RSS are data streams that keep you up to date with the latest news on all your favourite websites without having to actually keep visiting them.  However, using a feed your computer can tell when these websites have been updated and will let you know if an update is available.

The feed is usually made up of a number of titles and short summaries of the content on the website that issued the feed.  You will then read the summary, and then click through and visit the full article on the providers own website.  RSS is becoming increasingly popular and is also a recognised international standard for relaying information across an ever-growing number of platforms which now extends to hand held devices such as PDA’s and mobile phones.

Many websites publish an RSS feed that a visitor can add to their news reader. When a new item is published, the visitor will receive an automatic update to let them know.  RSS is a method of receiving news without using email and without the potential problems of email filters inaccurately filtering messages.

There are variations however RSS commonly stands for Really Simple Syndication, a format built to deliver regularly changing content through a specific type of file format that can be automatically read by browsers and News Readers that subscribers have installed on their computers or access online.

Be it business news, products or services information or your friends travel updates, many news-related sites and blogs publish (syndicate) their content through an RSS Feed, available to whoever wants it.

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in.  Saving the reader time by not needing to visit each site individually, it also ensures privacy as users will not need to join a listing, as such for newsletters.

The number of websites delivering their news via RSS is growing and includes names like Yahoo and BBC.

A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook).

There are also a number of web-based feed readers available, the most popular being; My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader. No, only the newest versions like IE7, Firefox, Safari, but IE6 doesn’t.

Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content and adding their RSS feed to the list of feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many websites display a small icon with the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available. Although RSS formats have existed since March 1999 the RSS icon ("ICON") has become more widely recognized since 2005.

Websites supplying RSS feeds will display that icon in or near the address bar of your browser.  Simply click on the icon to view the RSS, you will also be given an option to subscribe to it should you want to remain updated on each revision of its content.

Easy Feed produces feeds compatible with RSS versions 1.0 and 2.0.

All the latest versions of the popular browsers support RSS viewing and subscription. Internet Explorer, versions 7 and higher, will display an orange icon near the browser page options.  Firefox users will see the icon in their address bar, whilst Safari will display a blue icon , also in the address bar.

Whatever your business and whatever your website is about, if you want to get the most out of your online marketing, RSS feeds should be one of the main tools you use to market your products, services and website. If you are looking after the marketing and website content updates of your clients, EasyFeed is the right tool for you as it give you the platform to do just that from one central place.

EasyFeed can:

1. Improve the search engine optimisation of your web pages dramatically
2. Increase the traffic you receive through the search engines dramatically
3. Get your new content indexed by major search engines in less than 2 days!
4. Get traffic from different sources to web search engines such as feed engines and stand alone websites.
5. Keep your web pages or those of your clients automatically updated with fresh content
6. Deliver information in a more efficient way and grow your subscribers without maintaining email lists.
7. Increase your repeat business
8. Provide a secondary income stream by offering RSS feeds to your clients.

In every marketing exercise one of the first steps are to find out who are your potential buyers or readers and how can you reach them. Before you can be certain that an RSS feed will benefit your website you'll want to know who actually reads RSS feeds so that you can determine whether they are your potential customers.

Many people still don’t know much about RSS feeds and because of this are not using them regularly……but this is quickly changing. By educating your buyers and readers that you have a feed, which they can subscribe to you are attracting people who want to keep up-to-date with your or those of your clients’ websites. You can also use RSS feeds to target anyone who wants to compare prices and availability of products on a number of web stores, this includes both individuals and businesses and anyone who wants to subscribe to newsletters without worrying about their email address being sent a load of spam.

In other words anyone that uses the Internet is likely to read RSS feeds!

EasyFeed provides you with all the resources you need to create your or the one of your clients’ RSS Feed. With easy to access and use control panel EasyFeed will allow you to create RSS Feeds, display RSS Feeds on your website and use RSS Feeds to increase your traffic, profits and search engine rankings by displaying them on other websites.

Through an RSS Reader. Each one works in a different way, they should have their own instructions. With browsers, normally you need to look for the RSS icon, with can be the normal orange icon, or blue in Safari and click on it if highlighted, it should then prompt you to subscribe to the feed.

They can either have it as a direct link to the feed, or through a script which converts some of the feeds into the links such as an iframe, javascript or php script.

Every website owner wants to get higher page rank position with the main search engines such as Google and Yahoo and to generate more traffic. We all know that search engines are becoming more sophisticated in order to cope with the constantly increasing number of web pages. In order to provide relevant results they are constantly coming up with new rules which make it much harder for webmasters to achieve and maintain a high position.

Having an RSS feed or creating one for your client’s significantly boosts the traffic from web search engines. In addition, there are also a growing number of RSS search engines and directories in which it is far easier to achieve a high ranking because there is much less competition.

An RSS search engine works in a similar way to a web search engine. The users enter a keyword in the search and the RSS engine provides the relevant RSS feeds.

Similarly an RSS Directory is a directory of RSS feeds categorised by subject matter.

If you are looking for new ways by which potential customers or visitors can discover your web site, products or services, then you should get an RSS feed listed in RSS search engines and RSS directories.

RSS feeds are still relatively new in comparison to other online means of communication and because of this there is far less competition for position in RSS search engines and RSS directories than there is in web search engines and web directories. You may even find that there is very little or even no competition for your particular area of business!

RSS feeds are not a substitute of websites, blogs or e-newsletters but another way to reach your target audience and get the most out of the web. Since they are becoming more popular every day there hasn’t been a better time to start your own feed!

There are still relatively few RSS feeds compared to the number of web sites. The largest RSS feed directories still have around 400,000 feeds listed whereas Google has over 8 billion web pages indexed! It's a lot easier to get people to find your RSS feed than it is for them to find your web site, that’s for sure!