What Is An Rss Feed?

Posted by Karen Newton on Jan 07, 2009

RSS stands for either Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a way to automatically receive constantly updated news or other information from a web site. RSS has become quite popular lately, both for people who want to stay informed on a particular topic and by internet marketers who want to publicize their sites to as large an audience as possible.

Reasons For Using RSS

If you want to get regular updates on a particular type of news story, you might have to visit a web site that specializes in this kind of issue. However, you don't necessarily know when there will be new information that you care about. So you may visit the site often and only occasionally find something useful. On the other hand, you might forget to visit the site on a day when something very important is posted. An RSS feed will automatically send you the stories on your chosen topic, so you don't have to worry about visiting the site.

By signing up for RSS, you also don't have to sign up for mailing lists to stay informed. Once you join a mailing list, you might get lots of email every day, when all you want is a specific type of information. RSS lets you narrow it down.

How Do You Access RSS?

There are several formats for receiving RSS. You can get RSS readers for Windows, Mac or Linux. There are also web-based feed readers, such as My Yahoo, Google Reader and Bloglines. The advantage of these is that you can access them from any internet location in the world. RSS has a small, usually orange logo or icon consisting of a dot surrounded by two half circles. Once you recognize the logo you will know how to access an RSS feed wherever it is available.

Using RSS In Internet Marketing

If you have a web site or blog, it can be very helpful to offer a way for your visitors to subscribe to your posts. You can install a button that will enable people to easily subscribe. If you have a Wordpress blog or any kind of instant site builder, there will be instructions on how to set this up. If you operate a regular web site, you'll have to install RSS software on your server, which is not difficult.

RSS Feeds are a great way to keep up with the latest news on any subject. It is also a simple way for web site and blog owners to increase their traffic and gain subscribers.

Visit my FreeRSSTips blog to learn more about what is an RSS feed. You can also read about Rogue RSS Profits to learn how to create RSS feeds and manipulate them.



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