Create RSS Feed and Promote RSS Feeds

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, as it is known, is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet. It seems like all Internet businesses now RSS feeds available; At least your competitors do. You finally made the decision you have to have one. Where to start?

Steps to Creating an RSS feed


1.) Build a Feed

There are a number of desktop and web applications available that make feed creation easy. I would encourage anyone creating a feed to use one. Though not overly complicated, hand-coding an RSS feed can become a bit confusing and time-consuming. Most desktop software applications for building a feed include a wizard and contact-sensitive help, simplifying the process of creating a feed. Following a few simple steps in a wizard generally will produce an RSS feed in just a few minutes.

Publishers control what information is syndicated in the RSS feed, so ultimately the decision of the issuer as to whether to include teaser copy or full articles. Think what you are trying to achieve and who your target audience is when building the feed.

Software to Build a Feed - http://www.feedforall.com

Tutorial for Creating Feed by Hand using XML - http://www.make-rss-feeds.com


2.) Transfer the Feed Onto Your Server

Once you've built an RSS feed you need to transfer the feed to your server. This may be a standard FTP client (if not built into the feed creation software). The feed is usually in the root directory of the domain as follows: http://www.mydomain.com/nameoffeed.xml placed, but as long as you know where it is not really important.


3.) Display the Feed on Your Website Using a Graphic of Some Sort

In order to signal to website visitors that an RSS feed containing content related to the website is available, include a colorful graphic on the website. It has become a standard that nearly all websites that have RSS feeds available use colorful graphics such as flags as indicators that RSS feeds are available for specific content. The flags were initially bright orange rectangles but as the popularity has grown, webmasters have bent the rules a bit. NotePage has made a free online RSS graphic tool available that allows users to quickly customize buttons by selecting the text on the button and the color scheme of the button. Once the color and text is entered, a custom graphic is instantly created. Webmasters can easily match the style of the RSS button to a website's theme. Graphics experience is not required. Simply select alternative colors and insert text to personalize RSS feed graphics. The RSS graphics tool can be used by clicking the following URL http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm or choose ready made graphics fom: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-graphics.htm .


4.) Include Information in the HTML of the Web Page So RSS Readers Auto-Detect Your Feed

Following the publication of an RSS feed is important to let visitors know that the food is available. Aggregators will automatically detect RSS on a website if you add a small piece of code, in the header section of an HTML page.

[link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml"]

Be sure to replace http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml with the URL to the RSS feed and replace the brackets with "" greater than symbols.


5.) Display the Feed's Content on a Website

Contents contained in an RSS feed can be added to a website, providing site visitors an alternative method for viewing the content. The information will also help increase search engine interest. Displaying the feed as HTML can be accomplished. Providing fresh content on a regular basis will encourage site visitors return.

Tutorial for Displaying Feeds - http://www.small-business-software.net/display-rss.htm


6.) Submit the Feed to RSS Directories and Search Engines

As a rapidly increasing number of content sources, new and old, migrate or add RSS as a key distribution channel, and as more people utilize RSS newsreaders and aggregators to keep themselves informed, the ability to maintain high exposure and visibility is gradually shifted from complete attention to major search engines and content optimization techniques to an increasing awareness of RSS feed directories and search tools.


In order to increase exposure of an RSS feed it should be submitted to RSS search engines and directories. This can be done manually. Just as you would submit the URL of a website or web page to a search engine you will need to submit the link of the actual feed located on your website to the RSS directories. There is a large list of RSS directories at http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm . If you prefer to automate the submission process try RSS Submit at: http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html . An evaluation version is available.

Business Blogs - The Smarter Way To Promote Your Business!

When you compare most of the options available for promoting your business, it’s clear that the world wide web offers many attractive benefits and possibilities for businesses to not only create greater exposure for their products and services, but also to leverage the business owner’s time and effort.

There is a smart, cheap, best, easy and fast solution. It’s called a business blog.

Some of the immediate advantages a blog offers businesses over regular, static web sites, are a smarter content publishing and management platform, more direct involvement with their customers, built-in capabilities like RSS feeds and search engine notification, and greater control and flexibility over the way content is managed.

In addition, it is easier to promote and expand your business networks with a blog, it is a web site, if you know how. What's more is that the promotion of your work can have a longer life, and give you like than traditional newspaper and radio advertising, advertising media. (In fact, you can combine these, for example, so that your current promotion is your blog page, and then send a broadcast or print advertising customers to visit your blog.)

What’s the difference between a business blog and a business website?

You can make a business blog look and feel exactly like a website – in fact, many of the sites you are visiting right now are probably powered by blogging platforms like WordPress, instead of popular web design HTML applications like Frontpage or Dreamweaver. A significant difference, is that you don’t need to know web site coding language like HTML to run a business blog, or add and modify content on your site. You simply add content and publish. This makes business blogs a perfect online marketing tool for business owners.

Another important difference is that blogs allow you to have "conversations" and build interactive relationships with other people, where static web sites tend to be more of a "one-way" vehicle for presenting information to visitors.

What if you already have a web site?

If you currently have a website that requires you to contact your web developer, web designer, web master or an IT savvy friend, nephew, niece or neighbor every time you want to make a change to your site, then you definitely need to consider adding a blog to your site. Simply install the blog in a subdirectory of your domain (e.g. yourdomain.com/blog), then promote your business using the blog and link your posts back to your site for more information about your products or services, to purchase, etc …

If you don’t have a website yet, then save yourself money on costly web development and a lot of hassle and just use a blog. With a blog, you can easily promote your business by adding regular posts and articles about a variety of different topics.

Here are just some ideas for things you can write about your business, then post on your business blog:

Product recalls Customer service information (e.g. how to ship product back, refund policies, etc.) FAQs Profiling customers Information your customers would find useful, educational, informative, entertaining, etc.New things coming soon to your business Profiling members of your team News about your industry Top 10 lists Product / Service tips (how to spot quality, how to avoid paying too much or being ripped off, etc ..)News about your own business Product / Service benefits

As you can see, there’s no shortage of content to write about when it comes to promoting your business.

Now … just getting a blog up and running is not really going to help you. You need to know how to configure it properly if you want to achieve the best results with the least effort.

Fortunately, there is a good resource, I suggest you a more detailed study, if you are aware of the benefits and the use of blog services to help you promote your business and sell your products and services, intelligent edge, but also a sense of interest. One, called SelfPublishWebcom provides two ways to help you build your business, not only make your site fast in Google and other major search engines index (usually in a short period of 2-3 days) Web blog, but they told How do you fully configure, make it your business a powerful marketing tool, with many built-in marketing automation features, you do not even need to consider.

You just write about your business and the automated system running silently in the background goes to work for you.

SelfPublishWebcom offers two options: You can install the full set up and configure your company website / business blog for you and you're ready to go in as little as 4-5 working days, or if you have several hundred dollars You can save their complete

I've had a chance to fully review their offers and I thoroughly recommend the step-by-step video training tutorials they offer as a DIY cheaper alternative. You get access to a private Member's Area where you can watch all of the training videos and download all of the materials, plus ongoing support. The videos are excellent and make everything really easy to follow, and the information is never overwhelming. You are only given what you need to know in order to get the next task done. Additional resources are provided in the member's area, plus you get training emails, and access to a member's forum.

In my opinion, the smartest option is to purchase the step-by-step video training tutorials (selling for less than $100 last time I checked), then assign the task of installing, setting up and configuring the site to somebody in your team if you don't want to go through the tutorials yourself. Like I said earlier, the instructions and video tutorials are really easy to follow, so anyone can do it.