Kingish.com It's a way of life

Web feeds and Pings are a vital part of an SEO toolkit. They inform other sites of how much and how often your site changes. Blogs use this feature to let the main blog networks know when to update their records, for example when new entries are added.

Google Sitemaps

A new-ish example of this technology in action is the Google Sitemaps tool that allows you to, as Google says, "tell us about all the pages on your site, and optionally, information about those pages, such as which are most important and how often they change."

Sitemaps is great, but individual feeds that allow users and search engine spiders to consume your latest content in one easy mouthfull are really great!

Individual Feeds

It is important to try and use feeds within areas of a site that get updated frequently (such as blogs or news). However, areas which only get updated semi-frequently (perhaps once a month, say) may also find a use for a web feed as an announcement mechanism.

If certain content on your site updates on a regular or semi-regular basis then have a look to see if adding a feed could enhance it. If you update an articles directory once a year then it probably isn't worth your time, but if it's updated once a month then you might just about get people interested in subscribing. If you update once a week then definitely look into web feeds.

Update Frequency, and Other Problems

Once you start thinking about a site in these terms, one can easily come up against problem areas, such as the sub (and sub-sub) categories in a links directory such as The Open Directory. This scenario involves thousands and thousands of categories and sub categories, and the deeper you get into the site the less frequently it updates. Does each category or sub-category deserve a web feed?

If your site contains a links directory, or and articles directory, or a directory of companies, you will face similar issues.

There is also the problem of scraper sites. These sites have a parasitic relationship with other sites by stealing their content and making a living from them. In the process they also damage the 'host' site and reduce the amount of trust search engines have in it. Adding more feeds means that they can find you more easily.

So, does offering web feeds disproportionately increase your chances of being scraped? Probably.

Benefits

I would be wary of letting the issues with web feeds stop you from offering them to your users. After all, that's who the site's for, isn't it?

If it gives your user added value then run with it. If it allows them to get news of updates and adds a way of keeping in-touch then go for it. If you think of a search engine spider as nothing more than another user, then the search engines are informed when your users are updated.

Surely that can only be good news. Right?