How RSS works
The website publishes a feed file, for example at example.com/feed/. Each item contains a title, link, date and a summary or the full text. People subscribe to the feed in a reader such as Feedly or Inoreader, and see new posts without visiting each site.
What RSS is used for today
- Podcasts: every podcast is distributed through an RSS feed.
- News and blog readers used by professionals to follow many sources.
- Email newsletters: tools such as Mailchimp can create a newsletter from a feed automatically.
- Automation: sharing new posts to social media or other systems.
RSS and SEO
An RSS feed isn’t a ranking factor, but it helps new content get discovered, and Google accepts RSS and Atom feeds as sitemaps. WordPress creates feeds automatically.
RSS feed example
A news blog publishes a feed at /feed/. Each item has a title, link, date and a summary. A professional follows 40 such feeds in a reader and sees new articles in one list. A podcast host uses a feed too: the podcast app checks it, finds the new episode file and downloads it. A marketer connects the blog feed to an email tool that sends a digest every Friday.
RSS checklist for site owners
- Check that your CMS creates a feed and find its address, often /feed/.
- Decide whether to show full text or a summary. Summaries bring readers back to your site.
- Add the feed link in the page head so readers and tools can find it.
- Validate the feed with a free feed validator.
- Protect your content: spammers copy full feeds to scraper sites, so consider summaries.
RSS mistakes
- Publishing a broken feed after a redesign.
- Including draft or private content by mistake.
- Forgetting that feeds can be copied by content scrapers.
RSS FAQs
Is RSS still useful?
Yes, for podcasts, news monitoring and automation. See XML and XML sitemaps.
Does RSS help SEO?
Not directly. It helps people and tools find your content. See content marketing and blogs.