Best Kept Secret About Displaying RSS Feeds On-Site - Javascript Vs PHP

If you've gotten past the basics of what RSS feeds are about and how they can benefit you, then you are ready to learn one of the best-kept secrets about presenting your news feed on your website. It's not enough to simply install an orange RSS button for visitors to click, to see your feed or to fetch the feed address. To really bring benefit to your site, you should display some of the most recent items in your feed directly on your website, even if only a partial presentation of the item descriptions (aka articles).

But how? What code is used to display the news feed? After all, the feed is an XML file not suitable for direct human consumption. It needs to be translated into the HTML code that a browser understands and can present in human-readable form.

The good news is that there are websites out there that offer scripts to do that translation to human-readable text. You can locate them by doing Google search on terms like "RSS feed translation". You will learn that there are basically two kinds of scripts that are up to the job:  javascripts  and PHP scripts. Think there's no big deal as to which you should use? Think again.

In making your decision as to using a  javascript  or a PHP script, keep in mind two important goals pertaining to use of your feed on site. First, search engines appreciate websites that have fresh content posted every so often. Not wholesale changes (that could actually penalize your site), but tidbits of new information, with such information being posted every few weeks. If your website offers fresh content, search engines will reward your site with higher Search Engine Results Page (SERP) placement, even though your page rank remains the same.

Second, if search engines can "see" your fresh content (in other words, if search engine spiders can crawl that content), and if that content is relevant to the theme of your website, you will be further rewarded with increased "importance" (aka page rank). That increased importance will also improve your SERP placement.

So, your opportunity is to display your news feed (say the first couple of most recent items) in a way that presents fresh content that is crawled by spiders. By simply posting a small article every few weeks, your web site will leap upwards on SERP.

Now let's take a close look at using  javascript  vs PHP scripts for the feed presentation. Here's the fundamental difference between the two -- and the critical reason for choosing PHP scripts.  Javascripts  are executed AFTER your webpage is presented to the browser for display to your site visitor. That means that spiders, visiting your site, see the  javascript  code, not the translated news feed! So, your site doesn't get credited for fresh content or the theme-relevant content of your feed.

On the other hand, PHP scripts are executed BEFORE the code is presented to your browser. PHP stands for "PHP Hypertext Pre-Processor". Note the word "Pre-Processor". This means that your PHP script is executed with your news feed being converted to HTML code before being presented. Spiders visiting your site will, therefore, see the result of script execution, i.e., the HTML code that is your translated news feed (having been translated from XML to HTML). And this means search engines will see your fresh and relevant content -- your news feed!

To understand and execute PHP scripts, note that website servers must support PHP. Most do, because PHP is an extremely popular language for website code generation. But if your server does not, ask your hosting organization to support PHP. They are likely to honor your request because of the improved competitive nature of their hosting service as a result.