I Figured Out How to Write VALID RSS FEEDS + Best Directories!

[scott g]

I know no one really cares about this, but it took me FOREVER to figure this out!! So I want to share this information with SOMEONE! LOL!

The online feed creators HTML2RSS/Ponyfish and sites like them don't do the job. The paid programs (RSSBot & something else...) that I have don't get the job done how I want it (I didn't pay much, should have never paid at all).

Using online "How To" guides, dissecting the code of RSS Feeds that other sites have created for me, and using external programs, saving and verifying saving and verifying, all to CREATE the FEEDS that I WANTED! & I finally figured it out!

Firstly, I just wanted to backlink my backlinks easily and accurately with a couple big, long RSS feeds with multiple URLs. That's all I wanted. I simply use TextPad (Notepad, Wordpad) - I already have a huge list of URLs to the sites that have my backlinks - just a matter of copy + pasting the code/URLs. I could put a thousand links in one Feed if I wanted to! Oh.... so happy joy joy!

If anyone wants to create a really long ass, valid feed from different URLs (a long list of links for backlinking for you backlinks) here's how ya do it. After you create your .txt file save it as *.xml and put it/upload it to your website directory or hosting accnt/server space etc. Create a new directory to save the feeds to to keep them organized and seperate from everything else on your site: example.com/feeds/

PHP Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>

<title>TITLE IN TITLE BAR</title>
<link>http://yoursite.com</link>
<description>A MAD LIST OF LINKS TO BACKLINKS!</description>

<item><title>BACKLINK 1</title>
<link>http://goarticles.com/cgi-bin/author</link>
<guid>http://goarticles.com/cgi-bin/author</guid></item>


<item><title>BACKLINK 2</title>
<link>http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=</link>
<guid>http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=</guid></item>

<atom:link href="http://yoursite.com/feeds/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /></channel>
</rss>

It looks just as good, if not better than the feeds Feedburner makes for your blogs!

I don't care if any of you care! I care! I'm putting 50-60 links in each feed, uploading the .xml feed to my server space, and submitting them to a handful of RSS Directories/Aggregators:
Greenprofs
SolarWarp
FeedSee
Seedz RSS
Million RSS
Blogdigger
Feedlisting
Blog Pulse
Feedage
Plazoo
GoldenFeed
Read-A-Blog
Feedgy
RSSMicro
RSSMotron
Liquida
Syndic8

(I just submitted one feed w/ 50 links in it to this list of Feed directories successfully JOY!)
(P.s. Of course there are tons of tools that will automate Feed submissions for you.)

CHEERS!

May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future.


************************EDIT
Now that I look at this.... I see that I've OVERCOMPLICATED the RSS Feed!!!

Testing Testing Testing

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"    xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>Testing Testing Testing</title>
<link>http://www.scrapebox.com</link>
<description>How to write an UBER simple RSS Feed</description>
<item>
<title>Free Proxies</title>
<link>http://onhousearrest.net</link>
<description>The description can be the same as title... Or keyword STUFFED!</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:53:27 -0600</pubDate>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Feed Validator Results: http://onhousearrest.net/downloads/testRSS.xml
Feed Validator Results: http://onhousearrest.net/downloads/testRSS.xml

Just save your script as a .xml and you're golden!!! Damn that was easy?!?! WTF was I doing?! LOL!

CHEERS!

[GeorgettaSterling]

Thanks for this Scott. I don't understand it all, but thanks!

To be clear, for each link that you want to be in the RSS feed, you need to insert a block that looks like this:

<item><title>BACKLINK 1</title>
<link>http://goarticles.com/cgi-bin/author</link>
<guid>http://goarticles.com/cgi-bin/author</guid></item>

Right? So, with 50 links, you would have 50 blocks that each look exactly like that (except the "goarticles..." thing is different)?

Are these links RSS feeds themselves (your goarticles example seems to be?), or can they be just regular HTML links? Can this "transform" regular HTML pages into RSS, the way that HTML2RSS claims?

Then, I upload the XML file to a website I control. Then, I submit THAT link to the RSS directories, right?

Are you submitting them manually? It seems you started talking about software, but then didn't pick up that bit of the story again.

Sorry if my questions are dumb - I am still trying to wrap my head around the mechanics of RSS.

Thanks!

Best Regards, Georgetta

[scott g]

Originally Posted by GeorgettaSterling

Thanks for this Scott. I don't understand it all, but thanks!

To be clear, for each link that you want to be in the RSS feed, you need to insert a block that looks like this:

<item><title>BACKLINK 1</title>
<link>http://goarticles.com/cgi-bin/author</link>
<guid>http://goarticles.com/cgi-bin/author</guid></item>

Right? So, with 50 links, you would have 50 blocks that each look exactly like that (except the "goarticles..." thing is different)?

Are these links RSS feeds themselves (your goarticles example seems to be?), or can they be just regular HTML links? Can this "transform" regular HTML pages into RSS, the way that HTML2RSS claims?

Then, I upload the XML file to a website I control. Then, I submit THAT link to the RSS directories, right?

Are you submitting them manually? It seems you started talking about software, but then didn't pick up that bit of the story again.

Sorry if my questions are dumb - I am still trying to wrap my head around the mechanics of RSS.

Thanks!

Best Regards, Georgetta

No questions are dumb! I'm glad I could be of some assistance! It was a lot harder than you would imagine to manually build an RSS Feed that looks like a Feedburner Feed - and that is ACCEPTABLE to all directories (HTML2RSS generated Feeds are NOT).

You know how you always hear people say "backlink your backlinks - make an RSS feed." Well, I don't know what tool they're using and I'm not going to pay for one Plus, I like to have full control of my stuff! Lol!

Yes each <item> block is one link - so if you want 50 links you copy + paste 50 of those blocks and edit. It is time consuming but it is worth it to me. The URLs in my example are only partial b/c they were pointing to my Article Directory Author Profiles.

RSSNitrous is a pretty cool RSS submitter that is free. RSSBot is ok... it's $30.

I just manually submit to the directories I listed. It's pretty simple.

[scott g]

EXAMPLE OF HOW TO WRITE YOUR OWN RSS FEED WITH DOZENS OF URLS FROM HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT SITES.

I try to keep feeds 50-60 links deep not to over do it!

Code: (Notepad, Wordpad, Textpad - save file as .xml and upload)

PHP Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>

<title>This Is A Manually Created RSS Feed</title>
<link>http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/289108-i-figured-out-how-write-valid-rss-feeds-best-directories.html</link>
<description>This is an example of a feed that was created manually. It is entirely composed of different links to different websites of my choosing. It is RSS VALID! Looks as good as Feedburner and is accepted by ALL RSS Directories. Time consuming, but with a little love you can easily backlink your backlinks. You could put 100, or even a thousand links in ONE Feed!!</description>

<item><title>Topic 1</title>
<link>http://google.com</link>
<guid>http://google.com</guid></item>


<item><title>Topic 1</title>
<link>http://yahoo.com</link>
<guid>http://yahoo.com</guid></item>


<item><title>Topic 1</title>
<link>http://bing.com</link>
<guid>http://bing.com</guid></item>


<item><title>Topic 1</title>
<link>http://godaddy.com</link>
<guid>http://godaddy.com</guid></item>


<item><title>Topic 1</title>
<link>http://hostgator.com</link>
<guid>http://hostgator.com</guid></item>


<item><title>Topic 1</title>
<link>http://warriorforum.com</link>
<guid>http://warriorforum.com</guid></item>


<item><title>Topic 1</title>
<link>http://altavista.com</link>
<guid>http://altavista.com</guid></item>


<item><title>Topic 1</title>
<link>http://mozilla.org</link>
<guid>http://mozilla.org</guid></item>


<item><title>SEOQuake</title>
<link>http://www.seoquake.com/</link>
<guid>http://www.seoquake.com/</guid></item>

<atom:link href="http://onhousearrest.net/feeds/example.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /></channel>
</rss>

And it looks like this.


CHEERS!

[calfred]

Hey there Scott.

High five man.

I was finding out about the entire RSS thing. I know how you feel inside out.

You are right. The free method doesn't work to my liking as well.

Your simplistic code was validated by The W3C Markup Validation Service (choose Validate by Direct Input)

Now I don't need to use RSSmix.com anymore.

[scott g]

Originally Posted by calfred

Your simplistic code was validated by The W3C Markup Validation Service (choose Validate by Direct Input)

Now I don't need to use RSSmix.com anymore.

Where do you think I got the from?!??!

[calfred]

Sure. Thanks for the code. hehe

[scott g]

Yay! Made 7 Feeds with 50-60 links in each

CHEERS!

[derh]

This looks awesome!!! I just can't get my head around how to do this!!! I know very little about html coding. Need to get together with ya to figure this out!!

[scott g]

Originally Posted by derh

This looks awesome!!! I just can't get my head around how to do this!!! I know very little about html coding. Need to get together with ya to figure this out!!

It's really pretty simple - completely foreign at first. You'd be surprised by how much you can learn from dissecting other web pages. That's probably why I don't like PHP (Wordpress) b/c I'm not real familiar with PHP script! I like to get my hands INSIDE the script - that's how I know how to optimize

Plus, knowing a little HTML comes in very handy! You can include backlinks in the body of your posts linking a word or two or three. Here's a tutorial LOL! Copy the HTML below and paste it into Notepad. Now save it to your desktop as (type it in) "example.html" Double click it and it will open up in your browser and you can see what all the "code" does. If you want to edit the code - "open with" notepad or wordpad or whatever.

<html>
<head>
<title>this is the name of my page!</title
</head>
<body>
<p>That "p" means we're starting a paragraph. This is the body of your text. Say I want to make a word <strong>BOLD</strong> - or <em>ITALICIZED</em> or <u>UNDLERLINED</u> or <s>STRIKETHROUGH</s> or <s><strong><em><u>ALL OF THEM</s></strong></em></u>!!! Now lets end this paragraph and start a new one.</p>
<p>Now let's create a hyperlink. The anchor text in our link will be the keywords we are trying to rank for in Google! Search engines like it when our keywords are linked: <a href="http://www.dehumidifiersforhomereviews.net/" target="_blank">Dehumidifiers for Home Reviews</a>.</p>
The "target="_blank"" means the link will open in a new window. most of the time I don't use the "p" tags, I'll just seperate my paragraphs/lines with a BREAKS.
<br /><br /><br />
That was 3 line breaks. This is enough basic HTML for you to know so that you can make comments or posts somewhere with your backlinks inserted into them :)
</body>
</html>
<body>

[anwar001]

Do you enter the same urls in the link and guid tags like this:

<link>http://google.com</link>
<guid>http://google.com</guid>

And what does guid tag stand for?

[scott g]

Originally Posted by anwar001

Do you enter the same urls in the link and guid tags like this:

<link>http://google.com</link>
<guid>http://google.com</guid>

And what does guid tag stand for?

Yep just like that. I guess <guid> stands for guide?!? Don't really know. One thing that threw me off was when I would save my RSS Feeds like "example.xml" to desktop and view them in the browser they were just bold blocks of text... However, once uploaded to the web they show perfectly.

I suggest after making a feed and uploading it to your server/hosting, that you run it through W3C Feed Validation Service, for Atom and RSS to validate the feed... I had an issue with duplicate links in some of the feeds I was creating -I put about 50 links in each feed.

CHEERS!

[scott g]

Here's another Example. Every now and then the feed will not validate so I have to take out a link and replace it for some reason, or like I said if there's duplicates in there or if i accidently screw up a tag (ie. /title> to </title>). Other than that all good.

Oh yeah, the example: Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>

<title>This Is A Manually Created RSS Feed</title>
<link>http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/289108-i-figured-out-how-write-valid-rss-feeds-best-directories.html</link>
<description>This is an example of a feed that was created manually. It is entirely composed of different links to different websites of my choosing. It is RSS VALID! Looks as good as Feedburner and is accepted by ALL RSS Directories. Time consuming, but with a little love you can easily backlink your backlinks. You could put 100, or even a thousand links in ONE Feed!!</description>

<item><title>Example 1</title>
<link>http://yahoo.com</link>
<guid>http://yahoo.com</guid></item>

<item><title>W3C Feed Validator</title>
<link>http://validator.w3.org/feed/</link>
<guid>http://validator.w3.org/feed/</guid></item>

<item><title>HideMyAss - Anonymous Surfing</title>
<link>http://hidemyass.com/</link>
<guid>http://hidemyass.com/</guid></item>

<item><title>SEO SERP Checker</title>
<link>http://www.seoserp.com/web_tools/google_pagerank_checker/google_serp_report.asp</link>
<guid>http://www.seoserp.com/web_tools/google_pagerank_checker/google_serp_report.asp</guid></item>

<item><title>SEOQuake Plugin for Firefox</title>
<link>http://www.seoquake.com/?sln=en</link>
<guid>http://www.seoquake.com/?sln=en</guid></item>

<item><title>Google</title>
<link>http://google.com</link>
<guid>http://google.com</guid></item>

<item><title>Y! Site Explore</title>
<link>https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/</link>
<guid>https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/</guid></item>

<item><title>This WF Post</title>
<link>http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/289108-i-figured-out-how-write-valid-rss-feeds-best-directories.html</link>
<guid>http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/289108-i-figured-out-how-write-valid-rss-feeds-best-directories.html</guid></item>

<item><title>Squidoo</title>
<link>http://www.squidoo.com/</link>
<guid>http://www.squidoo.com/</guid></item>

<item><title>WF</title>
<link>http://warriorforum.com</link>
<guid>http://warriorforum.com</guid></item>

<atom:link href="http://showmeads.net/show/feeds/example2.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /></channel>
</rss>

CHEERS!

[kea55]

sounds great I will really have to try this soon

[scott g]

Originally Posted by kea55

sounds great I will really have to try this soon

Let me know if you have any questions. Hell, I'll be a generous Warrior! I'll host your FEED! So you can submit it to RSS Feed Aggregators and ping it or do whatever you want with it!

I like to try to give back in my own little ways to the IMers who are getting their feet wet!

CHEERS!

[Amys101place]

Great job on learning something new... that's of more value than any program you purchase and nice of you to share your findings with the community.

If anyone wants a great free program for doing this, I use RSSeditor. It works wonderfully well.

[claritytech123]

Thanks for sharing the RSS feed code. Very helpful for RSS making.

[maryparker]

Great post. Thanks for sharing your informative thoughts. Good insights. Looking forward for more tips & updates.

[scott g]

Originally Posted by Amys101place

Great job on learning something new... that's of more value than any program you purchase and nice of you to share your findings with the community.

If anyone wants a great free program for doing this, I use RSSeditor. It works wonderfully well.

Good find Amy! I sure as hell didn't find that! I'll have to check it out.

CHEERS!

[Amys101place]

Originally Posted by scott g

Good find Amy! I sure as hell didn't find that! I'll have to check it out.

CHEERS!

Thanks.. it was a hard find. I had tried about 10 before stumbling on a blog somewhere that mentioned it. After trying it, it was exactly what I had been looking for.

[Klemen]

great pots, it gave me more insight on rss knowledge
however when usually one question gets solved the next appears

what would be the difference when submitting your feeds to rss directories, between:
when making one rss feed out of one http://.....

and

when making feeds out of multiple http://... adresses

really confused here on which model of above to follow when working on link juice on my backlinks

thank you,
Klemen

[jhonsean]

An informative method you have scott g but there are still other members that are not getting the point on this strategy. Anyway thanks for this usable post my friend.

[scott g]

Originally Posted by Klemen

great pots, it gave me more insight on rss knowledge
however when usually one question gets solved the next appears

what would be the difference when submitting your feeds to rss directories, between:
when making one rss feed out of one http://.....

and

when making feeds out of multiple http://... adresses

really confused here on which model of above to follow when working on link juice on my backlinks

thank you,
Klemen

Are you talking about the MAIN URL? Unfortunately only ONE MAIN URL per feed. I assume you're talking about the head portion:

<title>
<link>
<description>

I ping my feeds, meta index them, blast them to RSS aggregators manually and with RSSBot in hopes that the search stumble across a feed and quickly index my backlinks... I've created multiple feeds for my static sites using different titles and whatnot, but I mainly create feeds for quick indexing and I've had good results.

CHEERS!

[Clint Butler]

Here is question, do you use your domain to store your RSS feeds, or do you put them on a different website?

Regards,
Clint

[scott g]

Originally Posted by Clint Butler

Here is question, do you use your domain to store your RSS feeds, or do you put them on a different website?

Regards,
Clint

Both. I have several domains that are just old and I don't use anymore except to post some content and storage. Don't get me wrong the domains are all indexed and have a PR1-2, I just have no need for them anymore. (don't do Adsense sites anymore)

I just create a new suddirectory (mydomain.com/feeds/) and store them all there. Keep things simple when I write my feeds b/c I then leave the bottom <atom ref:" the same... Just retitle the *.xml feed.

[Alex Barboza]

And my question is why did you set a backlink in the green smiley face in the opening post? Could that be considered spam?

Edir: the link goes to avandia.lawsuitinformation (dot) org/

[scott g]

Originally Posted by AlexBarboza

And my question is why did you set a backlink in the green smiley face in the opening post? Could that be considered spam?

Edir: the link goes to avandia.lawsuitinformation (dot) org/

Most people don't ever pick up that type of backlink dropping and no it is not considered spam. It's considered backlinking dropping...

I believe there was a guy around here named Terry Kyle that I picked this up from a loooooong time ago...

You know I try pointing it out it post sometimes like this -----> and people don't get it lol!

I've sprinkled lots of backlinks to different sites in this forum and others.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by scott g

Most people don't ever pick up that type of backlink dropping and no it is not considered spam. It's considered backlinking dropping...

I believe there was a guy around here named Terry Kyle that I picked this up from a loooooong time ago...

You know I try pointing it out it post sometimes like this -----> and people don't get it lol!

I've sprinkled lots of backlinks to different sites in this forum and others.

----------> <----------

[scott g]

Now that I look at this.... I see that I've OVERCOMPLICATED the RSS Feed!!!

Testing Testing Testing

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"    xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>Testing Testing Testing</title>
<link>http://www.scrapebox.com</link>
<description>How to write an UBER simple RSS Feed</description>
<item>
<title>Free Proxies</title>
<link>http://onhousearrest.net</link>
<description>The description can be the same as title... Or keyword STUFFED!</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:53:27 -0600</pubDate>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Feed Validator Results: http://onhousearrest.net/downloads/testRSS.xml
Feed Validator Results: http://onhousearrest.net/downloads/testRSS.xml

Just save your script as a .xml and you're golden!!! Damn that was easy?!?! WTF was I doing?! LOL!

CHEERS!

[yukon]

Thanks Scott!

I've used that code & have it stripped down to as basic as I think I can get it, & still have it validate.

I removed the date & description from the individual items.

<description>The description can be the same as title... Or keyword STUFFED!</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:53:27 -0600</pubDate>

[pons_saravanan]

GUID Stands for Global Unique Identifier. You may consider the text in this be unique with in the rss xml. If you use url as GUID then dont duplicate the same url again, that will do i think.

[scott g]

Originally Posted by pons_saravanan

GUID Stands for Global Unique Identifier. You may consider the text in this be unique with in the rss xml. If you use url as GUID then dont duplicate the same url again, that will do i think.

Forgot that! Good post!

WTF?! WF took away my ability to "Thank!" Douchey... LOL!

[iconoclast]

So does this technique turn the pages listed in the links into feed format? I thought a feed was a constantly updated summary of a website? Does the website have to be set up as a feed first before you can link to it? The links in the document should be to the pages that your backlinks are on? Thanks for any help, I'm having a hard time grasping this subject.

[contentclub]

That is excellent.Many thanks.I m gonna try this.