Easy RSS Feeds for your Website

From LoveToKnow Web-Design

If you are a webmaster who would like to increase traffic to your website or blog, you may recognize the need to create easy RSS feeds for your website. Click here to read more about how to code the XML for your feed, or how to insert someone else's feed into your website. Read on for more information about much simpler methods to create an RSS feed for your website.

Announce your Site With a Feed

Why you Need Easy RSS Feeds for your Website

Working as a webmaster, it takes enough time coming up with content for your own site that there's little time left for syndicating, or advertising, your website. However, syndication is absolutely necessary if you how to drive significant traffic to your web page. While there are many methods you can use to market your website, one of the most effective ways to build a loyal readership over the long term is to offer high quality RSS feeds of your website or blog updates.

How to Build Easy RSS Feeds

The RSS feed for your website is basically an XML file that resides on your web server. Feed readers keep an updated copy of that file, so your subscribers are updated of all new RSS feed updates. You could create this XML file by hand, but that process can feel complicated and cumbersome, especially for anyone who doesn't have any programming knowledge. This is why so many software developers, and in particular RSS feed reader companies, are now offering free RSS feed builders for webmasters. The following are some examples of some of the best RSS feed builders now available.

IceRocket, one of the most popular blog search engines on the Internet, offers a free RSS feed builder that, much like [[Simple Web Page Design Software simple web page design software], offers a simple interface where you can easily add links and content to your feed. Publishing the feed update is even automated. Instead of copying the new XML file over to your hosting account, IceRocket will publish the RSS feed directly to your web server for you.
rss-builder is a software package under GNU (General Public License) that allows you to create and edit RSS xml files on your computer. This is useful if you're already in the habit of copying the XML file from your web host to your computer for editing. However, if you want to save that step, RSS-Builder has a built-in feature that will edit the RSS feed directly on your web server.
LinkAssure offers a unique web-based feed builder to create your own RSS feeds. This is probably the simplest way to create a feed for your website if you're comfortable with transferring files to your web host but you've never written a line of XML code in your life. All you do is supply this web form with a title, link, copyright and description information, add a few items to your feed, and then copy and paste the resulting text into notepad or any other text editor. Then you just save the file in XML format and upload it to your web server. You now have an RSS feed!
PonyFish offers a similar web based form that will create your feed file for you. PonyFish is somewhat advanced because it uses a "robot" script that crawls your web page for relevant information to update the feed. The free account will perform that scan and update your feed every four hours. However, PonyFish requires a paid account if you want more frequent feed updates.

Another excellent source for free software that can help you create RSS files for your website or blog is CNET's Download.com site. The site currently lists two free feed builders.

Getting RSS Feed Subscribers

Keep in mind that simply having an XML RSS feed file stored on your web server won't get subscribers to your blog or website content. Additionally, you want to make sure that your blog or website has at least five to seven articles or posts already, or many directories will deny the submission. Invest some time into generating quality content for your site before taking the time to go through submitting your feed to all of the feed directories.

How to Submit Your RSS Feed

Just like you submit your website to search engines, you need to submit the link to your feed file to blog directories and RSS feed directories. There are hundreds of feed directories across the Internet, so initially you'll need to devote some time to getting your feed "out there." Start with the big search engine RSS guides, such as Yahoo or Google. Submitting your feed to some sites is called "pinging," and all you need to do is include the link to your feed. For example, to submit to MSN, type the following into your browser:

"http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://YourFeedUrl.YourDomain.com/RSSfeed.xml"

For Ask.com, type:

"http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://YourFeedUrl.YourDomain.com/RSSfeed.xml"

There are paid services that will submit your feed to all of the directories for you, but you will see enough traffic increase by submitted it yourself to the top RSS feed directories. The great thing about investing the time into submitting your feed is that you only need to do it once, and your updated feed file will continue to provide people who subscribe to you through those directories with updated content from your website or blog.