No matter what service or product your business sells, you need to provide quality information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, and engages your visitors. For example, if you provide accounting services, you may want to provide users with information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax tips, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it is really time-consuming. You have to sift through, research, and organize a ton of information, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is 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 completely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to continually provide your site readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your blog subscribers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – A Basic Overview
- RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- When a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically check the website for content updates. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- Feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog posts, news, audios, etc., to which users can choose to subscribe.
- You can read RSS feeds using programs called feed readers, or feed aggregators. Feed readers are used to access content on all different kinds of topics and syndicate this content to various online properties.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine several RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from many websites.
This detailed guide explains 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 their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate method used for sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide web users with a way to keep up with the latest information published on different websites.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Most online newspapers use content syndication to publish news and stories from content sources around the world.
Syndication allows digital news agencies to deliver readers the latest newsworthy items and content of interest from around the globe without having to employ additional news reporting and content writing staff in every place around the world …
(Many online newspapers rely on syndication to publish newsworthy items from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content with other sites. Online newspapers syndicate content using feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share information with other publications)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web traffic.
Major content sites contain a feed section (look for links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “express tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Leading online newspapers have a feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of different RSS feeds of the site …
(RSS Feeds. Source: nytimes.com)
These feeds give you access to information from different areas of the website (e.g. business news, arts news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into software that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Syndicating Content
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s website and helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding RSS feeds from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s a great idea to try and get other websites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate your content, you have the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Look for ways to get users to syndicate your feed … it will help to increase your web traffic!)
WordPress RSS Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on the WP theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to get the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget on your sidebar menu …
(The feed page will show as many recent 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 Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display articles as full text, or just a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed will appear)
To learn more about Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link or button …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon or link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress
In the example below, we’ll add content from other websites to your WordPress site.
How To Add A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you can add to 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 feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Find a website or blog containing content that you want to display on your site and copy its RSS feed …
(Copy the feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, go to your Widgets section and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content can now be seen in the sidebar (or wherever you have inserted the RSS widget) …
(RSS Feed 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:
Adding Content From RSS Feeds To Your Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to posts instead of the sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
The plugins listed below can be used to feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An auto blog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from specific RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them according to campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress with a number of premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin 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:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin combines and displays content from multiple sources using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium edition of POWr contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication options 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 sites, or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, Flickr, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog – WordPress Plugin)
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 the URL of your feed, give the feed a name (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin)
The RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin lets you display pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.
You can access these comments by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget area (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed on a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …
(Comments feed items viewed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed 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 site is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Individual Post Item RSS Feeds
Being able to access 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 making an RSS feed for individual post items is shown below:
(Feed For Specific Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the post URL, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in syndicating content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can easily create category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(Feed format for category)
Select and copy the category link address to your clipboard …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
And append “feed” to the end of it …
(RSS feed format for post categories)
Your feed now only displays content posted in this particular 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 Directory Of Feeds On Your Site
You can provide a page of feeds that allows readers to subscribe to specific categories …
(Publish An RSS Feeds Directory)
All you need to do is link an icon to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about inserting tables into WordPress posts, go here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize your RSS in several ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows several feed configurations that do not require editing code. Here are some examples of custom feed formats you can display …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
Below are the different 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 – Includes the latest comments posted on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed for the latest comments made on a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Feed that includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/11/29/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/10/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains the latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feeds. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ links in a visible location …
(Encourage your visitors to syndicate your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if you publish great information. In other words, provide high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get online users to subscribe to your content using 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 🙂
RSS – Additional Resources:
- Feed Buttons – Visit sites like Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and broadening the public understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation site. Visit this site for more information about RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know 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 via their RSS feed.
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business web site please see our related posts section.
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