news headlines, blog postings or other online content. Today, large and growing audiences of web users are using RSS and Atom-enabled newsreaders to quickly scan and read dozens of their favorite sites at a glance. The syndication craze has caught on big time, as evidenced by the fact that almost everybody - from The New York Times to the blogger next door - has started publishing a syndication feed.
Everybody likes it when webpages download quickly. That’s why size optimization matters so much for commercial websites — smaller sites (in terms of kilobyte-size) make for faster downloads, and happier users.
Speed is rarely an issue with RSS and Atom feeds. They’re mostly free from fancy HTML layout and modem-clogging graphics, and usually download so quickly that users can’t tell which feeds are fatter than others. In fact, serious RSS surfers usually prefer the feeds that carry a few extra kilobytes of text, in the form of unabridged articles or lengthy abstracts. Scanning a skimpy set of headlines in a news aggregator isn’t as satisfying as getting the full story.
GZip shrinks the source code of your file before sending it out over the wires. So, while newsreaders will still be banging on your site, they’ll be pulling smaller files. Most full-featured newsreaders accept GZipped files and understand how to decompress them.
If your web server isn’t serving pages with HTTP 1.1 and compression turned on, check with your sysadmin. It’s possible they’re compressing files with the .html extension, but forgot to add the .rss, .xml or .rdf extensions. It’s also possible that they’re just really behind the times, and still running an older HTTP 1.0 server.
If you use a blogging tool such as Blogger, TypePad or MovableType, you’ll notice the option to “ping” certain sites whenever you add new information to your blog. Pinging informs certain RSS-savvy portal sites and search engines (like Technorati) that your feed has been updated and ready to be added to their database. The advantages for you, of course, are increased visibility and traffic.
Traditional search engines, like Google, only glance at your site on a regular, fixed schedule. It can take up to a week for your site changes to register in their search index. In contrast, these RSS-savvy spiders will attempt to visit your site’s feed whenever it is altered, thereby providing something closer to real-time search.
There’s also an excellent site called Ping-O-Matic that will ping over a dozen services on your behalf, and at no cost. The single burden for you is that you are required to manually enter your URL on their home page.
That just about wraps up our advice for juicing up your syndication feeds. However, there is one more very important piece of advice that I feel compelled to pass along.
The techniques we discussed in this article should help you nip and tuck your syndication files into very pretty RSS or Atom feeds, but only from a technical standpoint. Don’t forget that in a text-centric medium like syndication, content is still king. File compression and favicons are no substitute for stories, opinions or ideas that deserve an audience.
Nothing trumps good writing! If you take the time to craft a great entry plus a thoughtful title and a clear description, that will impress users more than any 88×31 logo can.
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