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RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is becoming even more ingrained into our lifestyles.

While it’s true that most web users still haven’t caught on to RSS, some online retailers have found an innovative use for it.  One that doesn’t involve syndicating news or blogs but still gets their message across.

In this article I look at some of the alternative uses of RSS and how almost any website can take advantage of them even if they don’t regularly publish fresh web content.

I think the first time I saw a non-news related RSS feed was on MSN.

It was shortly after they launched their own search engine.  I was reviewing the HTML source of the page (as I commonly do when an engine launches a new feature.  You’d be surprised at the secrets the HTML source holds) and noticed a line in the head tag of the page which is common to a lot of blogs:

<link rel="alternate” type="text/xml” title="XML” href="http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=rob+sullivan&format=rss” /><link>

For those who are unaware, this is the code which a browser uses to automatically detect if there is a feed associated with that page.

That’s right, MSN is feeding search engine results via XML to any browser which is capable of detecting and reading the feed.  Since then, MSN has added the familiar orange “RSS” link to the bottom of the page.

So what does this really mean?

In the case of MSN, it means that you can use the feed to monitor search results.  This is what I use it for.

For example, my browser of choice is Firefox, and within Firefox I have a feed reader extension called Sage.  I can take the Feed URL from the MSN search results page, store it in Sage, and every time the search results change for my chosen keyword, Sage highlights the updated feed.  This way I can quickly scan my feeds to see which have changed (via the highlighting) and then choose the feed to see what changed.

Yahoo! has since also added feeds to their search results, making it easy to monitor results there as well.

But that’s not the only place I’ve seen feeds in non-news/blog related sites.

I was recently consulting on the design of a new site for a marketing company and they have a flash compontent to their site.  The flash used is to highlight and emphasize the marketing company’s portfolio.

Obviously, as with any company, the portfolio will change from time to time.  In order to make the Flash movie flexible enough that the site owner could update it as the portfolio changed, the flash designer built in an RSS component.

Now, when the portfolio is updated, the site owner merely has to update the contents of the RSS feed and the flash movie is automatically changed to reflect the new content.

These are two good examples of how feeds are being used in a non-news fashion; but there are more.

If you have a Google custom home page and subscribe to any of their widgets, you may have also noticed that they utilize XML to render the content.  This means that anyone can build a widget for the Google homepage, and many people have.

In my opinion, the format I read about today is the one which has the most potential impact on SEM.

According to this article in the New York Times retailers are now starting to harness the power of RSS.

Many online retailers like eBags, ICE.com, TowerRecords.com and others are providing their customers with product updates via RSS.

What they are doing in some cases is integrating feeds into the product pages so that when the page changes and the corresponding feed is updated, the client can be automatically notified.

For example, let’s say you saw a pair of shoes you just have to have.  But they are a little out of your price range, or the colors are wrong.

With the new system used by these retailers, you could subscribe to the feed for this product and just plug it into your favorite news reader.  When the retailer updates the product page, the feed reader would notify you and you could check out the updates to see if it affects the pricing or colors of the shoes.

And if it did, then you could click on a link in the feed and be taken right to the product page where you could then proceed to purchase the shoes online.

To me, this is one of the real powers of RSS – people choose what they want to see and if they are really interested, they subscribe to the content.  They only have to view the content if and when it changes.  Until then, they don’t need to even think about it because the feed reader does the work for them.

It monitors the website on regular intervals and notifies them of changes to the website.

What an incredibly powerful tool for retailers!  The user can subscribe to the feed anonymously yet the retailer still can maintain that contact with them.  Providing product feeds in this manner is probably one of the best ways for the retailer and the customer to stay in contact without fear of crossing the anonymity threshold.

So if you are an online retailer, may I suggest you look at incorporating these types of product feeds into your site?  You may be surprised at the results.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.