An RSS feed is a great way to promote your latest content to your readers. When you write your latest news article, your audience is immediately informed of this and can read it. In this article, I’ll show you how to set up an RSS feed in WordPress.
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, as it’s better known, is a way to get your latest articles, posts, and ideas across the web to your target audience 365 days a year. Imagine all the effort you put in and how much time you spend researching and writing your article. Doesn’t it make sense to push that content to people interested in hearing what you have to say? RSS makes it easy.
Many websites already have their own RSS moving facility. Take for example article sites. When you sign up for the service, the content will be delivered to you via a feed. Essentially, this is what is known as an XML file that contains the content such as headlines, posts, news, etc. When content is delivered in this way through the feed, it’s known as syndication.
You can subscribe to the feed and you will receive the latest content from these sites without you having to do anything else. You can set up many sources from many different sites and the beauty of this is that you never have to visit each site individually to receive your content again. I’m sure you’re already starting to appreciate the benefits of this.
If you have your own website, you can also submit your latest posts over the web. To do this, you must first set up your own RSS feed.
How to set up an RSS feed
Now let’s talk about how we can create a feed for our site. Do a Google search for feed burner and go to the site. This site is owned by Google, so if you have a Gmail account, you can log in directly. If not, you can create a new Gmail account and sign in with the details.
You will see a box with a text: ‘Record a feed right now. Write here the address of your blog or feed:’
Go ahead, type your blog address and click the ‘Next’ button
If Feedburner has found more than one feed on your blog, it will ask you which one you would like to use. I personally like to take the one that looks simpler. When you have selected one, click the ‘Next’ button.
You are now shown the title of your new feed. You can change this if you wish.
Now click on the ‘Next’ button.
You will now see your feed link at the top. It will be of the format:
Highlight and copy this link.
That’s really all you need. You can continue clicking the ‘Next’ button until the end.
Go back to your WordPress blog and log in.
You should now add the orange RSS symbol to your site.
In the WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Widgets
There, you should locate the RSS widget (Entries from any RSS or Atom feed).
If it’s not in “Available Widgets”, drag it from “Inactive Widgets” and drop it in “Available Widgets”.
Then drop the RSS widget onto the Main, or one of the Footer options on the far right.
Enter the Feedburner URL, choose 1 item to display, and then click Save.
The RSS widget should appear wherever you’ve placed it on the site.
And that’s all there is to it. Now the world can see your latest content every time you post it. This should get you good traffic as more people sign up to your RSS feed.