The Magic of RSS - What it Does and Why You Should Use It

RSS, which is generally understood to mean "Real Simple Syndication," is a file format that allows for the streaming of Web content, especially content that changes often such as a blog. It is a two way stream of information that allows you to use content from other Web publishers on your Web site, and to stream your Web content onto other publishers' Web sites or to subscribers' RSS readers.

The benefit of streaming content from other publishers onto your site is that it will keep your site updated with new content. Search engines love new content, as do people. The way this process works is quite simple, although some programming may be necessary to implement the technique on your Web site.

First, the publisher of the content posts an RSS file to his server. The RSS file is really just an XML text file that describes the content and supplies links to the pages on the site where the content is located. We will take a look at an RSS file shortly. So the content that gets streamed to other Web sites is usually not the complete articles, but titles, summaries, and links to the full article content.

The owner of the Web site that is going to make use of the publisher's content has to know the URL of the RSS file. Once he knows that, he can write some code using his choice of scripting language that will open the RSS file, read its content, and display it on the Web page.

One use of this strategy that I really like is to stream my own blog content to my Web pages. This is beneficial because it updates my Web site every time I update my blog.

The benefit of having your content streamed to other Web sites is that it results in links back to content on your site. If you have streamed content that other Web sites find valuable, then it is like casting hooks into a pond. The more hooks you have out there (the more Web sites there are that use your streamed content), the more likely you are to get traffic to your Web site, either in the form of direct click-throughs or traffic from improved search engine rankings.

The easiest way to create streamed content is to publish a blog with a blogging platform that creates automatic RSS feeds of your blog posts. An example is Blogger, which automatically creates a URL to an Atom file, which is just a different name for an RSS file. The file name is generally atom.xml.

You can also manually create your own RSS files and stream whatever content you want. For instance, you might choose to have an articles section on your Web site with original articles, and then create an RSS file that contains information about those articles. Every time you publish a new article, you update your RSS file.

However you go about creating your content and RSS file, it is helpful to publish your RSS URL to RSS directories. If you publish your content in blog format, I suggest you use one of the pinging tools discussed earlier that will automatically ping a number of popular blog and RSS directories about your updated content.

Jerry Work is the author of the brand new social media book, Be the Magnet (How to Use Social Media and Content Distribution to Generate Customers and Business Opportunities), and president of Nashville SEO firm Work Media. Be the Magnet explains the six components of a social media/content distribution campaign that will spread your company's brand name, drive website traffic, improve your search engine rankings, and generate business opportunities.