Where to Submit Your RSS Feed For Added Traffic and Online Visibility
RSS has largely fallen off the radar over the past several years, and tends to be given little focus by marketers.
Yet RSS feeds are commonplace, provided by most blogs, along with major content platforms such as Medium and YouTube.
Are they still useful? Can they be used for marketing benefits? Are there still sites you can submit your RSS feed to, and potentially get long-term benefits?
I had to trawl through a lot of sites to find out (try Googling rss submission sites and you’ll get the idea).
Most, it’s fair to say, appeared to be poor and a complete waste of time. So, for the first few I looked at at least, I wasn’t too hopeful.
(There are even gigs on Fiverr from people offering to submit your RSS feed to dozens of such sites. I’m not sure most people would really get much value.)
However, to my surprise, I did manage to find some gems as detailed below or summarized in this quick vid:
You can also download the list as a free cheatsheet for you to refer back to:
But before we get to the list of sites, just so we’re all on the same page…
What Exactly Is An RSS Feed?
Essentially, it’s information about your publication (e.g. a blog) presented in a standard form that other software and systems can then read and interpret.
It means they can tell exactly when you’ve published new content, and get information they need about that content, such as:
- A link to the content.
- Some summary information about it, usually a description (sometimes, the full content).
- Who the author is.
The alternative to a standardized RSS feed would be to try to interpret each publication’s website on a case-by-case basis… not too practical to say the least!
How to Find Your RSS Feed
For some of the RSS submission sites listed below, you don’t actually need to know the URL for your RSS feed as they’ll locate it automatically.
But for those that do require it, here’s how to find it.
For Wordpress blogs, the feed is built into the software. You’ll find it at:
For other popular content platforms, find your feed as follows:
- Medium: see their information on RSS feeds.
- Quora: no longer provide an RSS feed.
- SlideShare: https://www.slideshare.net/rss/user/[USER]
- Tumblr: https://[BLOG].tumblr.com/rss
- Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/[USER]/videos/rss
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=[CHANNEL_ID]
For elsewhere, look at the source code. Search for ‘rss’ or ‘atom’. If it exists, it will look like one of these (obviously with a different link and title):
<link rel ="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href= "https://www.everywheremarketer.com/posts.rss" title="EverywhereMarketer">Or:
<link rel ="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" href= "https://www.everywheremarketer.com/posts.rss" title="EverywhereMarketer">Whether it’s ‘rss’ or ‘atom’ just depends on the format used for the feed, reflecting the two different types available.
You can also potentially generate an RSS feed from other content using Fetch RSS.
Where to Submit Your RSS Feed
With your feed in hand, here’s my list of hand-picked, personally verified RSS submission sites to submit it to.
Some seem more valuable than others. Registration is sometimes required, sometimes not.
Some of these are also for blogs only, so won’t be suitable for say your feed from YouTube.
Most will review your submission, and it should be noted that there’s no guarantee you’ll be accepted. However, it should be seen as reassuring that they have this type of vetting in place.
And the good news is that most only take a couple of minutes or so to submit your feed.
Download this list as a free cheatsheet so you have it to refer to:
1. Twingly
According to Twingly:
… thousands of organizations and companies around the world rely on [the service] to keep track of what is said about them and trends they follow.
To do so, they index a million blog posts a day, while also providing:
- A search engine that’s searchable by other websites and software.
- Widgets that can be used by partner sites to show content, potentially linking to your blog.
Getting included takes seconds — simply add the URL for your blog (they’ll locate your RSS feed automatically):
Once submitted, you‘ll receive a reassuring confirmation message, and can move onto the next RSS submission site in this list:
2. Blogarama
Blogarama is a popular blog directory that uses your RSS feed to index posts on the site.
It’s also the oldest such directory (according to the site) with over 150,000 “active and moderated blog listings”.
As a result, it’s one of the top 25,000 most popular websites in the world (Alexa).
After registering with the site, you can then add your blog:
Once you’ve been approved, the RSS feed for your blog will then be monitored, with posts automatically indexed.
The first 50 posts are indexed free. If you’re finding it useful, you can then continue with one of their paid options.
3. Flipboard
Flipboard helps publishers “distribute to and connect with people who are passionate about your content”.
Presuming you’re publishing regularly, submit a feed to Flipboard and you’ll start attracting traffic from the site.
It’s popular too:
- It’s one of the top 5,000 most popular sites in the world (Alexa).
- It has 100+ million monthly active users.
Before submitting your feed, check their guidelines to ensure your RSS feed matches what they’re looking for.
For my own feed, I had to make a couple of adjustments first:
- Add an enclosure tag — this is what supplies a link to a post’s feature image.
- Make the post descriptions at least 300 characters long.
I then submitted the feed:
It validated it straightaway, following which it went to their team for manual review:
Note that Flipboard may remove feeds if they’ve not been updated for more than six months.
4. Pine.blog
Pine.blog is a relatively new site, and I’m not sure as yet on the value it provides, but may have potential so included it here anyway.
It’s billed as a type of social network, with people able to ‘follow’ others, as well as websites they’re interested in (such as blogs, news sites, YouTube channels, and so on).
Content is presented in a timeline, and users can comment, like, and so on.
Your own content can be included by submitting your RSS feed:
- Start by registering and logging in.
- Submit your feed.
After submission, you’ll see a confirmation message:
It then takes a few days for the feed to be approved and for content to start appearing.
You may also get a confirmation message a few days afterwards, something like the following:
5. Follow.it
On follow.it, people who follow you are notified when you publish something new.
The site monitors your RSS feed and checks for updates.
Users can choose how they want to be notified, including via:
- On the Follow.it website.
- Via push notifications on their phone.
The content they are notified about can be filtered by:
- Keywords
- Tags
- Authors
You attract followers by adding a link to your website. When someone follows you, you get access to their email address and can potentially then:
- Reach out to them individually.
- Add the email to a list for retargeted advertising.
Sign up by clicking the button on the follow.it website:
Add your feed as follows.
- Click the Add feed option on the menu:
2. Enter your RSS feed’s URL and click Next:
3. You can then either add a customizable form to your website:
Alternatively, just add an appropriate icon and link to your website:
When visitors click the link, if they’re not already logged into follow.it the page looks like this:
Otherwise they see a straightforward Follow button:
Follow.it is free to use, with premium features available enabling you to:
- Become the ‘sender’ of notification emails from follow.it that relate to your content.
- Define which page subscribers see after clicking Follow.
- Receive email alerts when someone subscribes or unsubscribes.
6. Wingee
According to the site, Wingee is “the world’s leading RSS directory” containing “human moderated high quality RSS feeds”.
In essence, it has RSS feeds listed under various categories.
Once you submit your feed, there are a couple of payment options as follows, or you can add a link to the site somewhere:
- A one-off fee of $2 for a standard listing.
- A featured listing for $5/month.
7. OnTopList
OnTopList is, roughly speaking, one of the top 40,000 most popular websites (Alexa).
It’s a blog directory, extracting information from the listed blogs via their RSS feed.
In submitting your blog, your RSS feed is then “checked for new entries every 24 hours”.
As with Wingee above, for inclusion on the site OnTopList requires a badge to be added to your site like this one, and linked back to them:
Alternatively you can pay an annual or one-time fee:
To Conclude
When I first started looking for potentially useful RSS submission sites, I was unsure what I would find.
However, I ended up pleasantly surprised. There are a number of sites listed above that are actually useful, and I’ve submitted my own feed to most of them.
Considering that submission to each only takes a minute or two, with the potential benefits long-term, it seems a no-brainer.
Remember to download the list as a free cheatsheet so you have it to refer back to:
Are there any other sites you think are worth submitting to? If so, let me know in the comments below.
Sincerely,
Steve Shaw
EverywhereMarketer
PS. Like This Story? Please help us reach more people by clapping below. And don’t forget to follow EverywhereMarketer to get more content like this.
Recommended Related Reading:
