RSS Feeds - Do I Need One on My Site?

Don't miss the opportunity to have your website content spread wide and far across the net with RSS. Many newcomers to publishing a blog or website can be confused at first what RSS is and what it does. You no doubt have seen the familiar buttons displayed on blogs and websites, but still have no idea how RSS feeds work, or why they are such a great tool for any level of content publishing. RSS feeds are probably most familiar as news feeds.

This article is more about why you need RSS feeds, and then you can do a little more research online if you are interested in the history and the technology of RSS. We won't make things too complicated here, but want to emphasize that RSS is a good thing for all parties concerned. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication", which means that content can be converted to a simple and compact computer code that is easy to distribute and easy for both computers and people to read called XML (file extension.rss or.xml). This can make most content "ubiquitous", meaning that it's available anywhere across the Internet. It certainly is simple and nothing to be afraid about using. As an example, if you look at the top of this article page you will see a square and orange RSS button. RSS buttons also often show up in the browser bar to let you know that an RSS feed is available.

You will find RSS feeds identifiable as the little icons, badges, and buttons that can be large or small, and located just about anywhere on a website. These usually are orange in color and have a symbol that looks like radio waves emanating from a dot. Often these RSS buttons will have a notice that will say something like "Subscribe via RSS", "RSS Subscription", or something of that nature. The content publisher is just letting you know that you can easily subscribe to the content on their website by clicking any of these buttons. Readers can subscribe in various ways, but usually this will be via email, or what is called a feed reader. This means that whenever the website or blog is updated with new content, the subscriber will be notified.

So you can see that RSS is a good thing if you are a content provider, too. This way you can "syndicate" or distribute your content by providing your own RSS and submitting your RSS feeds to what is called RSS directories. Just think of RSS feeds like you would links. People can copy your links and you can embed these links. When someone clicks on an RSS link, they get taken to either what is called a partial feed, or a full feed of the content. Another way to think about RSS feeds is as "packets" of content information that can be expanded and collapsed for easy transportation across the world-wide-web.

This should explain the two basic reasons why you need to use RSS feeds. This way you have an easy way to distribute your content, and interested readers have an easy way to find and access your content. Most blogging platforms and website templates now have automated RSS feeds built into them, so you don't really have to know anything about making an RSS feed. If you don't have an RSS feed available for your website, you can make one using an HTML to RSS converter at websites like http://www.feedage.com and http://www.webrss.com. Once you start using RSS feeds, you will become a huge fan of really simple syndication.