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A Beginners Guide to RSS Feeds

June 12, 2010 by WordpressTrainingforBeginners  
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One of the first things you will notice if you are starting out in the online industry is that you have a constant and always expanding need for fresh content on your websites. The more sites you own, the more content you need. While many people think about “videos” and “pics” when they hear the word content, search engines value text and links with much more weight than any images.

One way you can maximize your content is by syndicating some of it to your other sites. The concept is very similar to the days when newspapers dominated before the internet existed – when one good writer would sell an article to many publishers, who would each reprint it in many different newspapers all over the country. Syndication allows you to write less new content and to reuse some of your best content on more than one website.

There are major negative implications of using duplicate text and links on many sites involving search engine traffic, but the algorithms do allow for “snippets” of content to appear in multiple places without harm, so long as the overall content of each site remains substantially different from any other website. It’s very important to point out that original content is absolutely, without a doubt, always far better than syndicated content when you have a choice of using one or the other.

Creating your own syndication system involves setting up an RSS Feed. You have probably heard the term RSS before, it stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS was originally pioneered in the late 1990s, but several different versions were being created at the same time and that is part of the reason why some of the terms and tags used in RSS are less uniform than other aspects of web development. RSS is often used to share content more easily between websites or to allow surfers to be alerted by feeds they subscribe to when new content is added on their favorite websites.

At its heart, RSS uses many of the same programming elements as HTML source code. Webmasters with a strong grasp of HTML will probably be able to reverse-engineer their own feeds from an existing example pretty easily. However, for webmasters with a less code-centric set of skills, there are alternatives that work almost as well. For example, WordPress.com and other build-your-own Blog sites offer free services, including RSS Generators, to help site publishers get their content syndicated.

Pre-fabricated Blog sites do allow basic RSS feeds to be generated with a just a few clicks, but as with any other aspect of website publishing, you can always do more when you are the one hosting and customizing your own content to suit your own needs.

The reason RSS gets a little tricky is that the RSS feed tag and code work needs to work in harmony with both the database you are drawing the information from and the Reader you are sending that content to on another website or browser. For experienced coders, RSS may stand for “Really Simple Syndication”, but for novices trying to sort it all out, RSS can also be seen as “Really Sucky Syndication” as well.

There are many trustworthy sites with “How To” RSS tutorials, which give a more in-depth set of instructions and examples along with advanced feed tips for webmasters seeking to educate themselves. One of the best starting points is SearchEngineWatch.com, which offers useful basic information and links to more in-depth examples.

Once you believe your RSS Feed is properly constructed, you can also visit a Feed Validator site like: http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html to check the feed and make sure it is at least minimally compatible with basic RSS standards.

Many site owners have started to offer more complex RSS Feeds for affiliates to use, given the increasing demand and competition. If you recall earlier, I mentioned that duplicated content is a strong negative factor for search engine optimization. So, in an instance where a large sponsor is making text blocks available to vast numbers of affiliates, the amount of duplication across sites that publish the feeds becomes significant.

One way sites deal with the duplication issues is to create “morphing” feeds. These advanced RSS feeds actually re-order words or substitute a variety of sentences each time an entry is pulled by a user so that each feed becomes at least slightly different from all other versions of the feed being used by other webmasters. While morphing feeds do partially answer the problem of duplicate content, they often fail to generate text that humans would enjoy reading.

The simplest way to make an RSS Feed is of course to hire someone. Competent third party coders charge $100 or less to create a feed for you and any coder you hire should be able to easily explain what they have done so that you can create additional feeds or amend existing ones on your own. With an ever-growing need for content and a very small expense to have your RSS Feed generated correctly by a professional programmer, it really is the simplest way to get your sites syndicated.

Mona Sutherland graduated summa cum laude from UCLA in 2004 with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Mona moved to the Republic of Panama to pursue certain entrepreneurial endeavors, including graduating valdevictorian from her MBA course at the University of Lousiville. Mona is currently an Internet Marketing Specialist.

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