No matter what service or product you provide, it’s important to provide quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides taxation services, it’s not a bad idea to publish useful information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.

To create and publish this kind of information, however, requires a lot of effort and expertise. You have to do a ton of information sorting, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your facts, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then make sure that this information is continually 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 beyond your control.

Fortunately, there is a much easier way to keep your readers up-to-date with the latest information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your site readers with great information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

RSS – What Does It Mean?

• RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “news feed”.
• RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
• Feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news headlines, audios, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
• Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata such as published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse updates posted on these websites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their content.
• Feeds can be made available in different types and 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, readers, and programs.
• Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from various sites.

This guide explains where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add content from other websites to your site via RSS.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a really powerful way of sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide online users with an easy way to receive the latest information published on different websites.

First, let’s look at content syndication.

Media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources all around the world.

Syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers global stories and up-to-the-minute news from around the planet without having to hire and send additional staff to every location in the world …

(Many news agencies and highly-visited media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies all around the globe.)

Syndication is used to share information legitimately. online media publications syndicate information using news feeds …

(Content syndication is used by news reporting agencies to share content with other news publications)

Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.

Most online newspapers have 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”, “international herald tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

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

Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …

(RSS feeds directory. Source: nytimes.com)

Each of these feeds lets you access information from different areas of the site (e.g. business news, travel news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)

An RSS feed list can also include feed subcategories …

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

Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use an RSS feed, all you have to do is copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Using RSS Feeds

Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s site additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …

(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business 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 worth keeping in mind that you also want other sites to syndicate YOUR content.

When other websites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more visitors …

(Try to get visitors to syndicate your content … it will help increase your exposure online!)

Your WordPress Feed

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

Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:

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

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

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

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

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

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

(Post excerpts can affect how a feed displays)

To learn more about Post excerpts, see this step-by-step tutorial:

• A Basic Guide To Using Excerpts In WordPress Posts

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned earlier, all you need to do to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.

Let’s see how this works.

First, find a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button …

(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button or link. 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 what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …

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

Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into human-readable content.

How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress

In the example below, we are going to add content from other sites to your site.

How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress 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 simply by adding content from their feed. You can easily 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 content from an RSS feed to your sidebar …

(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)

First, Go to a site containing content that you want to display on your site and copy its feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)

Next, go to Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …

(RSS Widget)

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

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar Area

Load your site in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show on the sidebar (or wherever you have inserted the RSS widget) …

(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

How To Add Content From RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Posts

What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to a post instead of the sidebar?

You can easily do this using plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.

(RSS plugins)

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

Here are some plugins that let you add RSS feeds to your pages and posts:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)

WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you select.

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

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)

WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.

For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer Plugin)

RSS Post Importer allows you 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 every item in your feed as a separate post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)

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

This plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom colors, fonts, backgrounds, 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, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed Plugin

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 many other sources.

This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes WP Plugin

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress)

FeedWordPress is a flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin 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.

You can use this plugin to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity into a Lifestream.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress

Autoblog

(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. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give it a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog Plugin

RSS Includes Pages

(RSS Includes Pages)

Install RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress

WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds

In addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your post comments.

You can see your comments feed by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …

(Comments RSS)

All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in the Comments RSS page …

(Comments feed items as seen using Firefox)

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

(RSS comments feed content displayed using a Google Chrome browser)

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

(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the content. 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 – Using RSS Feeds For Specific Post Items

Being able to access an RSS feed for individual posts 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 an individual post item is shown below:

(RSS Feed For Specific Post Item)

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

(Single Post RSS Feed)

Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of a post address, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not the content of the post itself.

Tip #3 – Using Post Category RSS Feeds

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

WordPress allows you to 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 the category link address …)

Now, add “feed” to the end of it …

(Use this format for WordPress post categories feed)

Your feed will now only include content posted under that particular 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 – Set Up Your Own Feeds List

You can create a list of feeds for your subscribers that allows your readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like large authoritative sites …

(Set Up Your Own RSS Feeds List)

You can link a button like the one shown below to each feed and then create a table or a list of all individual feeds on a new page …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on creating tables in WordPress posts here:

• How To Add Tables In WordPress Posts And Pages

RSS – Notes

You can customize feeds in various different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.

WordPress allows various RSS feed configurations that do not require code editing skills. Here are some examples of custom feeds you can use …

(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)

Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:

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

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

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

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

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Includes latest posts in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/12/21/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Contains latest posts in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/07/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Contains latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/feed/

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

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

One last thing …

Remember to let users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ buttons somewhere visible …

(Promote your RSS feeds!)

Also, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you provide great information. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.

(Add someone else’s content and get other users to subscribe to your content with 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 feed 🙂

Resources:

• RSS Feed Graphics – Visit FeedIcons.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS icon”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS graphics.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
• Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS.
• WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and information. Visit this site for additional information about using RSS feeds in WordPress.

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 display someone else’s content on your site via their RSS feed.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using the WordPress software please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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