Receiving posts syndicated via RSS can help you keep fresh content on your blog. Image: Lumaxart / Flickr / CC-BY-SA

RSS, or “Real Simple Syndication,” is a form of content syndication that sends out a special type of text file – called XML – to readers. RSS can be used for everything from keeping up on the latest posts on your favorite blog or to linking social networking profiles together. When you have a blog, especially for affiliate purposes, you can use an RSS feed as a way of keeping fresh content on your blog. Most free blogging services have the option of displaying an RSS feed on the sidebar or footer of your website. To display these feeds, add the RSS widget offered by your blogging service and drop the feed address into the settings.

Even better than just displaying an RSS feed, though, you can use a plugin to make the RSS feed show up on your blog as posts. This is not unique content, but it can be used to augment the search engine power of your website. For WordPress websites, Feed WordPress is one of the most popular. Add this plugin to your website, add the feed address, and you’ll be up and running with free, fresh content for your website.

Posting via RSS

The Feed WordPress plugin pulls an RSS feed into your WordPress blog, which makes all of the content on the site you are feeding from appear as posts on your blog. Each individual RSS item or post becomes a new post on your WordPress blog. To set up WordPress post-via-RSS:

• On the Feed WordPress website, click the “download” link, then “save file” in the download box. Remember where you save the .zip file – you will need it for later.
• Log into your WordPress admin panel. You should see a navigation menu in the left hand sidebar.
• Click on “Plugins” in the left hand sidebar to open up more menu items.
• Click on “Add New.”
• Chose “upload” in the list of options.
• Click “browse” and find the .zip file on your computer.
• Click “install now.” WordPress will inform you when installation is complete.
• Go to your “Plugins” menu and activate the plugin

Setting up Feed WordPress

Once you have the Feed WordPress plugin activated, you can set it up to receive and post RSS feeds however you would like. Check with whichever website or feed you would like to receive content from to get the address of the feed. Copy it; you will need it later.

The options for Feed WordPress will appear in your left-hand navigation bar, at the bottom of the list of options. If you expand that menu, there is a wide range of options for you.

• “Syndication” is where you insert the URL of the RSS feed you would like to pull into your blog. Get the “feed URL” from the website you want to feed from, and insert it here.
• “Feed and Update Settings” will let you set the way the posts are updated to your WordPress blog. You can set how often your blog checks for updates on the feeds and how it checks for updates. We recommend you leave the default settings on this section.
• “Syndicated Posts & Links Settings” is where you will set the formatting, linking and comments settings on the posts that come from an RSS feed. These filters will determine how the posts act once they are on your blog. We recommend that you set new posts to be held for review so you can take a look at them before they post. Your permalinks should point to the local copy on this website, with the aggregator itself as the source of the posts. Formatting filters and URIs (which WordPress uses here to refer to URLs) should be left with default settings. Finally, you should allow comments, pings and local comment feeds.
• “Syndicated Authors” determines how your blog will treat authors it does not recognize. If you leave this as a default, WordPress will automatically create a user account any new author from the original feed.
• “Categories & Tags Settings” sets up how WordPress handles new categories and tags that come through with the feed. You should set your site to treat unfamiliar categories as tags or categories, to maintain the SEO power held within those organizational tools. You can also set a tag and a category that feed posts are automatically added to.

Setting up an RSS feed of content can take a bit of time, but it is a quick and easy way to receive a lot of content for your blog, quickly.