No matter what what industry you are in, you need to provide quality information to your site or blog users. For example, if your business provides taxation services, you may want to include the latest information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.

The problem with providing this type of information, however, is that it takes a lot of time and resources. You have to sift through, gather, and organize a ton of data, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.

Thankfully, there is a much easier way to regularly provide your readers with up-to-date information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your readers with great information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

What You Need To Know About RSS

• RSS, which, according to some is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “news feed”.
• RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content so that their site readers can read it without having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
• RSS feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog posts, news, video lists, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
• Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view any updates posted on these websites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their content automatically.
• Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different devices and programs.
• Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from different websites.

In this article, we will explain 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.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate method used to share content online. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for online users to keep up with the latest information posted on sites and blogs they are interested in.

First, let’s take a look at the uses of syndication.

Most news reporting agencies use content syndication to publish news from other news agencies all around the world.

Syndication allows most leading news publishers to deliver readers fresh news and content of interest from all around the globe without having to send additional news reporting agencies everywhere in the world …

(Media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.)

Syndication is used to share information legitimately with other sites. online media publications syndicate their newsworthy content using news feeds …

(Content syndication is used by digital news publishing agencies to share information with other publications)

Most sites actually would like you to share their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the site that published the original content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.

Major content sites provide links to a feed section (look for navigation links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, 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.) …

(Major content sites contain a feed section. Image: SMH RSS )

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

(A website’s list of different feeds. Image: nytimes.com)

These feeds let you access information from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, sports news, jobs, etc.)

An RSS directory can also include subcategory feeds …

(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com feeds)

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

RSS Feeds – Benefits

Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …

(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)

While adding an RSS feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to syndicate your content.

When other websites syndicate your content, this gives you the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new web traffic …

(Get other websites to syndicate your content … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)

WordPress RSS

WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.

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

1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in a standard or custom menu …

(Your feed will show the number of items you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section)

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

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

(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)

Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …

(Post excerpts can affect how content in your feeds will display)

We have created a detailed tutorial on Post excerpts here:

• A Basic Guide To Using Excerpts In WordPress Posts

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that translates feeds into readable content for humans.

Let’s see how this works.

First, go to a website or blog and look for their RSS feed section using any of the methods described earlier …

(Search for an RSS feed button. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of your feed into a feedreader …

(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)

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

How To Add Feeds To WordPress Sites

Let’s show you how to add content from another site’s RSS feeds to your site.

Adding Feeds To Your Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you could easily add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook 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 your sidebar)

copy the feed URL from a website containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar …

(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)

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

(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)

To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:

• Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Area

Load your website in your browser. The content can now be seen on your sidebar …

(RSS Feed Content Added To 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

Adding Feeds To Posts

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

You can easily do this using plugins. Search inside the Plugins admin screen for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.

(RSS plugins for WordPress)

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

Here are a few plugins that let you add RSS feeds to your content:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico WP Plugin)

WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.

You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds into categories.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico WP Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator)

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

For example, the Feed to Post extension is a popular, feature-filled importer that lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into posts or any other custom post type.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer Plugin)

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

RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full article content of each feed item as a standalone post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer WP Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)

With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different sources using RSS feeds.

This plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom backgrounds, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.

The premium version of POWr contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes WordPress Plugin)

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

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

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)

FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication options for WordPress-generated content.

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 Plugin For WordPress

Autoblog by WPMUDev

(Autoblog by WPMUDev)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog Plugin For WordPress

RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types

(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin)

By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use 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 – WordPress Plugin

Useful Tips

Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds

WordPress makes available RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts.

To view these comments, locate the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …

(Comments RSS)

Comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in your Comments RSS page …

(RSS comments feed items seen on a Firefox web browser)

Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you use …

(RSS comments feed items viewed with a Google Chrome web browser)

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

(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)

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 WP installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Creating Single Item Feeds

Being able to display an RSS feed for a specific post item can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items to RSS aggregator sites, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.

The formula for making an RSS feed for single post items is shown below:

(Single Post Feed)

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

(Single Post Feed)

Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of the post, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not actual post content itself.

Tip #3 – Category RSS Feeds

Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from a particular category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.

With WordPress, you can easily create separate category feeds.

Just use the format shown below:

(RSS feed format for category)

Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …

(Copy your category URL …)

Append the word “feed” to the end of it …

(WP category RSS feed format)

The category RSS feed will now only include content posted for this category …

(Category-specific 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 – Create Your Own List Of RSS Feeds On Your Site

You can provide a directory of feeds that allows your readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like the larger authoritative sites do …

(Create Your Own RSS Feeds List)

Link an image to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a separate page …

(RSS button graphic. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on inserting tables into WordPress posts and pages, go here:

• Adding Tables Into Your Content In WordPress

RSS Feeds – Notes

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

WordPress allows several feed configurations that do not require messing with code. For example, the table below shows some of the kinds of custom feeds you can display …

(Different Feed Formats You Can Create With WordPress RSS)

For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:

• Feed Type: All Posts
• Description: Content feed – Includes your latest posts
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/

• Feed Type: All Comments
• Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments left on your website or blog
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

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

• Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
• Description: Contains the latest comments made on specific posts
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Displays latest posts in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/08/11/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Feed that includes latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/12/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Feed that includes the latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/feed/

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

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

One more thing …

Remember to promote your feed. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …

(Remember to promote your feeds!)

Also, keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if you provide great content that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, you must provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.

(Easily add content to your site and get others to syndicate your content online with RSS feeds!)

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 feed 🙂

Additional RSS Resources:

• RSS Feed Icons – Visit an online resource site like FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS icon”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable Free RSS images.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS.
• WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation repository. Go here to learn more about using WordPress and RSS.

Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site using their RSS feed.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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