RSS
An RSS feed includes articles and content from a website in a stripped-down interface, providing a stream of updates to users in an easy-to-read format. To understand the impact RSS feeds can have on a site’s SEO, our Office Hours Notes below cover guidance and insights from Google.
Google Doesn’t Have a Preference Between RSS Feeds & Google News Sitemaps
RSS Feeds and Google News sitemaps both work for Google and there is no preference between the two. The benefit of RSS feeds for webmasters is that there is no limit of URLs, whereas Google News sitemaps are limited to 1,000 pages.
RSS Feeds Don’t Have SEO Benefits Beyond Content Discovery
RSS feeds don’t have any SEO benefit other than helping Google to discover content, much like a sitemap. Having an RSS feed doesn’t improve rankings, for example.
PubSubHubbub is the fastest way to get content into Google
RSS feeds with PubSubHubbub are a quickest way to get content updated in Google.
RSS with Pubsubhubbub to get URLs Indexed
You can use an RSS feed with Pubsubhubbub to ping Google with new URLs as an alternative to Sitemaps.
Google Uses Dates to Determine Fresh Content
Google may look at dates in an RSS feed or on a page to understand if it’s fresh content or evergreen content.
Last Modified In Sitemaps Aids Crawling
Google thinks the Last Modified date in an XML Sitemap can be very useful to help them recrawl URLs, and they also support RSS and Atom feeds.
RSS + PubSubHubbub is better than XML sitemaps
John recommends using RSS with PubSubHubbub as the fastest way to get new content indexed.