Making The Most Of RSS On Wordpress
Firstly let's establish exactly what RSS is. The letters stand for Rich Site Summary although you will frequently see reference to the more user friendly Really Simple Syndication.
Web syndication refers to a method whereby your blog posts can be made available to other people who want to keep up with recently added content without having to go to your blog. This is obviously a great help to bloggers who will be updating their blog on a regular basis.
Creating RSS feeds is done automatically on your blog and on Wordpress can be found by adding /feed/ to your blog URL. It's then a matter of submitting your feeds to as many directories as you can find. A Google search will come up with quite a few including such popular ones such as Feedagg and Feedbite.
There are some really great training videos on Youtube if you get stuck or want more information on the mechanics of how to do this.
There are some positive advantages to the blog owner in using an RSS feed.
1) Google likes blogs anyway and an RSS feed reinforces the fact that this is real content from a real person.
2) It's a great way to promote your blog with the potential to reach a wider audience.
3) Feeds increase your chances of others linking to your site which is good for your Google ranking.
One of the great advantages is that you only have to submit the feed once to each directory and each new blog you post will automatically be sent out.
As a blog owner, its great to be able to catch up on what others in your niche are doing. You probably have some favourite sites that you visit on a regular basis. The chances are that they will have an RSS feed button.
All you then need to do is subscribe to start receiving the latest updates. These will go to your reader which acts as a kind of inbox and you can review them at your leisure.
There a a few really useful plug-ins that make your Wordpress blog work well with RSS.
Feedstats allows you to track information about your visitors which come through RSS including where they come from and their time on a page.
RSS Footer gives you the ability to add text to posts in your feed that will not appear in your standard blog posts. This way you can add extra content to reward your subscribers.
Don't get too carried away with plug-ins. Try and be selective as you can otherwise you run the risk of slowing your site down.
To sum up then, if you run a blog, you can't afford to do without the possibilities presented by using your RSS feed to increase traffic and raise awareness about your site.
About the Author
Ian Gall has been involved in internet marketing for the past five years. His blog http://www.emarketing-expert.com covers the full range of internet marketing topics together with other thought provoking and entertaining posts
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