Incorporating RSS Feeds in Your Website Plan

You may be wondering why all the fuss and hub-bub about RSS at this time, and why I bother to write about it at all. Do a search in the EzineArticles data base strictly just for the term "RSS" and you will find that many of the best articles written on the subject were back around the 2005-2006 time-frame. So it's not exactly news.

The reason is that I keep finding new ways to use RSS in my search engine optimization, and in my online projects to build niche type websites and my network of blogs. Most recently RSS has been a large component for two personal projects I call "LinkWheel Sage" and "RSS Mage". The first project is a free guide on how to use RSS feeds to power link wheels, and the second project involves designing a free WordPress plugin that uses RSS feeds to create links and targeted traffic.

Exploring and mapping these projects has also piqued and renewed my interest in this simple technology that is often now taken for granted. This has made me aware of how important it is to be specific about incorporating RSS feeds in your website planning. This should not be an aside or an afterthought, and in the end can be extremely important to your overall online marketing strategy.

There certainly is nothing difficult about creating and using RSS channels, so it should be on your checklist for designing and building effective websites, blogs, and then become part of your ongoing online marketing to promote your website properties and branding. Everyone by now should be aware that RSS is beneficial as a way to quickly publish updated content, but let's also look at some of the other things that make this really simple syndication work so great.

Probably the best feature of RSS is the speed of the technology and the fact that it is essentially "real-time". Updates to content are made available network-wide across the Internet as content is added, edited, or deleted. Subscribing and un-subscribing to an RSS feed is drop-dead simple and most people using the Internet are familiar with using feeds and channels. It does not matter what the content is either. RSS does not discriminate and content can be a combination of text, graphics, photos, and videos. Content and feeds can be mixed at will. This provide for unlimited possibilities when it comes to user experience, since the recipient decides what content they want to choose and filter. If you don't like a particular feed, you can edit the content feed, or just stop receiving the feed.

Most importantly, RSS is a very focused and targeted way to distribute content. It can provide a highly personalized user experience. Readers that take the time to subscribe to RSS feeds have a genuine interest in the content and information. An added bonus is the fact that RSS is not very likely to be abused for spam like so many other aspects of being online. The end-user is always in control.

How to Incorporate RSS Into Your Website Planning

RSS is pretty much a standard feature anymore for website software and blogging platforms. This means that your feeds will be built automatically by the publishing software, and often automatically embedded as a link on pages or the header. So, your main job is to make sure your visitors and readers know what the options are for subscribing via RSS, and secondly to have a plan to distribute your feeds by submitting these to directories as an additional way to promote your content.

Since RSS is so user-friendly, this becomes a matter of keeping your readers informed, and then making ways to subscribe very obvious. You can do this by strategically placing RSS buttons and icons on your website pages. Some obvious places would be the header graphics, navigation side bars, and at the end of the page, or in the footer. Write about your RSS options in the "About Page", and remind readers occasionally in posts.

Always think in terms of how you can take advantage of RSS. Readers will appreciate this, too, because they will be reminded which feeds and content they want to receive on a regular basis. Over time, this will result in your marketing efforts becoming more focused. This only makes sense, because what you really need is a targeted audience, and RSS will help you achieve this goal. Be creative and link up your blogs, websites, and social network sites using feed links. You can even use RSS in this manner when building link wheels.

The Benefits of Using RSS Feeds   What Is RSS? Or What Does That Orange Radar Thingy Do?   Choosing an RSS Reader   Tracking News Through RSS Feeds   Making Your Own RSS Feeds   

What Are RSS Feeds and Their Benefits to Users and Website Owners?

RSS stands for 'really simple syndication' but that may still mean little to you but it's basically for syndicating content online. You may well have seen the RSS feed logo before and had no idea what it was, many websites have them, It's an orange icon with a dot and a couple of quarter circles beside it. If you've ever clicked on one of these you will see a list of what has been created and outputted by that website: blogs, articles, news and even podcasts and video podcasts. You can use this not only to view like this in your web browser though: the URL for the feed can be used by various programs and other services. For a start iTunes can be setup to use your feed to find podcasts you have added to it and make them automatically available on iTunes. RSS feeds can also be read by other RSS readers though: a piece of software that presents the latest from any RSS feeds you have added to it or 'subscribed' too. What this means as a user of RSS feeds is that you can have a one stop piece of software with the news from all of your favorite sites whose articles and other content you find interesting.

So as a website owner how can you use RSS? Well to start you need to be creating plenty of fresh content ideally every day and then you need to make sure it's good enough that people want to read it. If this is the case then if people like your content and you make it clear you have an RSS feed available then they will be able to take the link and put it into their software or you can manually make it available through the reader. This way when you post new articles they will be able to read them through their software. Now at this point many of you will be thinking that is no good as they wont be reading them on your website; the chances are that if they weren't reading them through the RSS reader they wouldn't read them at all though and wouldn't visit your site just to check if you have anything new. By reading your articles they are being reminding you exist and if you mention your products and services they may choose to visit your website when they do need whatever you offer as they already know you know what you are talking about and what you do.

If you use your RSS with podcasts or video podcasts consider it in the same way pretty much, places like iTunes will have people both subscribing to your content and finding it through their search feature of course.

RSS feeds are especially well suited to those who are basically selling knowledge including those selling books including eBooks who can show off their knowledge and understanding, almost like giving away something for free as a sample in order to sell more. Also those that are selling a service where their USP is their knowledge should use RSS feeds to show off they know what they are talking about; as a marketing consultant you might have people reading your marketing insights on a weekly basis who then already know that you are a great marketer when they come to choose a marketing consultant.

The Benefits of Using RSS Feeds   What Is RSS? Or What Does That Orange Radar Thingy Do?   Choosing an RSS Reader   Tracking News Through RSS Feeds