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RSS Feeds - What are They and What are They For?

By Barbara White

RSS has been used for more than a decade, but has only recently become commonly used. It is used to provide headlines and summaries of information in a concise and standardized way in one place, without the inconvenience of visiting separate sites on the Internet.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (although versions before RSS 2.0 were often recognized under various names). RSS feeds are written in a computer language called XML. This technology is what makes big news websites possible: RSS files are used to create a data feed which will transmit headlines, links or virtually any other piece of information to a channel viewer application, which is sometimes called a news reader.

Simply, a real simple syndication feed is a method that allows Web content to be formed into a recognizable form for viewing through a feed reader. It allows the user to save time and effort by viewing recent content from many different websites, without having to visit the sites individually.

RSS feeds (or news feeds) are growing quickly in usage and popularity and have become an integral part of the Internet, but many users don’t understand what they are. They allow people to see when their favorite websites have added new content without actually having to go to that website.

You can use RSS feeds to keep up to date with the latest posts from your favorite blogs and websites. Feeds can easily be used to get the latest news, weather, or movies, and be able to read them all in one place. This technology also gives you the ability to have other websites have up to date, accurate online information from your site(s) in seconds. Headline and sports news, informative articles, website updates, or your favorite food recipes are just a few of the things that you can syndicate!

Many people set up the feeds to update on their My Yahoo!, or Google page. You can also use them to keep informed with any groups that you belong to.

For example, YahooGroups is a free online community and discussion group service. YahooGroups can be monitored using RSS feeds. In order to keep in touch with a particular newsgroup, simply add /feed/msgs.xml to the end of the YahooGroup URL. Add the new URL to your RSS reader and receive updates every time a new post is added to the newsgroup.

RSS feeds can be used for online marketing very effectively.

If you want to promote your website, using Real Simple Syndication can get your URL listed with all search engines very quickly. This is a good choice for new webpages that need to have increased traffic. Marketing with feeds can help your URL achieve excellent results and ranking well in searches for your webpage’s main keywords.

Internet marketers can use the technology for contacting their mailing lists of subscribers. Many emailed newsletters are deleted without being read. RSS feeds are a more effective way of communicating, and will avoid the challenge of an email not getting through the spam filters.

Webmasters can use RSS feeds to place different types of content on their site. Valuable content can be in the form of articles, stories, press releases, announcements, updated info, company details, products and marketing. Creating feeds on your site gives webpages an ever changing source of syndicated content, and they need very little maintenance once you have set them up.

There are several advantages to using RSS as a source of Web content for your site. Quality content keeps your site visitors coming back and continually adds value to your website. It helps to perpetuate you as an expert in your niche and makes people more confident in purchasing from your site. Content syndication greatly facilitates your site in obtaining higher rankings in the search engines.

Barbara White writes for Send RSS Feeds where you can learn more about RSS feeds, content syndication and RSS feed submissions.

Tags: feeds, rss, syndication