No matter what your business provides or what industry you belong to, it’s important to provide high-value information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, and engages your visitors. For example, if you provide insurance-related services, you may want to include information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance advice, etc.

To create and publish this kind of information, however, is very time-consuming. You have to do a lot of information gathering, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your facts, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.

Thankfully, there is a simpler way to keep your site readers up-to-date with your information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS is the simplest way to provide your subscribers with great information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

What You Need To Know About RSS

• RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
• RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save users time from having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
• Feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news, video lists, etc., to which other users can choose to subscribe.
• Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata such as published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view updates posted on these sites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their content automatically.
• There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices, feedreaders, and programs.
• Many sites and software tools also let you combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from different websites.

In this detailed guide, we explain where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using their RSS feed.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a really powerful (and legitimate) way of sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide web users with an easy way to keep up with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.

First, let’s take a look at content syndication.

Global media and content publishers rely on syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.

Syndication allows leading online newspapers to deliver readers the latest news and newsworthy content from around the planet without actually having to set up more news staff all around the world …

(Global media publications rely on syndication to publish news and stories from news sources around the world.)

Syndication is used to share content legitimately with other sites. Online newspapers syndicate newsworthy content using news feeds …

(Content syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information)

Most websites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.

Many digital agencies and major sites contain an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation menu that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “calgary herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Leading news publishing agencies contain a feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald )

Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections …

(RSS feeds section. Image: nytimes.com RSS feeds)

gives readers access to content from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, travel news, science news, etc.)

An RSS list can also include subcategory feeds …

(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)

Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Content Syndication

Adding someone else’s content to your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s business additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create that content …

(The Benefits Of Syndicating Content)

While adding feeds from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s a great idea to try and get other sites to use YOUR content.

When other sites syndicate content using your feed, you have the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more visitors …

(Look for ways to get users to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help to increase traffic!)

WordPress Feed – About

WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.

Depending on your theme, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:

1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on your sidebar menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …

(WordPress Meta widget)

2) You can also find links or buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.

For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …

(Copy RSS links to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)

3) On many websites and again, depending on your theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Social Share, Link To Us, or Follow toolbar …

(Look for an RSS button in a a Link To Us, Social Share, or Subscribe floating, fixed, or slide-out toolbar)

4) You can also view your feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
• http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your website or blog is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)

Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS page …

(Feed entries displayed using Firefox)

Note that your feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …

(Feed entries seen on Google Chrome)

Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed

To specify how many items you would like to display in your RSS page, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …

(Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)

The feed page will show the number of posts as you have specified section …

(Your feed will display as many recent items you have specified in the WordPress Reading Settings section)

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

The other setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or just as a summary …

(WP Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your RSS feed)

Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …

(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will appear)

If you need help using excerpts in WordPress Posts, go here:

• Post Excerpts A Guide For Beginners

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.

Let’s take a look at how this works.

First, find a website or blog and search for their RSS feed icon …

(Look for a ‘subscribe’ icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy your feed URL)

If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …

(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Source: Feedreader)

Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.

How To Add A Feed To Your WordPress Site

In the example below, we are going to add RSS content from another website or blog to yours.

Adding An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding content from their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.

Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar area …

(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)

copy the RSS feed from a website containing content that you want to display on your site …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …

(WP RSS Widget)

To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To The Sidebar Menu

Refresh your web browser. The content can now be seen on your sidebar …

(RSS Feed Added To WordPress Sidebar Menu)

Add Your WordPress RSS Feed To Search Consoles

You can add your WordPress RSS feed to Google and Bing’s search consoles. This will help them index your content faster.

(WordPress RSS feed added to Google Search Console)

Adding your site’s RSS feed to search consoles is simple, fast, easy, and requires no technical skills. For a step-by-step tutorial, go here:

• How To Set Up Webmaster Accounts

How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Posts

Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post? Yes, it can!

You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search inside your Plugins section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.

(‘Add Plugins’ section – WordPress RSS plugins)

Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.

Here are some plugins you can check out that let you add RSS feeds to your pages:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico)

WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.

You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds according to campaigns and categories.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)

WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with premium add-ons for additional functionality.

For example, the Feed to Post add-on is a feature-filled importer that allows you to import RSS feeds directly into posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)

RSS Post Importer lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.

The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of each item in the feed as a standalone post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin)

POWr RSS Feed lets you automatically combine and display content from multiple sources using RSS feeds.

This plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in all languages.

The premium version of this plugin contains many additional features.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)

The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.

This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes WordPress Plugin

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress)

FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication options for WordPress.

As stated in the FeedWordPress site …

FeedWordPress is an open-source Atom/RSS aggregator for the WordPress blog publishing platform. You set up feeds that you choose, and FeedWordPress syndicates posts from those sources into your WordPress posts table, where they can be displayed by your WordPress templates like any other post — but with additional meta-data, so that your templates can properly attribute the post to the source it came from.

FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or bring together all your online activity in one place.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin

Autoblog

(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin For WordPress)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin

RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types

(RSS Includes Pages – WordPress Plugin)

By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Install the RSS Includes Pages plugin to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin

WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds

WordPress makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users.

To view this feed, go to the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …

(Comments Feed)

Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …

(RSS comments feed entries viewed on Firefox)

Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …

(RSS comments feed items displayed with a Google Chrome browser)

Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …

(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image: Feedreader.com)

Note: If the Meta section is not displaying on your theme, you can view the Comments RSS section of your site by opening up a browser and typing in the following URL:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/comments/feed
• http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/comments/feed (if your WordPress site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Creating Specific Item RSS Feeds

Being able to access an RSS feed for individual posts can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific posts to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.

The formula for using an RSS feed for a specific post is shown below:

(Feed For Single Post)

To create the above feed, copy the URI of your post, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.

(Single Post Feed)

Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the post URL, WordPress will return the comments for your post, not actual post content itself.

Tip #3 – Category RSS Feeds

Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content about specific topics. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.

With WordPress, you can easily create category feeds.

All you have to do is use the format below:

(Use this format for WP category RSS feed)

Select and copy the category link address …

(Select and copy your category URL …)

Now, add “feed” to the end of it …

(Format for WP category feed)

The RSS feed will now only contain content published in that particular category …

(Category RSS feed)

The WordPress Codex also provides different ways to create feeds not just for post categories, but also feeds for tags, authors, search, etc.

For this example, let’s create a feed for a specific post category using the format shown below:

(Post Category feed format. Source: WordPress Codex)

Here is the feed format WordPress recommends using. In this example, the post category ID is ’42’. We’ll need to replace the post category ID and the domain name …

(WordPress post category feed format)

To find the post category ID, go to Posts > Categories …

(Posts > Categories menu)

Locate the post category you want and hover your mouse over the title to reveal its unique ID …

(Post Category ID)

In our example, the post category ID is ’29’ and the post category feed format we need to use for this specific category with our domain name looks like this …

(Post category feed format with domain name and ID)

Copy and paste the feed into your browser and hit enter …

(Paste the feed into your browser)

This will display the feed for that specific category …

(RSS feed of a specific post category)

Note that in this example, WordPress automatically converted the feed format we pasted into the browser into the category feed we had used in the previous section of this tutorial …

(Post category feed format)

Here is the feed format again …

(Post category feed)

In this case, the simplest way to create additional feeds for specific categories is to simply change the post category slug …

(Change the post category slug to create a new category specific feed)

Paste the edited feed into your web browser and hit enter to display the content for that specific category’s feed …

(Post category feed content)

Now that you have a method for creating feeds for specific post categories (or tags, authors, etc.), you can even create a directory or list of individual feeds for visitors.

Tip #4 – Provide Your Own Feeds Page

You can publish your own feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like the larger authoritative sites do …

(Provide Your Own Feeds Directory)

All you need to do is link an image like the one shown below to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a separate page …

(RSS icon. Image: public-domain-photos.com)

To learn more about adding tables to WordPress pages and posts, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Create And Add Tables To Your Content

RSS – Additional Notes

RSS feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.

WordPress allows several feed configurations without editing code. Here are some examples of feeds you can use …

(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)

Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:

• Feed Type: All Posts
• Description: Content feed – displays your latest post entries
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/

• Feed Type: All Comments
• Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that includes the latest comments left on your website
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: Feed containing specific post entries
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
• Description: Feed for the latest comments made on individual post entries
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Includes the latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/12/15/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Displays latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/12/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Feed that includes latest entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/

• Feed Type: Search Results
• Description: Includes latest posts for a search query
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/

• Feed Type: Custom Post Type
• Description: Includes the latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book

One last thing …

Remember to promote your feeds. Place a subscribe button image somewhere visible …

(Promote your RSS feeds!)

Finally, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.

(Add content from other sites and get others to subscribe to your content online using WordPress and RSS!)

If you need help coming up with content ideas subscribe to our FREE content creation course using the form below:

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed 🙂

RSS – Resources:

• Feed Images – Visit an online resource site like www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS icons.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here to learn more about RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about RSS.
• WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – WordPress software documentation site. Visit this site to learn more about WordPress RSS.

Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using RSS feeds.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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