No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business belongs to, it’s vitally important to provide quality information to your site users. For example, if you provide insurance-related services, you may want to publish the latest information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance advice, etc.

The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. You have to do a ton of information sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually ensure 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 entirely beyond your control.

Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to provide your users with up-to-date information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your users with up-to-date 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 as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
• After users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the website for content updates. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers updated.
• RSS feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog post items, news, audio lists, etc., to which other users can choose to subscribe.
• Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata such as date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites that publish feeds and then browse updates posted on these websites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their web content automatically.
• There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed aggregators. 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 machines, readers, and programs.
• Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from different sources.

This in-depth article shows you how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display content from other sites on your site via RSS.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a very powerful (and legitimate) way to share web content. Feeds provide online users with a simple way to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on different websites.

First, let’s look at syndication.

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

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

(Media publications rely on syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the world.)

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

(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share content with other publications)

Most sites actually want you to share their content. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate additional web visitors.

Major content sites will include a feed section (look for navigation links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “daily telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Major sites include an RSS feed section. Image: SMH RSS )

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

(RSS directory. Image: NY Times RSS)

Each of these feeds lets readers access content from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, travel news, editorials, etc.)

A feed directory can also include further subcategories …

(Feed sections can also contain subcategories. Image: latimes.com feeds)

Note: A feed is only a URL. To use the feed, all you need to do is copy the URL and paste it into an application that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Syndicating Content

Syndicating content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create this 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 sites to syndicate YOUR content.

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

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

WordPress RSS Feed – About

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

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

1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on your sidebar or footer, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …

(You can access your WordPress RSS feed in the Entries RSS menu)

2) You can also find built-in links and/or buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.

For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …

(Copy RSS links to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)

3) On many websites and again, depending on your WordPress site’s theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Link To Us, or Subscribe toolbar section …

(Look for an RSS button in a a Share, Follow Us, or Link To Us section)

4) You can also view your RSS feed by typing your site’s URL into a browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
• http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)

Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS feed page …

(Feed items displayed on Firefox)

Note that your feed page will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …

(Feed entries as seen on Google Chrome)

Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed

Specify how many entries you would like to show in your RSS Feed page in the Reading Settings section. Type the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …

(Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)

The feed section will show the number of items you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section …

(The feed will show the number of posts as you have specified in your WordPress 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 …

(WP Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your feed)

Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on Post excerpts here:

• A Basic Guide To Using WordPress Post Excerpts

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned previously, all you have to do to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.

Let’s show you how this works.

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

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

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy your feed URL to the clipboard)

If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …

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

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

Adding Feeds To Your WordPress Site

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

How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, 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 adding content from their 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 your sidebar …

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

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

(Copy the URL of your feed)

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

(RSS Widget)

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

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Site

Load your website in your browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen on the 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

How To Add RSS Feed Content To Your Posts

Can you add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts? Yes, you can!

You can do this using plugins. Search inside your Plugins section for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.

(‘Add Plugins’ screen – RSS plugins for WordPress)

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

Here are some plugins you can check out that allow you to add RSS feeds to your posts:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico WP Plugin)

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

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

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)

WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress with additional functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).

For example, the Feed to Post extension is a feature-rich importer that allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer WordPress Plugin)

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

The plugin 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 – WordPress Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin)

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

This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.

The premium version contains many additional features.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed Plugin

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)

The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to 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 LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes Plugin

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)

FeedWordPress is a 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.

You can use this plugin to create aggregator site (sites that bring together posts from different sources), or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, Flickr, or other online services, in one place.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress

Autoblog

(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 the URL of your feed, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog – WordPress Plugin

RSS Includes Pages

(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)

Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages – WordPress Plugin

WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds

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

You can see these by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ section …

(Comments RSS)

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

(Comments feed items viewed on Firefox)

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

(Comments feed items as seen with Google Chrome)

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

(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: 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 WordPress site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Creating Specific Item Feeds

Being able to use an RSS feed for specific post items 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 accessing an RSS feed for a single post item is shown below:

(RSS Feed For Individual Post Item)

To create the above feed, copy the post address, 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, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not the content of the post itself.

Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds

Some your site users may only be interested in syndicating content from a particular post category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.

WordPress allows you to create individual category feeds.

Just use the format shown below:

(Feed format for category)

Select and copy the category link address …

(Copy the category link address to your clipboard …)

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

(WordPress post categories RSS feed format)

Your feed will now only include content specific to this category …

(Category 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 An RSS Feeds List

You can publish a list of feeds on your site that allows readers to subscribe to specific categories, just like large online publishers …

(Provide Your Own Feeds List)

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

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

To learn more about adding tables to WordPress posts, go here:

• How To Insert Tables Into Posts And Pages In WordPress

RSS Feeds – Additional Notes

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

WordPress allows various feed configurations without editing code. For example, here are just some of the kinds of feed types you can use and how to create your feeds …

(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)

Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed 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 – RSS feed that contains the latest comments left on your website or blog
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

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

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

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Contains latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/01/04/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/08/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – RSS feed that contains the latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/feed/

• Feed Type: Search Results
• Description: RSS feed that displays latest posts for a search query
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/

• Feed Type: Custom Post Type
• Description: Includes the latest entries 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 in a visible location …

(Remember to promote your RSS feeds!)

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

(Add content from other sites and get others to syndicate your content with RSS feeds!)

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 🙂

RSS Resources:

• RSS Feed Buttons – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images and icons.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing RSS specifications, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and helping the public to gain a better understanding of RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
• WordPress.org – WordPress documentation and reference. Visit this site for additional information about WordPress and RSS.

Congratulations! Now you know where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display content from other websites on your site via RSS.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues 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 click on links to visit our related posts section.

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