If you want to improve your website traffic but you are low on advertising budget, having an RSS feed is the solution to your problem.
RSS feeds are revolutionizing the way we search the web. It eliminates the hassle of constantly searching for the same information. For Internet users, it saves a lot of time; for online business owners, it saves money.
RSS feeds are also changing the ways webmasters design their websites. Webmasters now realize that RSS feeds are a great source of potential traffic. Most importantly, it builds trust for your business as your produce more content that is relevant to your target market.
What is an RSS feed?
RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a link that you put on your website, pointing to a text (or XML) file that contains your site updates. When a site visitor subscribes to your RSS feed, that person will receive updated information about your website every time you post something new. The process usually takes 30 minutes; it’s becoming less and less with new versions.
The use of RSS feeds is best demonstrated in blogs. When somebody likes reading your blog, he would want to find out when you post new content so that he could immediately read it. After he subscribes to your RSS feed, he will be notified every time you make a blog post.
Notification can be through an RSS reader, his browser bookmarks, or even through his mailbox. An RSS reader is an interface where all the feeds the person has subscribed to are shown at the same time. Thus, an RSS subscriber will be able to go to his favorite websites without having to type the site URLs every singe time.
Blogs are not the only places where you can place RSS feeds. You may also use this for interactive sections of your website. A forum is a good place to leave a feed. Members of the forum will get updated information on their chosen topic every time there is new input.
The benefit of an RSS feed
When a user stumbles upon your site, you can’t expect him to remember your URL. He might have gotten to your site via search engines, or by clicking links from other sites. Even if he likes your site content, it becomes useless if he can’t find you again. This would not happen if you have an RSS feed. Because RSS feed information is sent to him regularly, he won’t have to go looking for you when he needs information fast.
This is particularly helpful if you don’t rank high in search engine results. If someone subscribes to your RSS feed, you are assured of a regular site visitor even if you don’t turn up in the top 10 results of search engines. If this subscriber is satisfied with your content, you can rely on word of mouth advertising to increase your site visitors, and the increase in search engine ranking will follow soon enough.
How to set up your RSS feed
You can easily find online software to set up your website’s RSS feed. Some blogging platforms have integrated RSS feeds as well; you just have to insert a short line of code in the place where you want your RSS feed link to appear.