No matter what your business sells or what industry you belong to, providing high-value information on your site or blog is vitally important. For example, if you provide insurance-related services, it’s not a bad idea to include information from government departments, such as news or updates on statistical findings, insurance advice, etc.

The problem with providing this type of information, however, is that it is really time-consuming. You have to sift through, gather, and organize a ton of information, check your facts, write and edit content (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 beyond your control.

Thankfully, there is a simpler way to continually provide your site visitors with great information.

It’s called RSS …

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

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

RSS – Basic Definition

• RSS is short for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
• RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save users time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
• RSS feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog post items, news headlines, audios, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
• RSS feeds can be viewed using software programs called feedreaders, or feed aggregators. Feed readers can be used to find content on all kinds of topics and distribute this content to many online properties.
• Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) 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 different RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from various websites.

This guide shows you where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display content from other sites on your site via their RSS feed.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

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

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

Digital news agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish content from news agencies all around the world.

Content syndication allows most leading digital news publishing agencies to deliver readers stories and headlines from all around the planet without having to hire and send additional news reporting and content writing teams all around the world …

(News reporting agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish content from news sources all around the world.)

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

(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information)

Most websites actually want you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate new web visitors.

Major content sites will include a feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say “RSS” 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.) …

(Most online newspapers and major content sites have an RSS feed section. Image: SMH )

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

(RSS feeds directory. Image: NY Times RSS)

Each of these RSS feeds allows readers to access information from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, sports news, science news, etc.)

Feed sections can also contain feed subcategories …

(RSS Feed section. Image: Los Angeles Times)

Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. All that’s required to use an RSS feed is to copy the URL and paste it into an application that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Content Syndication

Syndicating content from someone else’s website or blog on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only helps someone else’s site, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create that content …

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

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 worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other websites to syndicate your content.

When other websites syndicate content using your feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …

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

WordPress RSS Feed – Overview

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

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

1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on the sidebar or footer menu …

(The feed page will display as many recent posts as you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section)

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

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

(WP Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in a RSS feed)

Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …

(Post excerpts affect how a feed appears)

To learn more about using WordPress Post excerpts, go here:

• How To Use WordPress Post Excerpts

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 an application that translates feeds into readable content for humans.

Let’s see how this works.

First, go to a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and search for a ‘subscribe’ link or icon using any of the methods described earlier …

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

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)

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

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

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

Adding RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites

Let’s show you how to add content from other sites to your WordPress site.

Adding RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could easily display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their RSS 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 content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area …

(Let’s add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)

copy the RSS feed URL from a site that publishes content that you want to add to your sidebar to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …

(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)

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

• Using Widgets In WordPress

Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed should now display in the sidebar …

(RSS Feed Added To WordPress Sidebar)

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 WordPress Posts

Can you add content from RSS feeds to a post? You sure can!

You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside your ’Add Plugins’ screen for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.

(‘Add Plugins’ section – WordPress RSS plugins)

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

Here are a number of auto blogging plugins that let you create posts using RSS feeds:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico)

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

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

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)

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

For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is an advanced importer that allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts or any other custom post type.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator Plugin

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer Plugin)

The RSS Post Importer plugin allows you to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress site.

The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full article content of every item in the feed as a separate post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin)

With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from various RSS feeds.

The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom borders, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in all languages.

The premium plugin edition 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 create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.

This plugin provides loads of powerful functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/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 Plugin For WordPress)

FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication 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 display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin

Autoblog by WPMUDev

(Autoblog by WPMUDev)

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 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 Plugin)

The RSS Includes Pages plugin modifies RSS feeds to include pages in addition to posts.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages

Useful Tips

Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds

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

To access the comments in your feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …

(Comments Feed)

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

(RSS comments feed entries displayed with a Firefox web browser)

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

(RSS comments feed entries viewed using a Google Chrome web browser)

Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …

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

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 – Accessing Individual Post Feeds

Being able to create an RSS feed for single 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 creating an RSS feed for individual posts is shown below:

(Single Post RSS Feed)

To create the above feed, copy the post address, 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 for that post, not actual post content itself.

Tip #3 – 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.

If your site contains content published under different categories, you can provide a separate RSS feed for each different category.

All you need to do is use the format below:

(RSS feed format for category)

Select and copy the category URL …

(Copy your category URL …)

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

(WordPress post categories feed format)

Your feed will now only contain content specific to this particular category …

(Category RSS 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 – Create Your Own RSS Feeds Page

You can publish a feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe to specific content, just like large websites …

(Publish An RSS Feeds List)

Link an icon like the one shown below to category (or specific post) feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a new page …

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

If you need help with adding tables to WordPress posts and pages, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Create And Add Tables To WordPress Pages And Posts

WordPress RSS – Notes

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

WordPress allows you to configure a number of different feed formats that do not require code editing skills. Here are some examples of custom feed types you can use …

(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)

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

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

• Feed Type: All Comments
• Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments left on your site
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: RSS feed that displays an individual post entry
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/

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

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Displays latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/02/31/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – RSS feed that includes the latest posts in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/12/feed/

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

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

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

One more thing …

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

(Remember to make your feeds visible your RSS feeds!)

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

(Easily add content to your site and get other users to share your content 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 feed 🙂

Resources:

• Feed Buttons – Visit www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS images and icons.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about using RSS feeds.
• WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and information. Visit this site for more information about using WordPress and RSS.

Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via RSS.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.

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