RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It is a way to share your blog’s contents in an XML format. Most commercial blog applications support the creation of an RSS feed for your blog. Even if your application doesn’t, it isn’t too terribly difficult to create your own RSS feed (http://www.make-rss-feeds.com/making-an-rss-feed.htm). I created my own custom feed for my site because the blog application I use doesn’t provide it out-of-the-box. Granted, the process of creating a feed requires some technical skill. But you don’t have to be a programming guru to make it work.

An RSS feed allows users to “subscribe” to your feed. You can use a program called a “news aggregator” to get updates from multiple web sites in a single application (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_aggregator). This is a very efficient way to keep track of web updates without having to actually visit a bunch of different web sites.

Most news aggregators automatically go out and check for updates on a regular schedule. In other words, they “pull” the information for the user automatically.

There has also been some speculation that search engines like Google take the presence of an RSS feed into account when ranking a site in their search listings. I have anecdotal evidence of my own that supports this notion. It may be that the presence of an RSS feed is an indication to Google that the site is (or will be) updated frequently. Therefore, Google may spider that site more often. Or, because Google often spiders other search portals, Google may get references to your site from certain blog search engines you submit to. Sometimes these blog search engines use your RSS feed as a source for updating their indexes. Other times, you must manually “ping” the blog search engines to let them know about an update. We will discuss this issue below.