RSS feeds on your blog, is that useful?

RSS feeds are an important term for bloggers to understand to deal with. This article explains what an RSS reader is and how you can use it. For a blogger, this is a way to get their visitors to subscribe to blog updates.

RSS feeds are not dead! They are very much alive

A high number of RSS subscribers used to be proof that your website was popular and loved. Similar to the likes of Facebook.

Nowadays, the previously common RSS logo of Feedburner from grace, some people thought that RSS was dead. RSS is not dead, however. In this article you can read why.

Feeds for Bloggers

Among Bloggers and people who like to get information from the internet, will RSS-feed not a new word, but for many the internet is slang. RSS feeds are useful for anyone wanting to keep up to date with news. And therefore also for bloggers who offer RSS as a subscription option on their blog.

The most used icon for the RSS feed is in the orange color and the most common placement is in the sidebar or around the blog post. It is also referred to as feed or web feed.

The basics of RSS feeds

RSS is one of the web feed formats commonly used on blogs or websites whose content is regularly updated. The abbreviation RSS means Real Simple Syndication.

RSS is a technology that allows you to keep track of updates from your favorite website using an RSS reader. The most common practice for visitors to track website updates is to bookmark them and access them every day and check for updates. RSS feeds allow you to get all updates from your favorite website notified.

If you subscribe to feeds from a website or if a new message appears on a website, you will receive a notification via your RSS reader.

Why use RSS feeds?

RSS feeds help to save a lot of time. If you are subscribed to an RSS feed, you do not have to open the website every time to see the updates. You can use any RSS reader to get the updates from the website.

WordPress has a standard RSS feed function, but it is not that user-friendly. A natural step is to burn your feed using Feedburner. You can also enable functions such as an email subscription, which can be very useful. It is very important for any blogger to provide RSS updates. In addition, there are many WordPress plugins that can be of service to you.

What is the use of an RSS reader?

If you are a visitor to a site, you can subscribe to that site's RSS feed using the RSS reader and be notified immediately when that site publishes a new message. There is no need to constantly monitor the homepage of that site. And because you can subscribe to the feeds of different websites, you can receive updates from multiple websites in one accessible place.

All sites that you follow come together in the same RSS reader which is your central news point.

Then, depending on the settings of the site, you can read the entire message in your RSS reader, or you can read a fragment and then read the full message on the website.

As a webmaster, RSS feeds can really benefit you. They provide a method to import content into your own site. It can be as simple as displaying the latest news headline on a topic, or as advanced as importing selected webshop products to your site.

How do you find the RSS feed of a site?

To be able to do all these cool things with RSS feeds, you need to find the RSS feed of a site.

Most websites still have an RSS feed today. For example, every single WordPress site creates an RSS feed by default. This also applies to most news sites and web shops.

How can you find an RSS feed if you land on any site?

The first option is obvious: look for the RSS logo. Many sites have an RSS logo linking to their feed.

The most common placement for the feed icon is in the sidebar or on the navigation bar. But also look at the social media follow buttons, the logo is often there as well.

If you don't see an RSS feed, you can almost always find a WordPress site's feed by adding '/ feed' to the end of the homepage or category archive.

If that doesn't work, you can always take a look at the source code and use “CTRL + F” to search for RSS.