Using RSS Feeds to Increase Traffic

This tutorial deals specifically with WordPress and a plugin called FeedWordPress. It requires a web installation of WordPress, basic knowledge of the internet, the ability to use an FTP client and an RSS feed. No programming skills are required. This may be specifically useful for Associated Content writers.

There are many sites on the internet that let you publish content for pay. Once you have your content on these sites, the traditional method of getting more traffic is either waiting for people to stumble upon your content, or letting people know. Both of these are limited in reach, and don't do much to increase the ranking of your content in search engines.

If you have a blog, you can create a new post every time you publish content. This can be time consuming, repetitive, and a bit annoying. By using a system like FeedWordPress, instead of posting every time you create content, you upload your RSS feed link and tell it to get new posts. It will automatically create a WordPress post on your website for every entry in your RSS feed. Since the RSS feeds only display a snippet of your content, interested readers will need to click through and view your entire work.

We will assume you are using an Associated Content RSS feed for this tutorial. This feed can be found on your "My Profile" page by clicking on the RSS icon (the orange square).

Step 1 : Download and Install
You can download FeedWordPress here. To install, upload the wp-content folder to your WordPress site installation via FTP. Once it has uploaded, navigate to your WordPress admin panel, select "Plugins", and activate FeedWordPress.

Step 2 : Add Your Feeds
Now that FeedWordPress is installed, you'll need to add RSS feeds. From your WordPress admin panel, click on "Blogroll", then select "Syndicated". Note : if you do not see "Syndicated" there was an error with your installation. Please refer to the installation instructions and try again.

You will be a box labelled "Website or newsfeed". This is where you will paste your RSS feed URL. Now click "Syndicate". You will be given a preview page, that looks like this. If you see a sample item, click on "Use This Feed". The feed will be added, and you'll be ready to modify settings.

Step 3 : Modify Settings
Click on the edit button next to your new feed. This will open up the feed settings. Here, you can select how the posts related to the feed will display. You can edit the Link Name and Short Description so the feeds are easier for you to identify in your administration panel. You can set the default category for your syndicated content. You can turn commenting on or off or create a new author account/categories (not recommended) for each post. Click "Save Changes"

Step 4 : Syndicate!
Point your browser to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/update-feeds.php. Select the RSS feeds you want to publish, click up date, and, after a few moments, your RSS feed information will be posted to your WordPress site. Check the main page of your site to check that they were syndicated correctly, ie, the link points to the correct location, the posts are in the correct categories, etc.

Happy publishing!