The 3 Killer Ways to Use RSS feeds.

In this article:

• How to get your RSS Feed
• Adding RSS Subscribe Buttons to Your Blog
• Submit your rss feeds to directories – List of directories & some automated tools
• Use RSS feeds as Content – WP Plugins and how to Mix 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.

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There are 3 main ways you can use RSS feeds:

1. You must put rss buttons (rss chicklets) on your blog so readers can easily subscribe to your feed… that way they’ll come back!
2. You should submit your rss feed to rss directories, much like you do with articles, videos etc.
3. 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

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:

Feedburner

TotallyFreeBlogTools

Top Rank Blog

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!

Automated RSS Submiters

RSS Submit – This submits to over 100 rss sites. It is expensive but highly recommended if you value rss and use rss submissions for your backlinking blogs, article author rss feeds, squidoo etc.

All Scoop RSS Submit – This is a free rss submitter which submits to about 30 directories. It is Windows only.

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.

IMPORTANT: I 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.

Plugins to use RSS feeds as content

To use automated posting of content to your blogs you will need a plug in to do this. You can add these plugins by downloading them and transferring to the plugins folder on your WordPress site OR the easy way is to choose ‘Add New’ under the Plugins menu and do a search for ‘WP o Matic’

WP o Matic - This has some advanced features like being able to select a specific category for a feed and also the use of a templating system which allows you to add code or text targeted to that rss feed.

Feed WordPress

Mixing RSS Feeds

If you want to make an rss feed from several pages or sites use:

Yahoo Pipes – This is the best way to mix feeds as it is allows for so much control and versatility. You have so many options for filters to block certain keywords, stop duplicate posts, use different types of rss inputs and much more. Another huge benefit is the fact that you can alter it as opposed to many others where once you mix it, is is unchangeable.

RSS Mix – This is a great way to mix rss feeds. It is easier to use than Yahoo Pipes but lacks the advanced features. If you just want a quick and basic mix that won’t change then this will be a great option.

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