No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business is in, providing high-value information on your site or blog is essential. For example, if your business provides taxation services, it’s a good idea to include useful 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 is really time-consuming. You have to do a ton of information sifting, 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 up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.

Thankfully, there is a simpler way to regularly provide your site visitors with up-to-date information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS - The simplest way to provide your subscribers with great information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

RSS – What Is It?

• RSS, which, according to some experts is short for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “news feed”.
• When users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the source website for content updates. Instead, their browser will constantly monitor the feed and keep subscribers up-to-date.
• Feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog posts, news headlines, audio lists, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
• You can view RSS feeds with a program called a feed reader, or aggregator. Feed readers are used to find content on all different kinds of topics and distribute this content (and any updates made to this content) online.
• Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feedreaders. 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, feedreaders, and programs.
• Many sites and software applications also let you combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates from various sources.

This 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 add someone else’s content to your site using their RSS feed.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide web users with a simple and easy way to keep up with the latest information posted on websites and blogs they are interested in.

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

Digital news publishing agencies and popular online publications use content syndication to publish news from other news agencies all around the world.

Content syndication allows online newspapers and many popular online media publications to deliver readers interesting stories and up-to-the-minute newsworthy content from all over the globe without actually having to hire and post additional content writers to every place around the world …

(News reporting agencies and many highly-visited media publications use content syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the planet.)

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

(Content syndication is used by online newspapers to share newsworthy content with other publications)

Most sites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate significant web traffic.

Many digital news publishers and major content sites include a feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “chicago tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Many online newspapers will include a feed section. Source: smh.com.au )

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

(RSS directory. Source: NY Times RSS)

gives readers access to information about different sections of the website (e.g. business news, arts news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)

An RSS list can also include further feed subdirectories …

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

Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. All that’s required to use an RSS feed 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

Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s content and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …

(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)

While adding an RSS feed 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 use YOUR content.

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

(Consider trying to get users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help to increase your exposure online!)

WordPress RSS – About

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

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

1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in your navigation menu …

(Your feed page will show as many recent 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 WP Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or a summary …

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

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

(Post excerpts affect how content in your feeds display)

We have created a detailed tutorial about WordPress Post excerpts here:

• Post Excerpts A Practical Guide For Beginners

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned earlier, all you need to do to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into 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 look for their RSS feed icon using any of the methods described earlier …

(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 your clipboard)

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

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

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

Adding An RSS Feed To Your Site

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

How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar

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

Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …

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

First, Go to a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to display on your sidebar and copy its RSS feed URL …

(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)

Next, go to your Widgets area and paste the feed into an RSS widget …

(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)

To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Sidebar

Load your site in your browser. The content can now be seen in 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

Adding An RSS Feed To WordPress Posts

Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post? Yes, it can!

You can do this using WordPress plugins. Search inside the Plugins admin screen (Plugins > Add New) for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.

(‘Add Plugins’ section – RSS plugins)

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

The plugins listed below are useful for adding feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)

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

You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them according to campaigns.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico WP Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)

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

For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your WP posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)

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

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

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer WordPress Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)

POWr RSS allows you to combine content from a number of different content using RSS feeds.

The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, phones, and tablets and supports text in every language.

The premium version of POWr contains a number of additional features.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed WordPress Plugin

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)

WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.

This plugin provides loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes WordPress Plugin

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)

FeedWordPress provides flexible Atom/RSS syndication options 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 site (sites that bring together posts from many different sources), or bring together all your online activity into a Lifestream.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress

Autoblog by WPMUDev

(Autoblog)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or 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 by WPMUDev Plugin For WordPress

RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types

(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)

By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Use the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages – WordPress Plugin

Using RSS Feeds – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds

WordPress makes available RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to displaying feeds of your posts.

You can inspect these comments by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ section of your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …

(Comments RSS)

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

(RSS comments feed items displayed using a Firefox web browser)

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

(RSS comments feed content as seen using Google Chrome)

Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …

(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 site is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Creating Feeds For Single Posts

Being able to create an RSS feed for a specific post item 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 using an RSS feed for single posts is shown below:

(Feed For Single Post)

To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.

(Single Post Feed)

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

Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds

Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.

If you publish content under various categories, you can provide a separate feed for each of these categories.

Just use the format shown below:

(Format for WordPress category feed)

Copy the category URL …

(Copy the selected category URL …)

Append “feed” to the end of it …

(WordPress post categories feed format)

The feed now only displays content posted in that particular 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 – Publish A Feeds Page

You can publish your own RSS feeds directory that allows your readers to subscribe to content in the categories that interest them, just like large websites …

(Provide An RSS Feeds Page)

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

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

To learn more about inserting tables into WordPress, go here:

• Adding Tables In Posts And Pages With WordPress

RSS Feeds – Notes

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

WordPress allows you to configure several feed formats that do not require editing code. Here are some examples of custom feeds you can display …

(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)

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

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

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

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: RSS feed containing an individual post
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/

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

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Contains the latest entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/09/17/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/03/feed/

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

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

• Feed Type: Custom Post Type
• Description: RSS feed that contains the latest items 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 promote your feed. Place a subscribe button or link in a visible location …

(Encourage your site users to subscribe to your RSS feeds!)

Finally, keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide great information that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, focus on providing your visitors with high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.

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

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 🙂

RSS – Resources:

• RSS Feed Images – Visit FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss icon”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about RSS.
• WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and reference repository. Go here to learn more about using WordPress RSS.

Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add content from other websites to your site using RSS.

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 learn more about using the WP software please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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