The Value of RSS/XML feeds for blogs

[Arcturus5]

Purely for SEO purposes, I've created a blog on my site. On a friend's advice, I created a rss feed for it using Feedburner. My site is brand new, and I don't have an subscribers for my blog (and really don't expect any, anyway), so I'm not entirely sure what use the feed is. Does simply creating a rss feed get one listed in rss directories? Are there ways to get oneself submitted, if not? Are there valuable SEO ways to use the feed?

Thanks.

[bhartzer]

Does simply creating a rss feed get one listed in rss directories?

No, you need to promote your feed just like you would promote any other website.

[Arcturus5]

I guess I shouldn't be suprised. One doesn't get something for nothing on the web. So, since I don't have subscribers, and think it is very unlikely that anyone would want to subscribe to my blog, how would I use the rss feed to promote my site?

[incrediblehelp]

Sure promote the feed to the many blog search engines that are out there now. The reason your friend recommended that you create one for your website (SEO reasons) is the great fresh content that can come from it. As long as you are posting a couple of times a week (even if they are small posts), the engines will like the website more.

[writergrrrl48]

I was also told to ping the blog directories whenever I added content so they'd come look. Someone suggested pingomatic.com - does anyone have experience with it? I thought it was simple and easy to use, 2 of my criteria :-)