RSS – A Brief Intro
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is a way of allowing your blog visitors to have your blog posts automatically delivered using a method of their choice rather than having to manually visit your web page every day to check for updates. This is particularly helpful when somebody reads many blogs as they can use a tool called an RSS reader to read all of those blogs in one place.
The RSS feed is a unique URL published by the blog, this is what is needed for your visitors to subscribe to your blog with RSS. You’ll be glad to hear that there is very little to do, as all the blog platforms have the RSS technology already built in, including WordPress. In fact, chances are you won’t have to do anything if you have already chosen your theme.
What you need to look out for is that the RSS icon is displayed prominently in the upper section of your blog theme. If your visitor has to scroll down to find it, use a different one. Ensure that the icon is relatively big and stands out. Basically, you need to make sure that it will draw the visitor’s eye straight to it. If it’s out of sight, it’s unlikely that it will be used.
Should You Choose a Full or Partial Feed?
RSS contains a feature that will allow just a small section of your post to be sent to the RSS feed, then if the reader chooses to view the whole post, they must then follow the link to your website to be able to read it. Watch out though as the WordPress default is to publish the entire post to the feed. You can check and change your settings by going to the WordPress Dashboard, then going to ‘Settings’ and then ‘Reading’.
There are good and bad points to each method. If you publish the entire post to the RSS feed it means that the reader will no longer need to visit your website as they can view all of your posts on their RSS reader. It may be that that scenario does not suit you, as it would mean that the reader will not see any of the ads on your pages. However, Google have recently changed this by setting up a system that will allow ads to be embedded straight in to your feed.
Now the thing to remember with RSS users is that these are people who understand the internet and RSS and will have chosen their RSS reader already. They subscribed to your feed because they are interested to read all that you have to say. There is little chance that these are the people that will click on ad, unlike people who came across your website from a search engine. It is these people that are hungry for information, that is exactly why they chose to use RSS in the first instance.
The use of an RSS reader will allow them to view all of their chosen blogs speedily and saves them from the need to navigate round a whole horde of websites. The downside, then, of only sending a partial feed to your reader, is that if these people are forced to then have to click and follow through to your website, they may simply not bother, and many may even unsubscribe. This then means that your posts do not get viewed.
My recommendation is that if you are growing a social blog where you want to build up an audience of loyal readers who read every word you say then make the feed full. If you are creating a commercial blog which is heavily monetized and you are not so bothered about readership then make it a partial feed.
On-page ads, however, are not the only revenue that can be generated by your blog. When you have learned how to utilise your blog to create much greater revenue streams, it will not matter whether your readers follow your posts on your website or via an RSS feeder. With this in mind, a full feed would be my recommendation.
How To Use Feedburner
If you use the WordPress theme unchanged then there is nothing you need to do in order to allow people to subscribe to your feed but you have no way of knowing how many people have subscribed. If you care about your subscriber number and want to be able to track it then the Feedburner service is for you.
The Feedburner service is run by Google is incredibly easy to set up and best of all is totally free. Once signed up, all you have to do is give the URL of your original blog feed to Feedburner and that will create a new Feedburner URL to use. Then just edit your WordPress theme using the new Feedburner URL instead.
Google Analytics – What does it do?
Google Analytics is a very nice bit of software that will allow you to follow all manner of statistics about your website. For example, the amount of traffic you’ve had, which keywords have been used to reach you, any links that point to your site, your visitors’ location and much more. It is incredibly good software and is totally free!
When you are signed up, you will have to insert a website profile for your blog. All you have to do is just add the URL of your blog and maybe reset your time zone if you wish. It will then give you some code that you will need to display on your web pages – Just click on this code and copy it to the clipboard.
To put the code onto your WordPress blog, you can do it manually but that involves editing your theme files and if you change themes you will have to do it again. Instead, I recommend Semiologic which manages your Analytics for you. The download page has full instructions on how to use the plugin so I don’t need to repeat it here.
Caroline Middlebrook has written a popular blog since September 2007 which generates 4-figures a month. She shows you how to make money with blogs and gives away free downloads of her free guides & courses.
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