Huntsville SEO 101: How to Use RSS Feeds to Generate Online Traffic
RSS feed is one of the most widely used SEO tactics that can boost traffic to your website. It is an old technology that is effective even today in generating traffic for sites.
If you’re new to RSS feeds, here is everything you need to know about them and how to use them for improving your website traffic and ranking on search engine results.
RSS Feeds: An Overview
RSS feeds were initially developed in 1995 during the early days of the internet. The term RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ though some people refer to it as Rich Site Summary. The aim of RSS feeds is to deliver updates about news and blogs published on a website.
RSS will update and show the most recent content published on your site. It was created to show the latest content of multiple websites, thereby saving users plenty of time in browsing different sites. Due to consuming less bandwidth, RSS could easily get updated on PDA and smartphones.
Benefits of RSS Feeds
While the advent of social media has reduced the need for RSS feeds, it is still useful in generating tons of traffic for the site.
RSS makes it easy for online users to see the latest published web content. The RSS reader will display the most recent posts in the feeds. Users can know about the latest content without having to visit the site. They can then click on the posts that they want to read from the feeds.
RSS can be considered as an automation tool that helps users keep track of the latest blogs on their favorite websites. The feed is particularly beneficial for blog sites, online forums, and news sites. It is useful for online users who want to keep up-to-date but don’t want to compromise their privacy by entering their email address to subscribe to a newsletter.
Website owners can gain a lot of traffic for their website. Other website owners who find your content through RSS feeds can provide valuable backlinks for your site. So, RSS feeds can improve web traffic and online ranking.
The Process of Creating RSS Simplified
Creating RSS feeds for your website is not that difficult. You must select a section of the website, such as the blog or news section that is updated regularly. You can automatically convert the selected pages to RSS feeds using online tools like MySiteMapGenerator.
The online RSS feed generator will index the selected page and discover links. The HTML code will be converted into the RSS 2.0 format. As a result, it will create the RSS-feed that can be used by any RSS-aggregator tool.
Another option is to manually create the code for the feed. It requires creating a node within which you can add a new item to the list whenever you publish a new blog. Include the title of the blog, publish date, link, and a CDATA description of the blog. Contact a professional Alabama Website designer to create a professional RSS feed for your website.
The following video describes the steps involved in writing a code for the RSS feed.
How to Promote a Site Using an RSS Feed
Now that you know what is an RSS feed and how to create one for your website, let’s find out how to use it to boost your website traffic.
1. Display Combined RSS Feeds
You can use a tool like inoreader to checkout various feeds and select the ones you are prefer to combine them in an RSS aggregator plugin, as below, to display on your website.
You can display RSS feeds of your site and related websites on the main page using an RSS aggregator plugin. Add the RSS of your blog and other websites to the news feed sources. You can specify in the plugin settings custom feed URL and title. The plugin will create a single feed for multiple websites that you can display on your website.
You can also use an online RSS Aggregator like RSSMix to combine feeds. But if you like greater control over the feeds, using the plugin is the preferred method.
Combining feeds and displaying on your site will attract a lot of online users. Online viewers would love coming back to your site to know about the latest content from different related websites. Your website will become a go-to site for people who want all the information on a single page.
2. Send Latest Feeds to Email List
Online services like GetResponse allow you to send RSS feeds to an email list. The option allows you to inform email subscribers about the latest blog published on the set automatically. The option brings the best of both worlds. You can keep your email subscribers updated about the latest content using RSS feeds.
3. Promote RSS Feed to Social Media Using IFTTT
IFTTT is an online service that lets users send RSS feeds to social media accounts. You can connect the RSS feed to Twitter, Facebook, and many different platforms. You can customize the post that is triggered each time you post something new to the RSS feed.
The tool automates the social sharing of the latest content. It saves a lot of time in promoting the feeds to different social media channels.
4. Power the Feeds to Tribber
Tribber is yet another great online service that can help you generate online traffic using RSS feed. The online tool lets you promote feeds to a large number of your online audience.
After you have signed up, you can create a profile with the RSS feed. You should search for tribes with one or more people and ask for an invite. You can also create your tribe and convince others to auto-share content of your site. This will allow your online content to get shared with lots of people online.
Wrapping It All Up
An RSS feed is a powerful tool to gain exposure to your website. The tool allows you to establish user engagement and create a loyal following.
Using the RSS aggregator and other online tools allow you to greatly extend the reach of your site. The tips mentioned in the article can help you generate online traffic from multiple sites through RSS feeds. Contact a professional Huntsville SEO to know how to increase traffic using the feeds.
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