RSS Website Marketing Resources

1. RSS Tutorial - How to create RSS feeds

This tutorial will take you through the process of creating an RSS feed for your site. Please feel free to ask any questions you have on our forums.

What are RSS feeds?

RSS is a basic XML format used to syndicated news headlines or similar types of content with other websites. The basic premise is that it will allow you (as the provider of the content) to allow snapshots of your content to be published on another site.

This can be a fantastic tool to use to promote your content - RSS feeds can be published on related sites, exposing a much broader range of users to your content. In terms of search engine optimisation, RSS feeds can also be a great way to build up the inbound link popularity of your website.

The process of creating an RSS feed is very simple (really simple!) - a basic knowledge of web design is useful (particularly HTML as similar concepts are applied), although the process can be picked up by almost anyone.

Creating a basic RSS feed

First step is simple - just open up a new notepad document and name it with the file extension .xml - for example "news.xml" (when you save it, be sure to "save as" and then change the "Save as type" to "All files".

XML.com has a great description of the general format of RSS feeds - it's not really worth rehashing here - you either get it right or you don't - there's no real grey area.

To summarise, the format of your RSS feed is similar to the use of HTML - you surrounding elements of the feed with opening and closing tags.

The first step is to define the RSS version you will be doing (refer to the XML.xom link above for more details) - in this example we will be creating an RSS feed using version 0.91. Why? Because it's bloody easy.

So you will open your RSS file and enter the following tags to define the version:

<rss version="0.91">

</rss>

This will let any RSS readers know firstly that the file is an RSS file, and secondly what version of RSS the file uses.

Next, within these tags, we need to define the channel to be used (there will only be one channel in our RSS feed - the data that is to be syndicated - but you can use the channel tag to define other information as well).

So our file now looks like:

<rss version="0.91">

<channel>

</channel>

</rss>

This is us now at the part you will have to customise for your own site - the actual data that has to be synidcated. For the purposes of this tutorial we will create a feed that syndicates this RSS tutorial.

First step is to add the title element:

<rss version="0.91">

<channel>

<title>RSS Website Marketing Resources</title>

</channel>

</rss>

As the name of the tag suggests, this title will define the title of our RSS feed. This will ultimately become the main heading that is placed on any sites that syndicate our content. From here we need to go onto define the link and the description that will go with the main heading:

<rss version="0.91">

<channel>

<title>RSS Website Marketing Resources</title>

<link>

http://www.sellthosewidgets.com/rss/rss_readers.htm

</link>

<description>

This is just a very simple tutorial to start you off - RSS feeds are a very simple concept, but when you get round the initial learning curve, there is a lot you can do with your feeds.

</description>

</channel>

</rss>

Now we need to create items for our feed - that is, the articles or news stories that will be listed.

<rss version="0.91">

<channel>

<link>

http://www.sellthosewidgets.com/rss/rss_website_marketing.htm

</link>

<description>

This is just a very simple tutorial to start you off - RSS feeds are a very simple concept, but when you get round the initial learning curve, there is a lot you can do with your feeds.

</description>

<item>

<title>This is the title for page 1</title>

<link>

http://www.sellthosewidgets.com/page1.htm

</link>

<description>

This is page 1.

</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>This is the title for page 2</title>

<link>

http://www.sellthosewidgets.com/page2.htm

</link>

<description>

This is page 2.

</description>

</item>

</channel>

</rss>

Note the new <item> tags highlighted above in red. Each set of tags (<item> opens and then </item> closes the set) indicates an individual news item. You can always use an RSS validator to check your feed for errors.

All that is left for you to do is to add in the <item> tags, links, titles and descriptions for as many pages as you want. Keep in mind that most RSS readers usually have a limit as to how many items they show, so don't go crazy. 10 is plenty to be starting with.

If you have a news site (or your RSS feed will otherwise contain a lot of new items) then it's best to have the most recent to the top. All that's left to do is to upload the RSS feed to your server and start to promote it.

>> 2. Marketing your RSS Feed

>> Back to RSS Website Marketing Resources

More RSS Resources

• RSS feed tutorial home
• Creating your RSS feed
• Marketing your RSS feed
• What are RSS directories?
• Submitting your feed