RSS Tutorial

Promoting RSS Feeds

Summary

Encourage your blog and website visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. Make it easy for your visitors to subscribe.

Create a hyperlink on your blog or website that points to your RSS feed.
Consider adding special links for various RSS feed readers.
Describe what RSS is and how it can be used.
Add Autodiscovery Statements.
Consider a separate page for Websites

I am surprised when I visit blogs or websites that have feeds, but have nothing on the blog or website to encourage visitors to subscribe. It is a little like publishing an ezine with no way for people to sign-up for the ezine. This is a very easy step. There is no reason not to.

Detail

Create a hyperlink on your blog that points to your RSS Feed. Put the link in a prominent place.

The hyperlink can be text.

The anchor text can say any of the following

"RSS"

"XML"

"Feed"

"RSS Feed"

"Subscribe to my Feed"

That is all that is required to get started.

The hyperlink can be a graphic.

Basic Buttons:

Complete Set of RSS Buttons.

Add special links for various feed readers.

You can add special buttons for your readers for the popular RSS Readers. Many RSS Readers provide guidelines to Webmasters. The guidelines generate buttons and code that will allow your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed with ease.

RSS Reader	Button	Webmaster Guidelines
AvantGo		AvantGo - Webmaster Guidelines
Bloglines		Bloglines - Webmaster Guidelines
Google Reader		Google Reader - Webmaster Guidelines.
My AOL		My AOL - Webmaster Guidelines.
My MSN		My MSN - Webmaster Guidelines.
My Yahoo		My Yahoo - Webmaster Guidelines.
NewsBurst		Newsburst - Webmaster Guidelines.
NewsGator		NewsGator - Webmaster Guidelines.

Chicklet Creator: This is a clever service that provides a way to generate all the HTML code for your blog or website to show all the above buttons. Enter your feed information, all the RSS Feed readers you want to support, and it will generate all the HTML code.

Describe what RSS is and how it can be used.

Because RSS is new, consider adding instructions on what RSS is and how it can be helpful. You can add text or point to an article or this tutorial.

Feed 101: You can point to this excellent introductory article.
RSS Tutorial: You can point to this RSS Tutorial.

Add autodiscovery parameters to your blog or website.

Autodiscovery allows browsers and aggregators to automatically detect the RSS feed when browsing your blog or website.

Between the <head> and </head> statements, add the following statements.

How to add RSS Autodiscovery to your site

Special Considerations for Websites

Why Websites need Special Consideration

Websites can have one or more RSS feeds.
The RSS feed purpose should be explained.
The RSS feeds could refer to one or more Webpages.

Consider creating a separate RSS subscription page

I suggest creating one webpage that is the RSS Subscription Page. This page should contain all the information to subscribe to the RSS feeds. The page should contain the following.

A link to all the RSS Feeds.
Special links for various feed readers.
Description of what RSS is and how it can be used.

Examples of RSS Pages

OUT-LAW.com: RSS Page of OUT-LAW.com with RSS feeds and Instructions.
ABMC Malinois Rescue: A nice page with multiple RSS Feeds with Dogs for adoption.
Time Online: RSS Feeds for TIME Online.