Most bloggers today are learning or already have RSS feeds integrated into their blogs. RSS feed is one of the most valuable tools to increase blog traffic and exposure. RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and is exactly what the name promises; a simple way to syndicate your blog to thousands of readers.

In short, RSS uses a programming language, XML, to announce each new post on a blog. The entire post or a summary of it is distributed (or “syndicated”) instantly so readers know there’s something new on the blog, and with that, new readers can discover the blog.

There are a variety of ways blog posts can be syndicated. The syndication could have been done by other website owners, who found the blog post interesting or relevant to their niche. They, in turn, have the blog post published on their own website. Most blogs would have to wait a long time for this type of syndication to happen. That’s why most bloggers use a smarter and more efficient way. They distribute their content through a feed reader program.

Distributing a new post through a feed reader exposes the content to a larger group of people in a very short period of time.

By using a feed reader, bloggers don’t have to wait for other sites to find their content or even find their content relevant. In fact, they can distribute it themselves. People who have read the blogger’s post through the feed reader, enjoy reading or find the post interesting, will visit the site and become regular readers.

Many good and interesting blogs lose readers due to the fact that the readers themselves simply forget to go back and look for updated information. This is a frustrating fact for bloggers. However, with the use of RSS feeds, the problem is solved. Readers are notified whenever there is something new on a particular blog. You could think of the notification as a reminder to check the blog again.

Readers are often interested in more blogs than they can really follow. If so, RSS feed readers are a very useful tool that allows you to track hundreds of blogs, since you don’t have to click on each one to see if there is new content posted. Now they receive notifications through the feed and easily get the information they are interested in in a short period of time.

In today’s current context, most bloggers are aligning themselves with RSS feeds. They are making that button available on their websites so that interested readers can sign up and be notified of new content on their great blog. These buttons that read XML or RSS are appearing on even the most popular websites on the Internet.