Using RSS to Promote Your Website

You have the website, the product, and compelling content to attract readers to purchase your book, your CD, or whatever items you choose to sell. You may notice a surge in traffic as you build your site and employ various search engine optimization tactics, but are not wholly satisfied.

You know you can attract more visitors if you could just reach them. You have a weblog attached to your site, and you write wonderful articles which receive much praise. What else is there to do?

Have you considered syndicating your content and products to users with an RSS feed? Do you even know what RSS is?

Simply defined, RSS is an XML-based format. XML, for the novice, stands for Xtreme Markup Language, a special coding language that represents information for resources in the World Wide Web. Using the XML, one can permit the distribution, or syndication, of content to users who collect such data through specialized aggregators, or readers. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, and once you get used to the idea it really can be simple.

By creating an RSS "feed" (think of a news ticker on a cable network, providing up-to-date information in real time), one can distribute product content, articles, pictures, and even embedded video, audio, and links. This information is used to entice users to click through to the host site.

RSS allows a person's computer to fetch and understand the information, so that all of the lists that person is interested in can be tracked and personalized for them. RSS differs from a traditional website in that the information is usually presented elsewhere. Say for example an Internet user has a personalize start page with My Yahoo! On this start page is information on various sports teams so the user can keep track of the playoffs. Yahoo allows the user to edit what information is displayed so only the information the user wants is visible. The user may aggregate information from various sports websites that offer RSS data, and place it on the Yahoo page.