What is RSS and Why Should I Care?

There is a lot of information that we are expected to digest on a regular basis. Sometimes, it can be daunting to consume so much in such a short period of time.

We have email, web pages, radio, TV, telephone and any number of other sources of information.

Personally, I want my information aggregated into one place so that I can skim through it all and decide in a few seconds if it is worth reading.

I don't like newspapers because I get one set of information and lot of ads that I have to read through.

I don't like news via email because sometimes it can be a pain to sort through... and email is slow.

I don't like going to a web page until I know that the information there is what I want to read.

Enter RSS.

But, what is RSS and why in the world should I care about it on my site?

What's RSS?

RSS means Really Simple Syndication. It is a feed of information that you can subscribe to. For example, the feed for my blog is located here but the feed for all the blogs on this side are located here.

If you want to subscribe to the the feed, you need a feed reader (or aggregator). There are a lot available. Outlook 2007 has it built in. I personally prefer to use a standalone feeder like Snarfer for Windows. You can even use your Google Home Page or Google Reader. If you need help subscribing to a feed, you can use my Live Chat on the right sidebar and I'll help you through it.

Give it to me my way!

I am a firm believer that we should provide information the way our clients want it. Some may want email or just to look at your website. You should always provide information the way your clients want it. On this site, you can use the RSS feed, you can subscribe via email by typing your email address at the right and clicking the "Subscribe to Blog" button. Or you can come back and load the page and see if we have any updates. You get to choose... and you should provide your clients as many different ways to subscribe as possible. When I develop a website for someone, I always provide an RSS feed for those add news or blog services to their site... and I recommend that all my clients have a news and/or blog feed.

Search engine benefits as well.

Even if you don't care how your clients read your information (although, you should) search engines care. Search engines like to see regularly updated content. An RSS Feed for your news or blog can provide search engines an easier way to identify new content. With the ability to tell services like Google and Technorati that you have new content automatically, an RSS feed can significantly help you in driving more traffic to your site.

He also is the Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing Systems, the Editor in Chief for OfficeProductNews.net and provides a common sense approach to business and technology on his blog.

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