Hi Kalena!,

We are developing a site using Joomla. The site is all about to show latest news i.e. the News Portal. But we don’t know how other sites are showing news on their news portal. How can we use RSS feed of other sites to show news on own News Portal and how can we used for SEO?

Thanks, Sameer

Hi Sameer,

Using an RSS feed (or even a number of them) on your site can be a simple and effective way to get new and dynamic content.  In some cases you may have some control over the content in the feed (by specifying a keyword in a Google news feed for example), so this can be perfect for providing content about a particular niche or topic area.  In most cases however you will be dependant on the content of the feed, so you would need to choose which feeds to use fairly carefully to ensure that they are relevant to your site, and your site visitors.

Fortunately, the addition of an RSS feed to your site is pretty straightforward – particularly under Joomla, as there are a bunch of extensions already available for you to choose from.  Try a Google search for “Joomla RSS” or simply check out this link for Joomla RSS Readers and you will find plenty to choose from.  Many of these will do the job for you, some will have more features than others, so just browse through them until you find one that meets your specific needs.

From an SEO perspective, simply adding a feed or two to your site may not help you a great deal – because although the content may be keyword targeted and relevant to your site, it is still essentially duplicate content.  You could consider getting a bit smarter about the feeds you use though.  Using tools like Yahoo Pipes you can gather feeds from multiple sources, manipulate them, merge them, reorder them, and generate your own customised feed, which. when displayed on your site, may be considered new content by the search spiders.

Andy Henderson
Ireckon Web Marketing

Spread the joy!