Hey wait, what the heck is RSS? That’s a good way to start. ‘RSS’ stands for ‘really Simple Syndication’ and what it does is prepare your site updates for delivery to those who subscribe to the feed.
It’s almost like each time your favorite magazine writes a new article and they just send it to you in the mail — except far less annoying and much more useful. People use ‘feed readers’ to collect RSS feed updates (usually of a handful or more of sites and blogs) and that way they are all centrally located in their reader with the option to continue reading on the source blog itself.
WordPress and Built-in RSS Feeds
WordPress sites come with RSS feeds built in and with a little look under-the-hood, you can find yours. We’ll do that next, but right after we’ll discuss the value (and added value you can have with your feed).
Find Your RSS Feed Address
RSS Feeds have a feed ‘address’ that people use to connect to your content through their readers.
Your address can be:
yoursite.com/?feed-rss
Through a little on-page promotion you can get people to subscribe, thus increasing your chances of repeat traffic (we’re counting on you to write good content though). The most obvious is to have a prominent feed button on your site that is easily found. Some people have increased their feed readership by having a snippet of text explaining what a feed is (for those who have no idea, but once they do they think it’s a great idea).
RSS Feeds and a Little SEO
The following tactic isn’t at the top of my list of link-building tactics, but it can generate links back to your site.
Once you have your RSS Feed address, find reputable RSS Feed directories and submit! This gets you into specific directories, but can also point links back to your site; some will allow you to modify the title of your site/blog so you can include keywords and phrases.
Another built in feature of WordPress, RSS Feeds, gives you more promotion power and quite possibly some low-hanging-fruit links back to your site.
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Speaking of feeds, why not subscribe to ours?
