How to Create an Feed for Your Web Site

Are you always looking for new and better ways to market your web site? Search engines are always on the look out for fresh content. When doing a search you don't want old content popping up, you want to have the most up to date information. Search engines will generally reward those sites which provide new content on a regular basis ie daily or even bi-weekly.

On of the best ways to provide fresh content is to create an RSS Feed.

What is an RSS Feed?
RSS stands for "really simple syndication". For example I write articles every 2 weeks and place them on my web site. I then link to that article from my home page and from my article headlines page. I make that article available to others as an item in my RSS file. People who use RSS readers or news aggregators can read then link to your article from their web site.

To explain further about RSS readers visit:
http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/what-are-rss-feeds.htm

You have now syndicated your content for others to view. This is a great way to improve or maintain your search engine rankings by naturally getting incoming links. Every time you write a new article it will be instantly available to 1000s of web site owners.

How to create an RSS File
RSS files use the XML language. This is similar to html except you must be careful to use closing tags and be sure to validate it before you use it. An XML file contains the information (Title, Description and Link URL) that your audience will receive through a RSS reader.

Here is all you need to create an RSS file:
-Title
-Description
-Link

1. Open notepad on your computer, then copy and paste the information below replacing it with your own title, description and link information.

The first part contains information about your web site. The second part contains information for one of your articles. You can also include optional information in your headlines such as language, copyright info, contact email addresses, or an image.

Try to limit the number of articles you wish to include in your RSS file to 5 or less. Enclose your RSS information with the xml and rss versions you are using followed by the channel and item tags. Finish off with the RSS closing tag.

Here's the example:

<.?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<.rss version="0.91">

<.channel>

<.title>Web Site Design | Hosting | Marketing

<.link>http://www.isitebuild.com

<.description>Affordable Web Design in Maryland

<.language>en-us

<.item>

<.title>How to Add a Search Engine to Your Site

<.link>http://www.isitebuild.com/add-search-engine.htm

<.description>

When visitors arrive at your web site you want them to find the information quickly otherwise they will lose patience and move on. A great way achieve this is to add a search engine or search box to your web site.

<./description>

<./item>

<./channel>

<./rss>

Please remove the period after the <>

You have now created your first RSS file that is almost ready for syndicating.

Read Part 4 of this article:

How to Syndicate Your RSS Feed
http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/what-are-rss-feeds.htm

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting.
Subscribe to his Marketing Tips newsletter for more original in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles