No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business is in, providing quality information to your blog visitors is vitally important. For example, if you provide travel-related services, it’s a good idea to publish useful information from government and foreign travel departments, such as news or updates on travel warnings, advice from consular offices, etc.

The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it is very 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 ensure that this information is 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 readers with great information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your site readers with great information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

RSS – What Does It Mean?

• RSS, which, according to some definitions is short for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often referred to as a “feed” or “web feed”.
• RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content so that users can read it without having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
• Feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog post items, news, audios, etc., which any user can then subscribe to.
• Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata such as published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view updates posted on these websites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate web content automatically.
• There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different devices and programs.
• Many sites and software tools also let you combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from many different websites.

In this article, we show you where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to add content from other sites to your site via RSS.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a very powerful way to share web content. Feeds provide a simple way for web users to receive the latest information posted on sites and blogs they are interested in.

First, let’s take a look at syndication.

Online media publications use syndication to publish stories from news sources all around the world.

Content syndication allows most leading news publishing agencies to deliver readers stories from all over the globe without actually having to hire and set up more writers in every place around the world …

(Global media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the planet.)

Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing newsworthy content. online media publications syndicate their information using news feeds …

(Online newspapers syndicate their newsworthy content using feeds)

Most websites actually would like you to share their information. Content syndication 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 provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web visitors.

Many online newspapers and major online media publications provide links to an RSS feed section (look for links in the navigation menu that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “miami herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Most news reporting agencies and major online media publications contain an RSS feed section. Source: smh.com.au )

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

(RSS directory. Source: New York Times RSS)

gives readers access to information from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, travel news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)

An RSS directory can also include feed subdirectories …

(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)

Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Syndicating Content

Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s business additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create that content …

(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website 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 a great idea to try and get other websites to use your content.

When other websites and blogs syndicate your content, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new visitors …

(Consider trying to get other online users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase your traffic!)

Your WordPress RSS

By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their sites.

Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a few ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:

1) If your theme displays the Meta widget on the sidebar menu …

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

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

Another setting in the WP Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display posts as full text, or as a summary …

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

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

(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will appear)

We have written a detailed tutorial on Post excerpts here:

• WordPress Post Excerpts - Step-By-Step Tutorial

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned earlier, to view the content of a feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content.

Let’s see how this works.

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

(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon. 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 the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …

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

Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.

How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites

Let’s show you how to add content from other websites to yours.

Adding Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates 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 simply by adding content from their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.

Let’s add content sourced from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …

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

First, Find a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to display on your site and copy its RSS feed to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …

(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)

To learn more about using widgets, go here:

• How To Add Widgets To Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Menu

Load your website in your browser. The content from the RSS feed will now display in your 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 RSS Feeds To Your Posts

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

You can do this using WordPress plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin directory for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.

(WordPress RSS plugins)

Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.

The plugins listed below are useful for adding 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 WP Plugin)

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

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

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)

WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with premium add-ons for extended functionality.

For example, the Feed to Post extension is an advanced, feature-rich importer that allows you to import RSS feeds directly into your posts or any other custom post type.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator Plugin

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer Plugin)

RSS Post Importer lets you import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress blog.

RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each feed item as a standalone post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer WP Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)

With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.

This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any computer, tablet, or phone and supports text in any language.

The premium plugin edition contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts, and more.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes WP Plugin)

WP Pipes 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, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress Plugin)

FeedWordPress is a flexible syndication plugin for WordPress site-generated content.

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 FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or bring together all your online activity in one place.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress

Autoblog

(Autoblog by WPMUDev – 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 your feed a name (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog WP Plugin

RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types

(RSS Includes Pages)

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

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin

Using WordPress RSS – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds

WordPress makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts.

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

(Comments Feed)

All the comments posted on your site by visitors will appear in your Comments RSS page …

(RSS comments feed items viewed using a Firefox browser)

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

(Comments feed entries as seen using a Google Chrome browser)

Again, you can check the feed content 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: 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 website is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Creating Specific Post Feeds

Being able to use an RSS feed for single posts 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 creating an RSS feed for specific post items is shown below:

(Single Post 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 add “/feed” to the end of your post address, WordPress will return the comments for your post, not the post content itself.

Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds

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

WordPress allows you to create separate category feeds.

All you have to do is use the format shown below:

(WordPress RSS feed format for category)

Select and copy the category link address to your clipboard …

(Copy the selected category URL …)

And add “feed” to the end of it …

(WP post categories RSS feed format)

Your RSS feed will now only contain content published under that category …

(Category 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 – Provide Your Own RSS Feeds List

You can create your own RSS feeds list that allows readers to subscribe to content in the categories they are interested in, just like the larger websites do …

(Set Up Your Own Directory Of Feeds For Subscribers)

All you need to do is link an icon to category (or single post) feeds and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a separate page …

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on adding tables to WordPress posts and pages, go here:

• How To Create And Add Tables In WordPress

RSS – Notes

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

WordPress allows you to configure different feed types that do not require editing code. Here are some examples of feeds you can use and how to create your feeds …

(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create With WordPress RSS)

Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:

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

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

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: Feed that includes individual items
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/

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

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Includes latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/12/10/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/11/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Displays the latest entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/

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

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

One last thing …

Remember to let your users know that they can subscribe to your feeds. Place a subscribe button image somewhere visible …

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

Also, keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.

(Add someone else’s content 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 RSS feed 🙂

RSS Resources:

• Download RSS Feed Icons – Visit an online resource site like Feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss images”, 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 the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
• WordPress.org – WordPress software documentation and information repository. Go here to learn more about 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 add someone else’s content to your site via their RSS feed.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see other posts we have published on this site.

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