Using RSS on Your Website

RSS is a method for syndicating website content. It consists of a family of XML file formats for web syndication used to provide web content or summaries of web content, links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data. Feed readers or aggregators can check RSS-enabled web pages automatically and display any updated articles.

If you’re a website owner, you can provide an RSS feed of your website’s content to essentially allow people to use the content on their website or through their feed reader. This provides links back to your website, and also prompts repeat visits.

Depending on your website’s content, providing an RSS feed could be one of the best things you ever do. If your website includes news or contains a blog, then publishing an RSS feed allows people to get a quick update from you, and then easily visit your site to read full articles. Most blog software will automatically publish an RSS feed for your blog, so check for a URL and start promoting; add the RSS button to a prominent area so visitors can easily find it and sign up.

Likewise, if you are constantly adding new products to your website, you might consider making an RSS feed available; in this case, just a quick rundown of your latest or top selling products and their prices. Other websites could be interested in publishing that data for their users, and you would receive more visitors! Again, RSS also givs you links, which can help your site’s search engine rankings.

You can visit the RSS directories and search engines on the net; many offer submission pages, and you can inform them of your feed. Again, make sure that people who come to your web site see that you provide a feed. Post a link to the feed somewhere on the home page of your web site, and if you have a dedicated news page, you may want to slap it up there as well.

You can link to your feed with an ordinary HTML link, but it is becoming more common to use a small orange XML icon to link to the feed. Some sites even use a blue RSS icon.

Finally, “ping” one of the major services that track web log and RSS changes. This ensures that other sites which are monitoring 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.

You are all set! Simply add content to your site or blog, and anyone who signs up for your RS feed will get automatic updates.

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