What Is RSS?

Do You Understand What RSS Is?

RSS stands for more than one thing. RSS usually stands for "really simple syndication" but it also can be "rich site summary" or "RDF site summary".

RDF stands for resource description framework. That answers the question of what is RSS, but not what it can do.

What is RSS in the context of really simple syndication? RSS is a tool that permits sites to give a fast summary of important links and descriptions in the XML format. This essentially allows them to syndicate their content by allowing other blog owners and webmasters to use this summary as part of a list of summaries on a specific topic.

Webmasters and blogmasters will gather a number of these summaries using a feed aggregator or feed reader. Rather than asking, "what is RSS", this tool will ask "where is RSS" and then find it.

The aggregator tool will locate RSS feeds and collect them from various sites such as, Yahoo and MSN, and will select smaller sites like a personal blog or a news sites.

Then the blogmaster or webmaster will use the script generated from the aggregator to insert it into their blogs. The RSS feed is then created in this way and will automatically start pulling news items and blog posts each time they come up. Whenever the blog or site page is refreshed, it will display the latest items.

Taking advantage of this tool is good for two reasons. If you use your own RSS feed, you can get your content syndicated across the Internet without actually paying to submit dozens of press releases, or have to contact dozens of blog owners and webmasters.

Additionally, using RSS feeds is good if you own a blog and want to add fresh content. This will allow you to constantly put new content links and summaries on your blog without spending the time to hunt around for related information. You just need to choose a feed aggregator to select the potential feeds you can use and these can be found on a list of news sites and authority blogs. Additionally, you will be able to input your own selections, allowing you to create custom feeds.

Do you now understand the basics behind RSS? RSS is a simple way in which to drive traffic to your blog and to display summaries of other blogs.