Just in case you don’t know what exactly RSS is, here is a short note:
- RSS is a way to distribute your Web content to its consumers
- You do this by offering an option to interested readers to subscribe to your regularly updated content
- The subscription option is offered by creating an RSS button at your website, and by distributing your RSS feed to feed directories. Interested readers can then click the button or feed link.
- There are a large number of RSS feed directories to which you can submit your feed, and then ping them every time your content is updated and added to the feed
- Unlike emails (that is also a way to distribute updated content) there will be no spam complaints because only readers who subscribe to the feed get the content
- If you have good content that will interest many readers, creating an RSS feed and distributing it is an excellent way to get these readers visit your site every time you add content
RSS thus has the potential to generate traffic to your website.
How Do You Create an RSS Feed?
An RSS feed is created at your website in two steps:
- Create an RSS file and upload it as a page to your website
- Create a link to that page on other pages, typically in the form of an RSS button you see everywhere
An RSS file is an XML file that contains:
- An overall description of the feed (your website), and
- Individual descriptions for all the content pages that you offer to your subscribers
An RSS file looks like the following:
Start a Small Business
How do you go about developing your business idea?
http://www.smallbusiness-start.com/
index.html
Business in the USA
Reviews the economic scenario of US
– the largest economy in the world now (and also the world’s
largest market).
http://www.smallbusiness-start.com/
business-usa.html
…
…
…
You create the file using Notepad or other plain text editor. Then you upload it (with .xml or .rss file extension for the filename) as a page of your website.
Next, you create a link to that page on other pages where you want your visitors to see it. User can click it and subscribe to your RSS feed (in modern browsers).
The real traffic potential of RSS feed can be utilized only by submitting the feed to feed directories, which are many. We look at this option next.
Distributing Your RSS Feed
You submit your RSS feed to various feed directories that accept RSS feeds. Some of these directories accept only RSS feeds and not regular sites. You can also just ping them using a tool like http://pingomatic.com/ every time you add a new content page (and update your RSS feed file).
You can find a list of important feed directories at http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm
Visitors to feed directories look for feeds on topics that interest them. It is important that you optimize your feed so that it will be found when visitors search for your topic. You can find suggestions for optimizing your RSS feeds at
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/02/20/ses-london-getting-the-most-out-of-blogging-rss
Let us conclude by emphasizing that all the trouble above will produce worthwhile results only if you offer content of value to your visitors.
