Although the buzz about RSS feeds has been going on for quite a while and even seems to be increasing, there still appears to be a good bit of confusion in people's minds about what it's all about and how it works and just what's what.

Maybe this approach will help clarify the two sides - or even make it sound stupidly simple. Think about RSS in terms of Input and Output. Visualize your site a central point. On the one hand you have what comes to your site - this is the Input to your site. On the other hand, what leaves your site - that's your site Output.

Here's two quick examples.  Your incoming links from other sites are Input for your site.  The links you have on your site that go to other sites are Output. Your visitors are Input. Hopefully the Output side involves some desired action on your visitor's part - signing up to a list or going to an order processor.

RSS Feeds Display, then becomes the input side of RSS for your site in this view. You are using RSS feeds and displaying the items in those feeds as content on your site.  So that's using RSS feeds as content Input.

The RSS Output side would consist of an on-site RSS feed containing items from your site intended to be used off-site in a reader or syndicated to other sites. That, though is going to be the subject of a different article.

Everybody has their favorite interpretation of what RSS means, let's just call it Really Simple Syndication (it's not all that simple, but the syndication part is mostly what we're looking at). To get a clearer idea of what a feed is and how it works, let's look at just what's in one.

There a variety of feed formats and coding structures for what are usually called RSS feeds, which are a little technical so let's skip that. Like a web page which has underlying html (or an equivalent code type) that tells the browser what to do and how to display the page, the structure and element identifiers in RSS feeds define the different pieces of content and allow a feed reader or another program to paarticle rocess the feed file and use the right content in the right place in an output display.

RSS feeds have a header section that identifies the type of feed, coding, etc., just as a well-formed valid html page does.  The header section also provides information about the feed. While some feeds have more and some have less, almost all feeds include at least the name of the feed (the feed title), a link to the site providing the feed, a description of the overall feed content, the language used, a copyright statement, and a date time stamp of the last time the feed was built.

After the header, the individual feed items begin. These would be more or less equivalent to the body of a web page. The minimum content for an item is the item title, the link to the location of the item, a description of the item and the date published.  Other items such as a guid (an identifier which can allow feed readers to ignore previously read items), category entries (which are used like technorati tags to categorize the feed item) and a variety of other elements depending on the feed source and purpose can be included. In almost all cases, for display, all we'd be interested in are the title, link and description.  

The item descriptions could consist of short segments of text or, in some cases,  the full content of a page, article, news item, blog entry, etc. Images may be included in the content and some descriptions have extensive html code that controls how the item is displayed (this seems to be more frequent in descriptions with images where the image may cause problems with how the text, or the following items, display).  Finally, of course, there are ads of various kinds embedded in some feeds. Usually the ads are not stuck in the item description so this wouldn't  normally be a concern when you are displaying items on your site (but, remember to always check the content showing up on your page - there may be feeds you'd rather not use or somebody may be putting ads into the description which you'd rather not display).

Valid feeds require a specific, repeating, structure so that the content of every item is layed out the same way. This uniform structure is what allows feed readers and scripts to consistently handle and display RSS feeds.

There are several ways to process and display feeds, usually php or other server side scripts or javascript.  While javascript displays can be a quick and simple solution, you have to understand that they can not usually be read by search engine spiders. Since one of advantages of feed display is that it provides updating content for otherwise static pages making them more attractive to the search engines, javascript displays eliminate this advantage.

Other script solutions output the content as part of the page (usually updating each time the page is reloaded) or create new static html pages.  These latter kinds of feed item displays can be as easily read by bots as any html content.

You can find a variety of free and paid options for displaying RSS feeds.  If you enjoy working with scripts, there are some free options that may be a great choice.  While they can do an excellent job, they tend to be slightly to seriously complex and, in my view, somewhat feature deficient. Of course, the more complex they are, the more features they tend to have. Paid options also vary significantly and I'd encourage you to check out them thoroughly.  Be clear about what you want to do and make sure any paid script solution will do what you want in a way that works for you.

Using RSS for content (the Input side of RSS feeds) can be a valuable addition to your site from an SEO perspective and provide your visitors with useful information - particularly if you choose feeds in tune with your site theme and mix multiple feeds to provide your own unique combination of related news.  However, note that word "addition". These days using a feed or feeds for a significant part (or all) of your site content is unlikely to gain you much favor with the search engines and may get you dropped from the index faster than you got added.  

Intelligent and moderate use of feeds gives you the dual advantage of having regularly updating content for bots on previously static pages and also giving your visitors more themed content. These advantages are the basis of what the RSS Feeds display buzz is all about.


Note: This article - in a different form has been published to a number of article directories eZineArticles.com.  If you are interested in publishing it on your site or in your newsletter, you can get the publishable version here: <a href ="http://ezinearticles.com/?id=283596" title="Article download" target="_blank">RSS Feed Display - The Input Side of RSS Feeds</a>. The sole requirement is that the article not be altered and that the links in the resource box are live.

This version is not for syndication. Copyright 2006 RKeir All Rights Reserved