The Online Shopping and Credit Crunch Survey Report conducted in the UK by E-consultancy found that some sixty four percent of respondents surveyed said they would reduce their spending generally in view of the deteriorating economic climate, but fifty six percent said that their online spending would not be affected - or would actually increase.

And when they do spend online they are looking for information in search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Customers want to open a dialog with companies - they are looking for best prices, reviews and advice about the products they are researching online. The importance of customer engagement is increasing, yet many companies have no defined social media strategy in place. Only half of companies (fifty one percent) say that the economic crisis has caused them to place greater focus on customer engagement. They want to know what customer's are saying.

Areas associated with Web 2.0 and social media such as user ratings & feedback (forty one percent), user-generated content (thirty seven percent), blogging (thirty six percent) and brand presence on social networks (thirty six percent) are expected to attract significant sums of investment.

One of the most cost effective ways for a business to make product information, special deals, reviews and advice available is to RSS (really simple syndication) enable their web content. Although most people think of RSS as an inherent part of blogs, any web content can be syndicated in an RSS feed. In fact, many of the social web applications that facilitate customer dialog run on RSS systems. And apart from making the content easily available, RSS feeds can also boost SEO (search engine optimization) and search visibility.

Google's SEO starter guide says that exclusive, fresh and relevant content is by far the most important factor in search ranking, so creating excellent content is vital to reaching people who are searching for information on the Internet. Syndicating this content in RSS feeds can reach a wider audience and build back links, another important part of search visibility. It's about the content and the back links.

Since Google changed their search format to Universal Search, every business needs to have optimized digital assets in many formats. Creating and syndicating this content makes all the difference to your RSS and SEO strategy. Feeds get seen by the search engines and signal them that there is fresh content available.

RSS is being used in many industries to open a dialog and keep customers, vendors, supporters, donors and other stakeholders notified of current information. If you are interested in RSS and SEO, check out YouTube. Simply type in 'RSS and SEO' in the search bar and choose the video by SalFalko. For even more information about RSS and SEO visit press-feed dot com.