What is a ROR feed and are there any SEO benefits to having one?

• What exactly is a ROR structured Feed and is there any significant traffic or PageRank benefits to having one?

Answer: The ROR (structured) feed is an independent Master XML format file you place on your site. The Master XML format file describes the different types of content you have, but in generic terms (the idea is that search engines will better understand them). These structured feeds are stored in the ROR feed called ror.xml which is placed in the main directory of your Website —http://www.your-website-name.com/ror.xml.

ROR feeds are pushed as a more detailed Google Sitemaps option because it allows you to put information about products, services, feeds, articles, reviews, archives, and many other objects, all of which can be indexed by all of the major search engines. Here's an example of what the ROR feed looks like for this site: The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) - http://www.bodc.ac.uk/ror.xml.

Notice how much information is on that feed!? The feed contains everything from short page summaries, to traditional sitemap info, to links to all their images. It's essentially everything on the site.

The issue is that this technology was first released in 2006 and since then search engine bots have gotten more and more sophisticated in their ability to crawl content. So, regardless of what their logo says, there is no real evidence of any SEO benefit to using ROR (Resources of a Resource) structured feeds.

Even though the jury is still out on any noticeable SEO benefits of this feed, having another venue to distribute your content to search engines is never a bad thing. So, if you're interested in adding one to your site, you'll be happy to know it's very easy. In a matter of minutes, you can create your own ROR File by following these simple steps: