of your website, not your RSS feed.
You’re right - this thread isn’t really anything to do with SEO - maybe we should get it moved to a different part of forumland.
If you don’t include the link to the RSS feed in the head of every page, no web browser can see you have an RSS feed available. Therefore the amount of subscribers you’re likely to get will be reduced. As for getting more links and traffic… that should be the aim of your website, not your RSS feed. Syndication is simply a method to allow existing visitors to your website to get access to the content without needing to make an effort to check to see what’s new (thereby gaining loyalty), it will not help or have any effect in relation to people being more or less likely to send your site to others. You should be looking to social networking, advertising, marketing and promotion stuff to achieve this rather than laying your popularity onto a feed intended for existing users.
Bookmark your blog. Social bookmarking will help your site get more traffic.
Note: keep updating your blog with unique and interesting information.
across the whole site works best.
Ah very interesting…some of my competitors do this. Should this be done:
on the home page?
across the entire site?
or on the main articles page?
I would add the RSS feed to the <head> of every page. On most modern browsers, that gives you a little RSS icon in the address bar, or some such similar set up. (I think that includes IE7?). It isn’t intrusive, so there’s no harm in having it there.
But … not everyone will look at that and spot the icon and know what it means. It’s a good idea to include an explicit link to the RSS feed in the body of at least some pages, if not all (depending on your design and whether you can incorporate it without it getting in the way, and also whether it’s relevant to all pages). That gives your visitiors the maximum chance of finding it.
Lets start with the easy bit, include it in your <head>, see http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/#Telling