The stats are based on an app. 10,000 end-user sample, 30 day average and 4 months of data.

They are seeing a 6.8% average CTR from content item [individual content item in an RSS feed] to site and a 150% [1.5 clicks] average CTR from feed to site within 30 days.

3. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CLICK-THROUGH RATES: THE MARKETER/PUBLISHER SIDE

And finally, let's take a look at stats from publisher/marketer point of view.

Lockergnome.com is one of most popular tech sites on internet.

Although they are serving a more tech savvy audience, Lockergnome is an excellent example of results you can ultimately hope to achieve using RSS.

First of all, they are seeing a ration of 5:1 in favor of number of RSS subscribers against e-mail subscribers, and even more interesting, a 500% better clickthrough ratio with RSS than with e-mail.

4. SEARCH ENGINE VISIBILITY

The BTI Group is a smaller VoIP provider and, through their high ranking blogsite [http://blog.btigroup.com/], proof that RSS works for search engine positioning.

Here are just some of their achievements, as a result of their RSS marketing activities …

a] 120 page-one search results on important industry search terms #1 Voip vs traditional phone system #1 VoIP solution provider #2 VoIP small business #2 VoIP architecture #5 VoIP phone equipment #6 VoIP benefits #7 VoIP Small Business costs

b] A 75% increase in traffic to corporate website

c] BTI’s link popularity jumped from 164 in June 2003 to 1312 in December 2004 to 1405 in February 2005

OVERVIEW

These metrics clearly show that RSS works for marketers and publishers.

This data alone, also considering that RSS clearly gets 100% of your content delivered and actually provides you with an abundance of new marketing opportunities, such as podcasting, should be enough to make you do something about RSS now.

Search engines prefer specifics also; general sites don’t rate as well. They reward focused, keyword-rich topics with improved rankings. Spiders don’t care if you wrote content yourself or used work of other authors. But they do rely on your links and sitemap, so they can index it all.

Add Your Own Personal Input to Every Article You Post

Take time to add a paragraph above each article on your site - 80 to 100 words is plenty. Like a cordial host, introduce information or author ahead. Build anticipation so they’re eager to keep reading. Employ keywords shown in your title and header tags. DO NOT ALTER THE ARTICLE ITSELF. That would violate author’s copyright, and it’s not necessary.

At bottom of article (after author’s Sig) add another paragraph of your own. - Summarize it - Link to other articles along same line - Recommend resources - Insert affiliate links or products you sell

Reuse page-specific keywords in bottom paragraph. Although that article also appears on other sites, your version is now unique to search engines. Most submitted articles appear in multiple websites, directories, and ezines. Adding new language personalizes it, while avoiding possibility of a duplicate content penalty.

You’re also building a personal connection to readers, as they begin to identify your voice and online personality. That goes a long way toward return visits.

Package Articles in an Organized Way

Don’t dump every article together in one long list. Cluster them into logical sub-categories which aid site navigation. Add links between articles and related pages on your site. Although everyone knows incoming links can boost Page Rank, links within your site (internal) benefit your rankings as well (though to a lesser degree). And they’re 100% within your control. Besides, ample links help visitors move confidently around your website.

Despite infinite supply of online articles, most dish out recycled stuff that everyone’s seen before. Avoid that trap with information that’s a cut above. Take trouble to carefully select articles that provide extra value. Then by adding your own voice and unique comments you please both human readers and search engines. And that’s a winning strategy all around.