Learn The Power of RSS Feeds!

What is RSS ?

RSS simply stands for “Really Simple Syndication“. It allows you to syndicate your site content, or subscribe to other websites’ contents . You can personalize and choose what type of news, tutorials, updates or any other content you would like to view. You can arrange and view it the way you like. You can read your favorite news and updates without even going to the url of your favorite site. It will automatically update its feeds every time there are updates. RSS is simply a channel of information that updates itself automatically.

RSS can boost your website traffic tremendously that’s why almost every webmaster is considering and integrating it to their sites. It is an easy, cheap and convenient way of publishing and sharing information.

It opens a new door for free advertising. You can reach clients and customer easily. It is a faster form of communication compared to sending emails. Which is often abused by spammers.

You can choose which information you want to receive. And avoid those unwanted and unrequested (spammed) information.

Web rings uses RSS to exchange information and update their sites daily. That way, they can maintain the freshness of their sites’ contents.

Another special thing about RSS is , you can access it through your mobile phones and PDAs.

That’s the power of RSS.

How RSS works ?

RSS was created to make our life simple, so it’s not hard than what you think.

Ok, let’s try.

Just follow these simple steps:

1. RSS is in the form of XML. Create your RSS document and saved it with .xml extension. Or visit www.webrss.com and www.toucanmultimedia.com (free sign-up) to create your RSS feed automatically. Just provide your site’s URL and follow their instruction carefully. If your website system or maybe you are using Wordpress or other software that has built-in RSS file creator, then you don’t need to do this.

2. Validate your RSS document. It simply check the feed against errors. Visit http://www.feedvalidator.org to validate your feeds.

3. Upload the file to your web server and save it to your desired RSS feed directory path (Url). But, if you are using blog softwares such as Wordpress and Typepad, RSS creation is automatic and there is a default feeds directory.

4. Get these images and paste it to your web pages.

5. Copy the following sample code. Modify it, it depends on your website’s setup: <a href=”www.yoursite.com/feed/feeds.xml”><img src=”www.yoursite.com/feed/rss.gif” border=”0″ height=”14″ width=”36″ /></a>

6. Search Yahoo or Google for ” RSS feeds directories “. Register and submit your feeds to them. They will be the one who will manage and distribute your RSS feeds to the interested users. Then users will just link to these feeds. So every time you have updates and new contents, your feeds subscribers will be automatically updated.

7. Visit the following Free Aggregation Sites. Register and submit your feeds.

• digg.com
• www.Syndic8.com
• www.webrss.com

8. Register your feed to the leading search engines like Yahoo & Google.

• Google - http://www.google.com/ig/directory?root=/ig&dpos=top - Look for this button after you submitted the feed.
• Yahoo - http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss_guide/ - Look for this button after you submitted the feed.

9. Update your feed regularly. Search engine spider will regularly visit your site and check for updates. At least once a day or every 30 minutes. This is good because it will help your site’s search engine ranking. That’s why regular updating is important.

10. Look for RSS reader (Aggregator). Latest Firefox has a built-in RSS Reader feature (Live Bookmarks capability). You may also want to visit www.my.yahoo.com & www.igoogle.com , setup your personal homepage and search for your favorite RSS feeds, put them together, personalize and arrange it the way you like.

Let’s try some demo of what we have learned

Are you still with me? You can now create buttons like the following. You can try to click the buttons below for demo purposes. Clicking will simply subscribe this page for free and take you to your yahoo or google page and will ask you to save the feed url. Just cancel it if you don’t want to save.

How to update your RSS Feeds?

You can automatically update all your feeds through “Ping”. Ping commands varies from different RSS Feeds directories. One of the famous Ping services site is www.pingomatic.com. You can search the web for more Free Ping services site.

Another good Feed Management site is www.feedburner.com. They have the most sophisticated tools in RSS feed updating,tracking and monitoring.

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Good day!