How to Use RSS, Readers and Feeds

“What’s a feed?” “What is RSS?” and” How do I set up a reader?” I get asked these three questions all the time!

So let’s get started with: What’s a feed?

Every site that has really regular updates like news sites or blogs should have an RSS feed so that site viewers have the option to ’subscribe’ to their updates, just like subscribing to any hardcopy magazine or newspaper. And just like any hardcopy magazine or newspaper the more subscribers the more viewers there are of your information and therefore not only do your site traffic stats go up, your SEO ranking rise, but your branding cannot help but get noticed and these are all very good things for your business.  Creating a feed via Atom, XML or RSS is called burning a feed and my favourite feed burner is aptly called Feedburner.

Feedburner allows you to add a feed, opt in for all sorts of great options like email subscriptions for those viewers who do not have or do not like to use readers, the very important traffic and click stats and so much more in their very comprehensive dashboard.  Best of all it’s free and run by Google themselves who bought it out recently.

What’s RSS?

Basically RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication which is a special kind of code that allows your posts and information to be sent out across the web to those whose readers or emails have allowed this information to be sent to them via this code. For the more comprehensive Wikipedia explanation click on the link.

What’s a Reader?

The simplest explanation is that a Reader is a web application or widget that allows any blog or news syndicator you subscribe to, to collect in the reader for easy viewing by you. Google has one of the most efficient and easy to use readers, called again aptly enough Google Reader. If you already have a Google account you will already have it on your iGoogle page by default.

If not you will have to sign up for a Google account (a simple step by step that doesn’t really need an explanation) and then go to your Home Page. Once you have found your Reader, go looking for blogs or news sites that interest you, click on RSS or Subscribe and it will take you to a screen where you will choose your reader of choice. Choose Google, of course, or another reader if you have one already.

You can even tick the option to always use this reader to make it even easier from now on. Once you click on your reader of choice you will be taken back to your Reader home page to view the feed there. Easy!

Watch this easy to understand Vid for even more understanding:

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