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Steps to Creating and Promoting RSS Feeds
By Sharon Housley (c) 2005 

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is commonly known,
is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily
distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet. It
seems like all Internet businesses now have RSS feeds available;
at least your competitors do. You have finally made the decision
that you have to have one. Where do you start?

Steps to Creating an RSS feed

1.) Build a Feed

There are a number of desktop and web applications available
that make feed creation easy. I would encourage anyone creating
a feed to use one. Though not overly complicated, hand-coding an
RSS feed can become a bit confusing and time-consuming. Most
desktop software applications for building a feed include a
wizard and contact-sensitive help, simplifying the process of
creating a feed. Following a few simple steps in a wizard
generally will produce an RSS feed in just a few minutes.

Publishers control what information is syndicated in the RSS
feed, so ultimately it is the publisher's decision as to whether
to include teaser copy or full articles. Consider what you are
trying to accomplish and who your target audience is when
building the feed.

Software to Build a Feed - http://www.feedforall.com

Tutorial for Creating Feed by Hand using XML -
http://www.make-rss-feeds.com

2.) Transfer the Feed Onto Your Server

Once you have constructed an RSS feed you will need to transfer
the feed to your server. This can be done using a standard FTP
client (if it is not built into the feed creation software). The
feed is usually placed in the domain's root directory like this:
http://www.mydomain.com/nameoffeed.xml , but as long as you know
where it is it doesn't really matter.

3.) Display the Feed on Your Website Using a Graphic of Some Sort

In order to signal to website visitors that an RSS feed
containing content related to the website is available, include
a colorful graphic on the website. It has become a standard that
nearly all websites that have RSS feeds available use colorful
graphics such as flags as indicators that RSS feeds are available
for specific content. The flags were initially bright orange
rectangles but as the popularity has grown, webmasters have bent
the rules a bit. NotePage has made a free online RSS graphic
tool available that allows users to quickly customize buttons by
selecting the text on the button and the color scheme of the
button. Once the color and text is entered, a custom graphic is
instantly created. Webmasters can easily match the style of the
RSS button to a website's theme. Graphics experience is not
required. Simply select alternative colors and insert text to
personalize RSS feed graphics. The RSS graphics tool can be used
by clicking the following URL
http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm or choose
ready made graphics from:
http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-graphics.htm .

4.) Include Information in the HTML of the Web Page So RSS
    Readers Auto-Detect Your Feed

After publishing an RSS feed it is important to let visitors
know that the feed exists. Aggregators will automatically detect
RSS on a website if you add a small bit of code in the header
field of an HTML page.

[link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="RSS" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml"]

Be sure to replace http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml with the
URL to the RSS feed and replace the brackets with "<" less than
and ">" greater than symbols.

5.) Display the Feed's Content on a Website

Contents contained in an RSS feed can be added to a website,
providing site visitors an alternative method for viewing the
content. The information will also help increase search engine
interest. Displaying the feed as HTML can be accomplished.
Providing fresh content on a regular basis will encourage site
visitors return.

Tutorial for Displaying Feeds -
http://www.small-business-software.net/display-rss.htm

6.) Submit the Feed to RSS Directories and Search Engines

As a rapidly increasing number of content sources, new and old,
migrate or add RSS as a key distribution channel, and as more
people utilize RSS newsreaders and aggregators to keep themselves
informed, the ability to maintain high exposure and visibility is
gradually shifted from complete attention to major search engines
and content optimization techniques to an increasing awareness of
RSS feed directories and search tools.

In order to increase exposure of an RSS feed it should be
submitted to RSS search engines and directories. This can be
done manually. Just as you would submit the URL of a website or
web page to a search engine you will need to submit the link of
the actual feed located on your website to the RSS directories.
There is a large list of RSS directories at
http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm . If you
prefer to automate the submission process try RSS Submit at:
http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html . An evaluation
version is available.

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Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages
marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text
messaging software company.
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