What is an RSS feed and What Can it Do for My Blog?

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An RSS feed is identified by that little orange square RSS feed icon with a white dot in the corner and two curving white lines above it that you've probably seen on blogs all over the Internet. An acronym for Real Simple Syndication, RSS feeds are XML documents that are used to automatically publish frequently updated web content such as blogs and podcasts. RSS feeds effectively syndicate or push your content out to users who subscribe to your feed, which is simply the text of your recently published content.

Most blogs, especially the free, WordPress blogging platform, automatically have an RSS feed built in to the blog. When visitors come to your blog and they like your content, they can subscribe to your feed, which allows them to receive your fresh content delivered right in their feed reader.

RSS feed readers allow visitors to be able to browse through their favorite blog content all in one convenient location at their own convenience. With the emergence of web-enabled smart phones people can read their RSS feeds while standing in line at the post office, or while waiting for the train. If something that you have written in a post sparks their interest, they may click through and visit your blog.

But what can RSS do for my blog?, you ask. Well, optimizing your blog's RSS feed is an effective way to syndicate your blog's content. You can gain lots of exposure for your blog when you publish your RSS feed to a few of the top RSS directories. These directories are arranged according to categories, so some visitors will browse the categories to find blogs that fit their interest and subscribe to them.

Another benefit of submitting your RSS feeds to directories is that this is a great source of quality, relevant backlinks. Links back to your blog from websites with content that is related to yours helps improve your sites search engine optimization and can help boost your page rank.

Did it ever occur to you that you could monetize your RSS feed? You can place contextual ad codes such as Google's AdSense program in your RSS feeds and start making a bit of money here and there from your RSS subscribers.

If you want to start focusing on building up your RSS subscriber list, invite your visitors to subscribe. Have a call to action in your blog posts that clearly spells out the benefits of receiving your fresh blog posts in their reader so they don't miss a thing.

An RSS feed is a useful tool that can help you expand your blog's readership, get you some quality backlinks and make a bit of money for you as your list grows. Use a free service such as FeedBurner, which is owned by Google, to optimize and publicize your RSS feed. All you have to do is sign up, submit your feed and then they will optimize it for you and give you the URL to your shiny new feed.

RSS feeds are just one of several ways to expand your blog's readership and generate backlinks. For more information about how to get started, visit, http://www.mcreasite.com.
#blog #feed #rss

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