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.
Creating Dynamically Driven Content
Dynamic content to a different location, such as database-driven content descriptions that are displayed on the website store. To separate the content from the layout of such a system.
The biggest reason people use dynamically driven content is to reduce time and costs of website maintenance. If the content is dynamically driven, the website owner can easily update the content without knowledge of website design or programming. In other cases, the content can come from other sources, reducing the time it takes to create content from scratch (or pay someone to do so). Other benefits include faster page loads and more possibilities for the delivery of the content, such as RSS or delivery for user accessibility.
The methods for creating dynamic content will be distributed mostly in two categories. The first category is the client-side scripting, the mouse or keyboard actions, reacts like DHTML, JavaScript or ActionScript. The second method is a server-side scripting, the response to a form or type of browser, such as PHP, Perl or ASP.NET would be.
The easiest way to create dynamically generated content, RSS feed if you are using, PHP and MySQL database. It is as simple as, to get the address of the feed, the script is used to display the feed on the page. In addition, to retrieve information feed, each item is an inexpensive tool to create a separate page in the feed. This is a search engine page, the items in the feed, it displays the registered keyword is SEO friendly.
Other tools, RSS to retrieve information, view the original link to the item title and few lines. Because only a few lines will appear in the title and search engine, which does not utilize the whole item is not SEO friendly like.
brute force evo II AND Stay connected a for earlybird orders one click
The value of RSS syndication is the links are contained within the content. This is because the major search engines like Google and Yahoo! pay a lot more attention to incoming links to a website and past them in the. We will content ourselves a little later, because it still applies, but it's so important to understand why content syndication feeds from across the Web, you can earn more money and cost you less!
RSS feeds are appearing on websites across the internet in order to keep people up to date with the latest news or information on a particular topic quickly. And we all know that users expect quality content, but even more so they expect that content to appear immediately! And, they want to see the content. They do not want to look for the content. They do not want to link to the content. They want the content to jump off of the screen and into their brains in 10 seconds or less!
Perhaps this is why Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, came about in the first place. It’s great news for web site owners too, however. Taking advantage of the huge variety and sheer number of RSS feeds that accept submissions from other websites provides a very cheap and simple way to develop more web site traffic and higher income.
Did I mention cheap? Investment of time, do not provide a way for visitors only minimal patronage, not only to stay aware of the latest updates for your services or products, to expand awareness of the world can. I'm cheap, what is the right reference? Well, RSS from the article's content and delivery of feed, using RSS feeds a lot of free time to feed some of the world is a standard XML RSS format content to spend preparing can.
If you have ever spent a large amount of money on an online marketing program - you already know the drawbacks of traditional internet marketing. Mass emails are no longer effective due to the increasing power of spam filters. Directory listing services are finding that their clients are removing their links due to retribution by the major search engine algorithms. And, Pay Per Click… well it’s just really expensive if you intend to see real results.
With RSS syndication, you are never going to face any of these issues. If you can write an html file for your website, you can syndicate your own RSS content. The basic process is quite simple to master, and as you become more familiar your skills will expand quickly as well.
What’s even better news for web site owners? The major search engines are not only approving of RSS syndication, they are providing RSS feeds open for submission in a huge array of topic areas like sports, entertainment, world news, travel, health and technology. There is a topic for every web site owner willing to put in a little effort! And people use their sites already, so what a better place to syndicate your content?
When you place content in an RSS feed, a link appears to your web site. This is noticed by the major search engines, and helps to increase your link popularity among the search engines. Link popularity will potentially move your site up in the search engine results pages (SERPS). Combine these two facts, and you will see that no matter how you look at it, RSS syndication will get you more traffic.
It doesn’t really matter whether your additional visitors found you through an RSS feed, or if your visibility and increased link popularity allowed them to find you through a major search engine! Think about that, and you are sure to see the true benefit of RSS content.
There’s that word again… “Content.” RSS content is different from what you might normally expect in an SEO campaign. The reason that most web sites containing RSS feeds put them there in the first place is to provide extra information for their visitors.
Think about when you publish a Web page, to provide IT professionals that you may be directed to content that is a rather specific nature. There may information, tutorials, or even advertising for a specific package. Although this information is important that a large majority of visitors who click on your link, some visitors may be more interested in another area of the IT sector.
Providing an RSS feed that displays the latest in the world of IT news may be a great answer. If the information found in your RSS feed is quality and relative to your visitors’ interests, they will bookmark your site. Then they will COME BACK!
But what does that mean to you as the RSS syndicated content provider? It means that you will need to produce quality content - because it’s your content that keeps the users coming back to the original site. As long as your content is quality, and you remain a part of that RSS feed, you will see increased new and return visitors.
And generating traffic is the largest goal of an SEO campaign, so why wouldn’t you want to syndicate quality content for RSS feeds? This simple and inexpensive method of marketing your website is gaining popularity, and becoming visible now as a content provider will only mean greater returns in the future.
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by clicking below: Posted in: xml tutorial| Tags: SEO search value content rss stay syndication force earlybird evoAll you Need to Know About Rss
What does RSS mean?
RSS may mean three different things. The original RSS (RDF Site Summary RSS 0.9) was developed by Dan Libby for Netscape. After a few months, they produced a simpler and easier to use version of Rich Site Summary or RSS 0.91 times. But they later lost interest, so that without an owner. As more and more users were using RSS feeds, Winer has an adapted version of RSS 0.91 for Userland, claiming it as his own. Later in 2005, Microsoft developed Really Simple Syndication in relation to its Simple Sharing Extensions.
What is RSS?
RSS is a syndicated content and news in the XML file format. It is commonly used sites, often need to be updated regularly, such as news websites (CNN, BBC and Reuters) and weblogs content. Because it essentially gives the pages more traffic, are now more widespread use of marketing, online publications and virus reports. Today, large and small sites often have turned to RSS technology.
For example, you are an avid baseball fan, you want to share a little about one of the most recent players. The above things, you can also attach multimedia files, such as video or pictures. By using RSS feeds, other Internet users to subscribe to the RSS feature to your site can read, "the title of freedom." They can also track the changes and the use of news aggregators, which will be discussed later updates.
How does RSS work?
In order to be able to use RSS, you must first download a software (content management system), in which XML format can be read. Headlines and excerpts of articles, and a link to the full article display. Not just words, but also can insert multimedia files of the RSS sources such as pictures, video, MP3 and others. Broadcatching, picturecasting, Photocasting photos and podcasts of some of the features, you can into your feed, but not discussed in this article.
For users to access an RSS feed, they must use an aggregator or feed reader. An aggregator searches for updates on RSS-enabled web pages then displays them. It can be either a standalone program or a web browser extension, depending on your operating system. Broadcast search engines for web content via RSS feed are also available as Plazoo and Feedster.
How can I make an RSS feed?
It is certainly easier to make an RSS feed if you know HTML. If not, you can subscribe to a blog (there are hundreds out there), some of which automatically creates RSS. If using a personal webpage building system, you need to understand more about RSS. Making an RSS feed from scratch is relatively easy.
A RSS feed should always contain an "item", whichever version of RSS you might use. If you wrote about a recent event in your city or a book review, the contents of this article can form an item. An item is essentially composed of three things: a title, its description, and link (where they can find your webpage). In choosing a title and description, use something that will describe the web content best. Although it will be easier for you, it doesn't follow that the title tag of your webpage and the item title are the same.
An item will look like HTML tags. First, you need an opening channel tag that put it as an XML file defined. Then, label the tag as an item by it after the channel tag. Then you can now insert the three essentials of your item:,, and. Just like HTML, we need to close the day in writing and on the ground.
An RSS feed that contains multiple tags looks like this:
Anne Rice's Belinda: A Book Review
If you haven't read any Anne Rice books yet, you will be greeted with shocking romantic relationships forming between unlikely characters...
http://allaboutbookreviews.com/belinda
Harry Potter IV: Darker with More Deaths
The recently released Harry Potter installation has proved dark for its younger readers...
http://allaboutbookreviews.com/harrypotterandthehalfbloodprince
Now, if you're still having a hard time understanding these tags, look for HTML tags tutorial to further grasp the concept. Have fun!
A Beginners Guide to RSS Feeds
One of the first things you will notice if you are starting out in the online industry is that you have a constant and always expanding need for fresh content on your websites. The more sites you own, the more content you need. While many people think about “videos” and “pics” when they hear the word content, search engines value text and links with much more weight than any images.
One way to maximize your content is through syndication some of them to your other websites. The concept is dominated by very similar to the time when newspapers before the Internet existed - if a good writer would sell an article to many publishers, each of which would be strongly in many different newspapers across the country. Syndication allows you to write less new content and reuse some of the best content on more than one site.
Have been used involving search engine traffic and links to many sites repeat the word a major negative impact, but such algorithms allow "the contents of excerpts," appears in many places there is no harm as long as the overall content of each site are still very different from any other website. It is very important to point out that the original content is absolutely, no doubt, always far more than syndicated content, you have a better use of this or other options.
Create your own syndication system requires the establishment of an RSS feed. You probably have heard before, the term RSS, it stands for
Its core, RSS as HTML source code using the same number of elements of programming. Administrator with a strong grasp of HTML may be able to reverse engineer its own information from the existing examples is easy. However, the webmaster's less code, and skills as the center, but there are some alternatives to the work of the same. For example, WordPress.com and other construction-yourself blog site offers RSS generator, including free services to help website publishers access to syndicated content.
Pre-fabricated Blog sites do allow basic RSS feeds to be generated with a just a few clicks, but as with any other aspect of website publishing, you can always do more when you are the one hosting and customizing your own content to suit your own needs.
Cause of RSS is to get a bit tricky, RSS feeds need to coordinate the work of markup and code to work with both databases, you are drafting the information and readers to send content to another site or browser. For experienced encoder, RSS may stand "really simple syndication," but for beginners to deal with all this, RSS can also be seen as "real Sucky aggregation" as well.
There are many trustworthy sites with “How To” RSS tutorials, which give a more in-depth set of instructions and examples along with advanced feed tips for webmasters seeking to educate themselves. One of the best starting points is SearchEngineWatch.com, which offers useful basic information and links to more in-depth examples.
Once you believe your RSS Feed is properly constructed, you can also visit a Feed Validator site like: http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html to check the feed and make sure it is at least minimally compatible with basic RSS standards.
Many website owners have already started a subsidiary to provide more sophisticated use of RSS sources, in view of growing demand and competition. If you recall, I mentioned earlier, the duplicate content is a powerful search engine optimization disadvantages. Thus, in one case is a big sponsor of the text block is being made available to the majority of subsidiaries, in the amount of cross-site duplication of information dissemination is increasingly significant.
Web site a way to handle problems with the duplication is to create "deformed" feed. These advanced RSS source, re-word or sentence in order to replace an entry for each species has been delegated to a user, so that each feed has become fodder for at least a few different times, all the other versions by other site administrators. Although the distortion of information to provide partial answers to the problem of duplicate content, they often failed to generate the text, and mankind will enjoy the fun of reading.
The simplest way to make an RSS Feed is of course to hire someone. Competent third party coders charge $100 or less to create a feed for you and any coder you hire should be able to easily explain what they have done so that you can create additional feeds or amend existing ones on your own. With an ever-growing need for content and a very small expense to have your RSS Feed generated correctly by a professional programmer, it really is the simplest way to get your sites syndicated.
Posted in: html tutorial| Tags: Online guide search word site content rss feeds syndication beginnersHow You Can Instantly Tap Into an Unlimited Source of Content, for Free!
Are you looking for dynamic, automatically refreshing, sticky content to spice up your website?
If you are a webmaster, you will know how difficult it is to attract new content to your subscribers and create new traffic to your website. Paying freelance writers can cost you a fortune if you are just at the beginning and not site revenue to finance the cost of writing the article itself is far too much time and takes you away from other important tasks (like actually running the place and make sales can happen).
Luckily, there's a little-known but extremely easy tool that you can use to instantly jazz up your website and provide your traffic with valuable information. In fact, you might have heard of this tool before. Headline syndication, aggregators, XML format?
Sound familiar?
Yup, I'm talking about RSS Feeds.
If you haven't heard about RSS Feeds, or what they are, I strongly urge you to print out this article, go to a quiet corner where you won't be disturbed and literally devour every word of the rest of this article. Not only will it probably save your business, but it will revolutionize the way you think about the Internet.
And if you've come across RSS feeds before or used them, then skim through the next section to refresh your memory (seriously, there is a lot of useful information that you might be missing out on) and then dive into the meat of this article, which will show you how to set up RSS feeds on your website to display dynamic, self-updating content with very little effort.
What Is RSS?
RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary", although other terms such as "RDF Site Summary" (which emphasizes the file format) and "Really Simple Syndication" (which highlights the main selling point of RSS) are also useful in defining RSS by the book. However, bookish definitions don't always explain things very well. What really is RSS?
RSS is a platform over which a webmaster can instantly deliver summarized information about the latest / most important content on his website. This summary is usually a list of headlines and snippets - the headline will instantly inform the reader of what this new article or page contains and the snippet (usually the first few lines of the article) is to further entice the reader into visiting the website, or to simply give the reader more information. RSS has evolved into a commonly accepted XML standard, and many websites now use RSS Feeds (XML files containing the summaries) to publish "updates" about themselves.
Viewed from the perspective of a webmaster, an RSS feed is meant the visitors and participants to enable an easy way to keep abreast of fresh content on their site (without being on the website first). Additionally, an RSS feed that allows the reader to
Using An RSS Feed
As an internet entrepreneur can, one of your main tools will be an RSS reader. This is basically an aggregator - a collection of RSS feeds (you can add or remove) from different sites you are interested in. A typical RSS reader, would contain RSS feeds from news sites, sports facilities, and perhaps a few niche sites (such as SEO forums, blogs about SEO, etc.). The main aim of this software, inform you about the latest news and content on web pages you are interested in.
If you have used My Yahoo!(my.yahoo.com) or Bloglines(www.bloglines.com), you've probably used RSS Feeds already. These are online RSS aggregators - you get to choose from numerous websites and within minutes you can have your own launch-pad for knowing everything that's happening in your niche, in the world, or in sports.
As a first step to understanding how RSS Feeds work, I'd suggest that you use at least one RSS Aggregator - either an online RSS tool or RSS reading software like SharpReader(www.SharpReader.net) - and subscribe to a few RSS Feeds to learn how it works from a user's perspective.
Marketing and RSS
Using RSS Feeds, websites can:
? Attract more customers / visitors. ? Keep subscribers informed of new developments ? Allow subscribers to instantly learn of new articles, content and products on their website. ? Reduce the load on the subscriber's inbox by reserving newsletters for important news, special product offers, etc.
As a webmaster, you can use RSS Feeds to your advantage. Since blogging became insanely popular over two years ago, RSS Feeds have become mainstream. In other words, no matter what your niche, there's a good chance that you'll be able to find a few authority sites that publish RSS Feeds, thus syndicating their latest headlines.
How can you use this?
By providing your visitors relevant, self-refreshing content in the shape of the "latest news" by using RSS feeds from niche-relevant websites.
Now I'm not saying that you should cover your whole website (or even one whole page) with RSS Feeds. Such practice is frowned upon by search engines and will actually get your website banned from every single search engine index! RSS Feeds are meant for headline syndication, not for content scrapping.
Instead, you could use headlines from the top 3 forums in the weight loss niche to show the latest discussion threads on one side of the "News" page of your own weight loss website. The rest of the page would, of course, be covered with information (i.e. latest news) about your own website.
Or you could put a news ticker on your politics blog to not only give your blog a look of "being updated" but to also provide your readers with relevant, useful information.
If you sell sports goods and own an online store, you could run a "sports news" feed on your main page to attract the attention of your visitors and give your website a more authentic look and feel. There are many different ways you can use RSS Feeds to add value to your website. Make sure though, that you are merely using these Feeds as "icing on the cake", and not as the whole cake itself.
Finding RSS Feeds
Finding RSS Feeds is easy; there are several RSS-specific directories and niche search engines for you to browse through. However, the surge of blogging in the last two years has meant that any RSS search tool is inundated with blog spam. This makes it a bit harder to find RSS Feeds that you can actually use.
I've listed a few resources below that can help you get started in your search for finding relevant RSS Feeds.
? Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) ? BlogPulse (www.blogpulse.com) ? Daypop (www.daypop.com) ? Feedster (www.feedster.com) ? Findory Blogory (findory.com/blogs) ? Gigablast Blog Search (blogs.gigablast.com) ? IceRocket Blog Search (www.icerocket.com/?tab=blog) ? PubSub (www.pubsub.com) ? Technorati (www.technorati.com)
Once you've found the RSS Feeds of your choice, it's time to find out how to set them up on your website.
Setting up an RSS Feed to Display on your Website
Internet Marketers are a particular breed; we're always looking for an "easier" or "quicker" way of doing things; not necessarily shortcuts, but just ways to work smarter. It's the same with RSS. When I first came across it, I immediately went to Google and not only picked out a tool that could help me syndicate my own website (so I wouldn't have to spend time learning XML), but I also found several tools that I could use to display RSS Feeds from other websites onto mine! These tools are ridiculously simple, and I'd fully suggest that you try them before venturing into learning how to display RSS Feeds on your webpages through code.
If your website is in PHP, you can use the following software:
CaRP (www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/)
This software also has a free version, which displays a simple ad in the middle of the news display saying something like "these news headlines brought to you by CaRP". Try it out; it's easy to use, and will teach a lot about managing RSS Feeds.
There are JavaScript alternatives available as well (in case your website uses plain HTML).
Jawfish (www.geckotribe.com/rss/jawfish/)
Like CaRP, Jawfish also has a free trial, which is once again easy to setup if you can follow step-by-step instructions.
FeedRoll (www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/)
Another JavaScript alternative is FeedRoll - this is perhaps the easiest to use of the three mentioned here, but it offers less flexibility and choice of feeds compared to the others.
Of course, if you want more options (or have ASP or something on your website), go to your search engine of choice and type in "How to display RSS Feeds on my website" to get a quick listing of articles, tutorials and more tools to help you out.
More RSS
RSS is an amazingly versatile platform that can be used from anything as simple as running a news ticker to something as topical and time-sensitive as providing weather alerts to affected areas. In fact, any information that is:
? regularly updated ? time sensitive ? new
can be a good candidate for an RSS Feed. The key here is to remember that there are always new uses for information and technology... it's just a matter of pinning them down.
Brad Callen SEOElite http://www.seoelite.com
If you liked the lesson and want to learn more about SEO, visit http://www.seoelite.com/7DaysToMassiveWebsiteTraffic.htm and get your free copy of "7 Days To Massive Website Traffic!" right now!
Brad Callen SEO Elite http://www.seoelite.co
Posted in: javascript tutorial| Tags: Traffic Website Information article tool content rss feeds instantly unlimitedHow You Can Instantly Tap Into an Unlimited Source of Content, for Free!
Are you looking for dynamic, automatically refreshing, sticky content to spice up your website? If you are a webmaster, you’ll know how difficult it is to create fresh content to attract your subscribers and new visitors to your website. Paying freelance writers can cost you a fortune when you are just starting out and don’t have site revenues to fund expenses, and writing the articles yourself takes way too much time and takes you away from other important tasks (like actually running the site and making sales happen). Luckily, there’s a little-known but extremely easy tool that you can use to instantly jazz up your website and provide your traffic with valuable information. In fact, you might have heard of this tool before. Headline syndication, aggregators, XML format? Sound familiar? Yup, I’m talking about RSS Feeds.
If you haven’t heard about RSS Feeds, or what they are, I strongly urge you to print out this article, go to a quiet corner where you won’t be disturbed and literally devour every word of the rest of this article. Not only will it probably save your business, but it will revolutionize the way you think about the Internet. And if you’ve come across RSS feeds before or used them, then skim through the next section to refresh your memory (seriously, there is a lot of useful information that you might be missing out on) and then dive into the meat of this article, which will show you how to set up RSS feeds on your website to display dynamic, self-updating content with very little effort.
What Is RSS?
RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary”, although other terms such as “RDF Site Summary” (which emphasizes the file format) and “Really Simple Syndication” (which highlights the main selling point of RSS) are also useful in defining RSS by the book. However, bookish definitions don’t always explain things very well. What really is RSS? RSS is a platform over which a webmaster can instantly deliver summarized information about the latest / most important content on his website. This summary is usually a list of headlines and snippets – the headline will instantly inform the reader of what this new article or page contains and the snippet (usually the first few lines of the article) is to further entice the reader into visiting the website, or to simply give the reader more information. RSS has evolved into a commonly accepted XML standard, and many websites now use RSS Feeds (XML files containing the summaries) to publish “updates” about themselves. From the webmaster’s point of view, an RSS feed is meant to allow visitors and subscribers an easy way to keep themselves abreast of fresh content on their website (without having them visit the website first). Additionally, an RSS Feed also allows the reader to “preview” this fresh content, thus letting them decide immediately if the new article / content is interesting to them or not. All in all, RSS Feeds have the main purpose of enhancing user experience. Keep that last point as we go through the rest of this article – it is an underlying mindset to making RSS Feeds work effectively.
Using A RSS Feed
As an Internet entrepreneur, one of your most valuable tools can be a RSS Reader. This is essentially an aggregator – a collection of RSS Feeds (that you can add or remove) from different websites that you are interested in. A typical RSS Reader would include RSS Feeds from news sites, sports sites, and perhaps a few niche sites (such as SEO forums, blogs on SEO, etc.). The main purpose of this software is to keep you informed of the latest news and content on websites that you are interested in. If you have used My Yahoo! or Bloglines , you’ve probably used RSS Feeds already. These are online RSS aggregators – you get to choose from numerous websites and within minutes you can have your own launch-pad for knowing everything that’s happening in your niche, in the world, or in sports. As a first step to understanding how RSS Feeds work, I’d suggest that you use at least one RSS Aggregator – either an online RSS tool or RSS reading software like SharpReader – and subscribe to a few RSS Feeds to learn how it works from a user’s perspective.
Marketing and RSS
Using RSS Feeds, websites can:
* Attract more customers / visitors.
* Keep subscribers informed of new developments
* Allow subscribers to instantly learn of new articles, content and products on their website.
* Reduce the load on the subscriber’s inbox by reserving newsletters for important news, special product offers, etc.
As a webmaster, you can use RSS Feeds to your advantage. Since blogging became insanely popular over two years ago, RSS Feeds have become mainstream. In other words, no matter what your niche, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to find a few authority sites that publish RSS Feeds, thus syndicating their latest headlines. How can you use this? By providing your visitors relevant, self-refreshing content in the shape of the “latest news” by using RSS feeds from niche-relevant websites. Now I’m not saying that you should cover your whole website (or even one whole page) with RSS Feeds. Such practice is frowned upon by search engines and will actually get your website banned from every single search engine index! RSS Feeds are meant for headline syndication, not for content scrapping. Instead, you could use headlines from the top 3 forums in the weight loss niche to show the latest discussion threads on one side of the “News” page of your own weight loss website. The rest of the page would, of course, be covered with information (i.e. latest news) about your own website. Or you could put a news ticker on your politics blog to not only give your blog a look of “being updated” but to also provide your readers with relevant, useful information. If you sell sports goods and own an online store, you could run a “sports news” feed on your main page to attract the attention of your visitors and give your website a more authentic look and feel. There are many different ways you can use RSS Feeds to add value to your website. Make sure though, that you are merely using these Feeds as “icing on the cake”, and not as the whole cake itself.
Finding RSS Feeds
RSS is easy to find the source, there are several RSS-specific directories, and your niche search engine to browse. However, in the blog surge in the past two years, which means that any RSS search tools and blog spam flood. This makes it difficult to find RSS sources that some can actually use. We have listed below can help you in your search to find relevant RSS subscription started a few.
* Bloglines
* BlogPulse
* Daypop
* Feedster
* Findory Blogory
* Gigablast Blog Search
* IceRocket Blog Search
* PubSub
* Technorati
Once you’ve found the RSS Feeds of your choice, it’s time to find out how to set them up on your website.
Setting up a RSS Feed to Display on your Website
Internet Marketers are a particular breed; we’re always looking for an “easier” or “quicker” way of doing things; not necessarily shortcuts, but just ways to work smarter. It’s the same with RSS. When I first came across it, I immediately went to Google and not only picked out a tool that could help me syndicate my own website (so I wouldn’t have to spend time learning XML), but I also found several tools that I could use to display RSS Feeds from other websites onto mine! These tools are ridiculously simple, and I’d fully suggest that you try them before venturing into learning how to display RSS Feeds on your webpages through code.
If your website is in PHP, you can use the following software:
- Carp: This software is also brought to you carp
There JavaScript options, and (if your site uses just HTML). BUT, using javascript kind would defeat the purpose of using an RSS feed, such as search engines can not read javascript. It seems completely invisible to them.
- Jawfish: Like CaRP, Jawfish also has a free trial, which is once again easy to setup if you can follow step-by-step instructions.
- FeedRoll: Another JavaScript alternative is FeedRoll – this is perhaps the easiest to use of the three mentioned here, but it offers less flexibility and choice of feeds compared to the others.
Of course, if other options (or if, ASP or something on your website), select the type of search engine
RSS is a remarkably versatile platform from which everything that can go as simple as a News Ticker to be something used to date and time-sensitive as the provision of weather warnings in the affected areas. In fact, all information that is:
* regularly updated
* time sensitive
* new
can be a good candidate for a RSS Feed.? The key here is to remember that there are always new uses for information and technology… it’s just a matter of pinning them down.
Making an RSS Feed
What Is RSS?
How does RSS work or delivery? You have about a particular topic, say issuing a new Web page. Topics that other people will be interested to know about it. Your RSS file
What does RSS stand for? There's a can of worms. RSS as introduced by Netscape in 1999 then later abandoned in 2001 stood for "Rich Site Summary." Another version of RSS pioneered by UserLand Software stands for "Really Simple Syndication." In yet another version, RSS stands for "RDF Site Summary."
History buffs might be interested that there's been some rivalry over who invented RSS. This is why we have both different names and indeed different "flavors" or versions of RSS. Mark Pilgrim's written an excellent article, What Is RSS, that charts the different versions with recommendations on which to use. I'll also revisit the version choice you'll need to make. But first, let's look more closely at some basics of what goes into any RSS file.
How Easy Is RSS?
I've been exploring RSS because it was time that Search Engine Watch offered its own stories in this manner. I've read several tutorials about making a feed, and they generally suggest that it is easy. They often offer code that you can "cut-and-paste" and link over to specifications that I actually don't find that clear.
For example, the RSS 2.0 specification has an "cloud" element that's optional but which a lay person might still wonder if they should use it. Meanwhile, heaven help the person who stumbles into the RSS 1.0 specification and its complicated RDF syntax.
Sure, making an RSS file IS easy for many. If you understand HTML, you'll probably understand enough to do a cut-and-paste from someone else's RSS file to make your own file. Don't know HTML? Start a blog, because several blogging tools automatically generates RSS files.
For those who use non-WYSIWYG web page building tools or personal home page building systems technical staff, and confidence. Even if you can create an RSS file from scratch, as long as you have the extra features, you may not need some exemptions. We will how to do this below. Later, I will mention some of the tools, and even do some or all of your work.
The RSS File
At the heart of an RSS file are "items." No matter what version of RSS you settle on, your file will have to include at least one item. Items are generally web pages that you'd like others to link to. For example, let's say you just created a web page reviewing a new cell phone that's being released. Information about that page would form an item.
To enter your item into the RSS file, you'll need three bits of information:
* Title
* Description
* Link
Requires a precise description of the item title or to see the items on the Web page's HTML tags do not match the title, and description meta tags, they do not know (what I assume is what you use ? of my HTML tags to see the article about how to use what). Any title and description, we can write a page describing. However, the title of your page using the meta description tag, and certainly easy to copy, RSS feeds to create a paste.
In the case of our example page, let's say this is the information we settle on to define it as an item:
Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
I've been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html
Now we have to surround XML tags and their information. These HTML tags are exceptions, HTML, unlike XML which does not exist to set a definition similar to the tag. Anyone can configure a specific XML tags. Is convenient if the resulting XML file is read depends on the program. RSS feed is an XML tag is defined, and set their own feed. To correct them, read RSS feeds that information to understand and use?
Did that make your head spin? If so, don't reread -- just carry on to see how simple it is. First, open a text editor like Notepad. We're going to build our RSS file using it.
For your title, you need to start it with thetag, then follow this with the text of the title, then end with thetag. It looks like this:
Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
For your description, you do the same, starting out with the openingtag, then following with the actual description, then "closing" with thetag. Now you have this:
Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
I've been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!
Next, we add the link information, beginning with , following with the actual hyperlink, then closing with . That gives us this:
Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
I've been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html
Now there's one more thing we need to do. We actually have to define all this information as forming a particular "item," which we do using a special item tag.
You place the opening item tag,at the top or start of all the information we've listed. You then place the closing item tag, , at the bottom or "end" of the item information. The finished product looks like this:
Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
I've been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html
Congratulations! You've now made your first item. There's a bit more to do to finish our RSS file. First, what if we have other items we want to syndicate? Then we simply add more item elements, just as we did above. You can have up to 15 items. New items tend to be inserted at the top, with old items removed from the bottom, to make room for new stuff.
With our example, let's see how things look if we add two more items:
Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
I've been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html
Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!
I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html
Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small
OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon's MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html
Having defined items we want to distribute, we now have to define our site as a "channel." You'll use the same tags as with the items: title, description and link. However, this time the information will be about your entire site, rather than a particular page. That means our channel information would look like this:
All Gadgets Reviewed
If it's a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what's not!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com
Now, how does something reading our RSS file know that the information above is for our "channel" when it looks just like item information? Simple. As long as we don't surround this information with an opening and closingtags, it won't be seen as item information but rather as channel information. That gives us this:
All Gadgets Reviewed
If it's a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what's not!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com
Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
I've been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html
Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!
I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html
Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small
OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon's MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html
There are a few last things we need to do. First, we need to add a tag at the very top of the file saying that this is written according to the XML 1.0 specifications. Right under this, we also have to say what RSS version we are using.
So far, everything we've done is compatible with UserLand's popular RSS 0.91 version. However, it also matches UserLand's latest RSS 2.0 version, as well, so we'll define the file as meeting that specification. This will allow us to add other neat features in the future, if we want.
Finally, after the RSS tag, we need to add an opening "channel" tag. That gives us this at the top of the file:
At the bottom of the file, after all the items we want to syndicate, we have to insert a closing channel and RSS tag, in that order. Those look like this:
This means our complete file looks like this:
All Gadgets Reviewed
If it's a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what's not!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com
Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
I've been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html
Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!
I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html
Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small
OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon's MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html
Mind Blowing Options
Everything shown above is the bare basics you need to create a file and start syndicating content from your web site. However, there are additional things you could do.
For example, rather than your entire web site being a "channel," you could actually have different content from within the web site be defined into separate channels. That's something I'm not going to explore in this article, but some of the resources below will guide you through this, when you feel more comfortable.
As suggested, RSS 2.0 allows you to insert any kind of additional information in your feed. It is your heads and watch them spin, you can decide what to use. The simple answer is, please do not worry about what you do not know. Provide all the options not all aggregators. Above proposal to provide only minimal information, but should be fine.
Did I Choose The Right RSS Version?
Earlier, I'd mentioned there are different versions of RSS. Even though we entered the bare minimum of information, it turned out that we were able to have a file that was easily considered to be RSS 2.0, the latest version promoted by UserLand and which is widely used.
Indeed, the Syndic8 site reports that the most popular format of RSS by far is RSS 0.91 -- and though we've used RSS 2.0, our file as shown is entirely compatible with RSS 0.91. In short, we're in safe company.
What about that RSS 1.0 version that I said was complicated. Well, it is complicated. However, some people might want to make use of some of the special capabilities that it offers. If you are interested in it, then check out the official specification.
Saving The File
Now that we're done adding to the file, we need to save it. But what name shall we give it? I've looked and not seen any guidance on this. I imagine that's because as long as the file is valid (more below), it probably doesn't matter what it's called.
To make my own decision for Search Engine Watch, I decided to imitate what I saw out at UserLand, which promotes the RSS 2.0 standard that we used. UserLand's example feeds all ended .xml, so let's do the same. As for the first part, that really can be whatever you like. For our example, let's say we just call it feed.xml.
Now that our file is saved, we can place it anywhere we want on our web server. Let's say we put it in the root or home directory. Then the address to our RSS file would be:
http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/feed.xml
Validating The File
Now our RSS file is done, but did we do it right? To find out, we need to validate it. Use the aptly named Feed Validator service. Simply enter the address to your RSS file, and you'll be told if everything is OK -- or if there's something wrong you need to fix.
How about a quick preview of how your new feed actually looks? Then pay a visit to Wytheville Community College News Center. Again, enter your feed URL, and you'll see the clickable headlines and story descriptions nicely assembled inside a box.
The service will also generate a JavaScript code that you can post on your site. Anyone copying the JavaScript can automatically have your feed syndicated into their pages -- pretty neat!
Get Syndicated!
Now that your file is validated, you want the world to know about it! To make this happen, visit the RSS directories and search engines listed in the RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content article. They generally offer submission pages, where you can inform them of your feed.
You also want to make sure people who come to your web site see that you provide a feed. It's very common to post a link to the feed somewhere on the home page of a web site. If you have a dedicated news page, you may want to put it there, as well.
You can link to your feed using a normal HTML link. However, many websites have a small orange XML button to use to the feed link. I've also seen some sites with a blue RSS icon. I could find no standard about using these. So, to be sure I have all three of Search Engine Watch. Search on the homepage, and you'll see how it's done (and help yourself to the icons, when you need it).
Finally, it's good to "ping" one of the major services that track when web logs and RSS content changes. By doing this, you ensure that other sites that monitor these know to check back at your site for more content.
Weblogs.com is one of these major sites. Enter your site's name and the URL of your feed into the manual Ping-Site Form, and it will know you've updated your feed. The Specs page explains how to set up automatic notification.
blo.gs is another major change monitoring site. It is supposed to receive any changes that come from Weblogs.com, so you shouldn't need to notify it separately. However, if you want to be on the safe side, it's easily done. Use the ping form, which also explains how to set up automatic pinging, as well.
Tutorials & Resources
RSS Headline Creator, you can skip and manually coding the number of headlines you want to choose your file, up to the 15 maximum allowed. Then a form with fields that you be made complete. Enter the correct information, then press the
How To Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated is a Dec. 2002 tutorial by Kalena Jordan and Dan Thies from which I drew inspiration to get my own feed going.
Syndic8's How To Section lists a variety of tutorials that discuss how to build RSS files.
Content Syndication with RSS is a book by Ben Hammersley that was just released in March 2003. I haven't read it, but everything I've heard is that it should be excellent.
RSS Resources Directory from UserLand categorizes helpful information related to RSS, in different categories.
Postscript: Search Types: Blogs & Feeds and SEO: Feeds are sections of the Search Topics area available to Search Engine Watch members with lots of information on the topic of feeds since this article was originally written.
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