RSS – 3 Killer Ways to Use RSS
The 3 Killer Ways to Use RSS feeds.
Let’s start with the basics… what is an RSS feed? RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. In terms of your blog, your rss feed is a feed of your blog posts. When someone subscribes to your feed they will be notified when you add a new blog post by the rss aggregator they use. An aggregator accesses the RSS feeds of websites a person subscribes to and organizes the results. That is a very basic description.
There are 3 main ways you can use RSS feeds:
- You must put rss buttons (rss chicklets) on your blog so readers can easily subscribe to your feed… that way they’ll come back!
- You should submit your rss feed to rss directories, much like you do with articles, videos etc.
- You can subscribe to rss feeds to automatically add content to your website
How to get your rss feed
This is very easy. If you use Wordpress, then it creates a feed for you automatically:
http://www.yourdomain.___/feed/
Basically just add /feed/ to the end of your domain.
If for any reason you need to create it yourself, an extremely popular rss creator is Feedburner.com.
- You just sign up for a Google account or sign in with your Adwords account.
- Enter your feed address and hit ‘Next’
- Enter the details about your feed name
- Once feed is burnt take note of the feed address
- Now choose what platform you are going to put your rss button/chicklet on and follow the instructions
If you want to make an rss feed from several pages use:
Adding rss Buttons/Chicklets to your Blog
Even though you have an rss button on your site it is still a good idea to add the rss aggregator buttons that are commonly used so your feed goes into the mix of the aggregator the reader always use ie. Google, My Yahoo, My MSN etc.
TIP: Always use Subscribe, Google, My Yahoo, My AOL and then others you are familiar with. Between 5 and 8 is a good amount.
TIP: Many Themes now have an RSS chicklet on the theme so there is no need to add the button to your blog. Just see if you can see the rss logo, “Subscribe” “Subscribe: Comments Posts”… or something like that.
Get the chicklets from:
Once you have the code either paste it into your sidebar.php code from Appearance/Editor/Sidebar.php OR
Add the code as a Text option under Widgets: Appearance/Widgets – Drag text box into the sidebar and paste the code into the text box, then save.
Submit your rss feeds to directories
This is self explanatory. Just take your rss feed (either yourdomain.___/feed OR your feedburner feed) and submit to the following directories.
TIP: As soon as you add about 5 initial posts to your site (try to do in the first day or 2) then add your site to feedage.com… it helps get you indexed really quickly!
RSS Directories
Feedagg.com
BlogPulse.com
AZFeeds.com
Feedage.com
Yahoo Publisher rss
Plazoo.com
Feedbite.com
rssFeeds.com
FeedRaider.com
FeedSubmitter.com
FeedSee.com
rssMountain.com
GoldenFeed.com
Feedbase.net
rssMicro.com
rssMotron.com
FeedFury.com – Even if you register you have to do a quiz & give up some details!
Use rss feeds as Content
This is a way to get additional content onto your blogs but IT SHOULD NEVER BE ALONE. It can be up to 25% of your total content and to make it more accepted by Google you can add a paragraph to the start of the feed to add some uniqueness to it.
To do this you find the rss feeds you want and then add them to your blog by using a plug in called Feed Wordpress.
IMPORTANT: must stress that if this is your main blog that you want build on and keep for years to come then do not use this technique. If you are doing all you can to keep on the good side of Google… DON’T use this technique. It is for additional, supporting blogs that you need help building the content for but aren’t really important to rank well with Google.
