Creating and Promoting RSS Feeds
By S. Housley

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is commonly known,
is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily
distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet.
It seems like all Internet businesses now have RSS feeds
available; at least your competitors do. You have finally
made the decision that you have to have one. Where do you
start?

Steps to Creating an RSS feed


1.) Build a Feed

There are a number of desktop and web applications available
that make feed creation easy. I would encourage anyone
creating a feed to use one. Though not overly complicated,
hand-coding an RSS feed can become a bit confusing and
time-consuming. Most desktop software applications for
building a feed include a wizard and contact-sensitive help,
simplifying the process of creating a feed. Following a few
simple steps in a wizard generally will produce an RSS feed
in just a few minutes. 

Publishers control what information is syndicated in the RSS
feed, so ultimately it is the publisher's decision as to
whether to include teaser copy or full articles. Consider
what you are trying to accomplish and who your target
audience is when building the feed.

Software to Build a Feed - http://www.feedforall.com
Tutorial for Creating Feed by Hand using XML -
http://www.make-rss-feeds.com



2.) Transfer the Feed Onto Your Server

Once you have constructed an RSS feed you will need to
transfer the feed to your server. This can be done using a
standard FTP client (if it is not built into the feed
creation software). The feed is usually placed in the
domain's root directory like this:
http://www.mydomain.com/nameoffeed.xml , but as long as you
know where it is it doesn't really matter.



3.) Display the Feed on Your Website Using a Graphic of Some
Sort 

In order to signal to website visitors that an RSS feed
containing content related to the website is available,
include a colorful graphic on the website. It has become a
standard that nearly all websites that have RSS feeds
available use colorful graphics such as flags as indicators
that RSS feeds are available for specific content. The flags
were initially bright orange rectangles but as the
popularity has grown, webmasters have bent the rules a bit.
NotePage has made a free online RSS graphic tool available
that allows users to quickly customize buttons by selecting
the text on the button and the color scheme of the button.
Once the color and text is entered, a custom graphic is
instantly created. Webmasters can easily match the style of
the RSS button to a website's theme. Graphics experience is
not required. Simply select alternative colors and insert
text to personalize RSS feed graphics. The RSS graphics tool
can be used by clicking the following URL
http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm or
choose ready made graphics fom:
http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-graphics.htm . 



4.) Include Information in the HTML of the Web Page So RSS
Readers Auto-Detect Your Feed

After publishing an RSS feed it is important to let visitors
know that the feed exists. Aggregators will automatically
detect RSS on a website if you add a small bit of code in
the header field of an HTML page.

[link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS"
href="http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml"]

Be sure to replace http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml with
the URL to the RSS feed and replace the brackets with "<"
less than and ">" greater than symbols.



5.) Display the Feed's Content on a Website

Contents contained in an RSS feed can be added to a website,
providing site visitors an alternative method for viewing
the content. The information will also help increase search
engine interest. Displaying the feed as HTML can be
accomplished. Providing fresh content on a regular basis
will encourage site visitors return. 

Tutorial for Displaying Feeds -
http://www.small-business-software.net/display-rss.htm



6.) Submit the Feed to RSS Directories and Search Engines

As a rapidly increasing number of content sources, new and
old, migrate or add RSS as a key distribution channel, and
as more people utilize RSS newsreaders and aggregators to
keep themselves informed, the ability to maintain high
exposure and visibility is gradually shifted from complete
attention to major search engines and content optimization
techniques to an increasing awareness of RSS feed
directories and search tools.


In order to increase exposure of an RSS feed it should be
submitted to RSS search engines and directories. This can be
done manually. Just as you would submit the URL of a website
or web page to a search engine you will need to submit the
link of the actual feed located on your website to the RSS
directories. There is a large list of RSS directories at
http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm . If
you prefer to automate the submission process try RSS Submit
at: http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html . An
evaluation version is available. 


About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon
manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a
wireless text messaging software company.