No matter what your business provides or what industry you are a part of, providing quality information on your site or blog is important. For example, if your business provides accounting services, it’s not a bad idea 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 creating this kind of information, however, is that it involves a lot of effort and resources. You have to do a lot of information gathering, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.

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

It’s called RSS …

(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your readers with up-to-date information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

What Does RSS Mean?

• RSS stands for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also referred to as a “feed” or “web feed”.
• Once users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the website for content updates. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the site and keep feed subscribers up-to-date.
• Feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog post items, news headlines, audios, etc., which users can then subscribe to.
• You can read RSS feeds with web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based programs called RSS feed readers, or aggregators. Feedreaders are used to access content on all kinds of topics and distribute this content (and updates made to the content) online.
• There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different machines and programs.
• Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates from multiple sources.

This article shows you how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site using their RSS feed.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a very powerful method used for sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide a way for online users to keep up with the latest information published on different websites.

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

News publishing agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.

Syndication allows leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers stories from all over the planet without actually having to send more news writers to every location in the world …

(Global media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources all around the globe.)

Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content with other sites. Global media publications syndicate stories using news feeds …

(News reporting agencies syndicate information using news feeds)

Most sites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.

Most leading online media publications 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”, “belfast telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Most online newspapers and major sites include an RSS feed section. Source: Sydney Morning Herald )

Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a directory of RSS feeds for different content areas of the site …

(RSS feeds list. Image Source: New York Times)

These feeds let readers source different areas of the site (e.g. business news, arts news, science news, etc.)

Feed sections can also contain feed subdirectories …

(RSS Feed section. Source: LA Times)

Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. To use the feed, all that’s required is to copy the URL and paste it into a program that can translate the feed 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 site additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create this content …

(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website 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 websites to use YOUR content.

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

(Get users to syndicate your content … it will help to increase your web traffic!)

Your WordPress RSS

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

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

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

(The feed page will show the number of posts as you have specified in the 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 feeds is whether to display posts as full text, or just a summary …

(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)

Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …

(Post excerpts can affect how your feeds will display)

We have written a detailed tutorial on WordPress Post excerpts here:

• Post Excerpts An Overview

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

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

Let’s show you how this works.

First, go to a website or blog and search for their RSS feed section …

(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)

If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …

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

Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into readable content.

How To Add Feeds To WordPress Sites

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

How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you can display on your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their RSS feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.

Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar …

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

First, Find a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to display on your site and copy its feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …

(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)

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

• Adding Widgets To Your WordPress Sidebar Menu

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

(RSS Widget)

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 Feed Content To Posts

Can content from RSS feeds be added to posts? Yes, it can!

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

(‘Add Plugins’ search results – RSS plugins)

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

Here are a number of plugins that allow you to add RSS feeds to your content:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)

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

You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds according to categories and campaigns.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)

WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers additional functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).

For example, the Feed to Post extension is an advanced, feature-rich importer that allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)

The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.

RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of every item in your feed as a standalone post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed)

With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can combine and display content from multiple content using RSS feeds.

The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom colors, borders, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.

The premium version of this plugin contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually 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 create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.

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

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress Plugin)

FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible syndication plugin for WordPress.

As stated in the FeedWordPress website …

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 site (sites that combine and display content from many different sources), or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, Flickr, or other online services, into a Lifestream.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress Plugin

Autoblog

(Autoblog Plugin)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give it a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog by WPMUDev WordPress Plugin

RSS Includes Pages

(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)

The RSS Includes Pages plugin modifies your RSS feeds to include pages and not just posts.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages WordPress Plugin

Useful Tips

Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds

In addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site.

You can view this by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …

(WordPress Comments RSS)

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

(Comments feed entries viewed with a Firefox browser)

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

(Comments feed items viewed with a Google Chrome web browser)

Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …

(Paste the comments feed URL into a feedreader 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 WP site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Creating RSS Feeds For Specific Posts

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

The formula for displaying an RSS feed for a single post is shown below:

(RSS Feed For Individual Post)

To create the above feed, copy the web address 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 your post, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not the post content itself.

Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category Feeds

Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.

If your site displays content published under various categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate RSS feed for each category.

All you have to do is use the format shown below:

(Format for WP post categories RSS feed)

Select and copy the category link address to your clipboard …

(Copy the selected category URL …)

Now, append “feed” to the end of it …

(WordPress RSS feed format for category)

The feed now only displays content posted under that category …

(Category feed page)

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 A Feeds List

You can set up a page of feeds that allows your readers to subscribe to content in the categories they are interested in, just like the larger websites do …

(Provide Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds For Your Site Visitors)

Link an RSS image to category feed URLs and then create a table or a list of your category feeds on a separate page …

(RSS button. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)

We have written a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress here:

• How To Add Tables To WordPress Pages And Posts

RSS – Additional Notes

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

WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations that do not require touching code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feeds you can use and how to format these feeds …

(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)

Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the table above:

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

• Feed Type: All Comments
• Description: Comments feed – Includes the latest comments published on your blog
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: Feed that displays a single post
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
• Description: Includes the latest comments made on a post
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – RSS feed that contains the latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/12/31/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Feed that displays the latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/01/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Contains the latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/

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

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

One more thing …

It’s a good idea to let your site users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feed. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ link somewhere visible …

(Encourage your visitors to syndicate your RSS feeds!)

Keep in mind that other sites will only syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality content that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.

(Add someone else’s content and get others to share your content using WordPress and RSS!)

If you need great content ideas subscribe to our FREE content creation course using the form below:

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

Additional RSS Resources:

• RSS Images – Visit Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS graphic elements.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
• WordPress Codex – WordPress software documentation and information site. Go here to learn more about using WordPress RSS.

Congratulations! Now you know 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 via their RSS feed.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.

***