For those of you that don’t use or don’t know how to use RSS, this lesson will give you the chance to learn. I use RSS on my site to:

• Keep readers up to date with my latest articles.
• Send my latest articles via email to those who prefer to receive it that way.

What Is RSS?

The term RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, which really doesn’t explain anything to anyone, lol. RSS is a technology that allows a website to syndicate (publish) their headlines, articles, posts, or post summaries on a location other than their site.

This technology was created so that a user of the internet can read everything they want to read, all in one location. For example, if you read 10 different websites regularly, and waste time going back and forth between them, you can probably save yourself a lot of time by using RSS. By using RSS, you could simply open an RSS feed reader and find the new content of all 10 of the sites you like while never going to any of the 10 sites.

Why Would You Want To Read Websites Using RSS?

• It saves you time. You don’t have to type in any web addresses and you don’t have to wait for websites to load.
• You won’t forget about important websites. Once you have subscribed to a site using an RSS feed reader, it will remain in your reader until you remove it.
• It makes it so you don’t miss news. I am subscribed through RSS to the sites of the major players in my niche, all of whom will write about important industry news. This helps me to stay up to date with my industry.

RSS Feed Readers

RSS feed readers (also known as feed aggregators) are basically gatherers of information. If you use an RSS feed reader to subscribe to your 10 favorite sites, it will gather the newest content from those 10 sites for you. You can then read that content in your feed reader instead of reading it on the sites.

Websites decide whether they want to publish partial or complete articles through RSS. If a site publishes a partial feed, you will be able to read part of the article through RSS and will be given a link to the site to read the rest. I personally publish full feeds, meaning you can read my entire articles with an RSS reader.

The Most Popular Feed Reader Is Google Reader

Google Reader is currently the most used feed reader, and is also my reader of choice. If you’re just getting started with RSS, I would recommend using Google’s reader. Here’s the step-by-step for signing up to use Google Reader.

• Go to the Google Reader page.
• Click the link that says, ‘Create an account now’.
• Fill out the sign up form.
• Click the ‘I accept. Create an account.’ button.
• Google will then send you a verification email that you will need to open. There will be a link in the email that you will need to click on to verify your account.
• That’s it, you now have an account!

Using Google Reader

Once you have signed up for a Google reader account, it’s pretty easy to use the reader. All you need to do is sign in and you’re ready to go. To sign in, you will go back to the Google Reader page and then enter your email and the password you chose. Note: You may be signed in automatically.

Once you get signed in the reader is pretty straight forward. The sites you subscribe to will appear on the left, in the area I have outlined in red:

As you can see, in the example above I hadn’t yet subscribed to any sites. This is what your reader will look like in the beginning. Once you have subscribed to a few sites, it will look more like this:

To read the content of a site in Google reader, all you have to do is click on its link. The reader will then show the latest content on the right hand side of the screen.

Subscribing To Sites Using Google Reader

Most sites that publish an RSS feed have links or buttons that you can use to subscribe. To subscribe using Google reader, you will follow these steps:

• Click on the Feed button or subscribe link.
• Click the ‘Add to Google’ button.
• Click the ‘Add to Google Reader’ button.
• That’s it, now the site’s latest content will appear in your reader.

Happy reading!