by Caroline Middlebrook
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.
Each separate blog will publish a unique URL, this is the RSS feed and is what any visitors will need to use to subscribe to the blog via RSS. All of the blog platforms, including WordPress, have RSS technology built in already which is great as this means that there is very little that you need to do to set it up. The chances are, in fact, that if you’ve already chosen the theme to use, you won’t have to do anything at all.
What you do want to watch out for is that your RSS icon will be clearly displayed in the top section of the blog theme. If the visitor needs to scroll way down to get to it, choose another one. Be sure that the icon is relatively large and that it stands out. Fundamentally, you need to be sure that your visitor’s eyes will be drawn straight to it. If it’s tucked away then it more than likely won’t get used.
Choosing Full or Partial Feeds
There is an RSS feature that will send just a small piece of the published post to the RSS feed, and if the reader would like to view the whole post, they have to click to follow it through to your web page to read it. Be aware though that WordPress is set, by default, to publish a full feed, so your whole post will be sent via the feed. You can see, and amend, this setting by going to your WordPress Dashboard, then go to ‘Settings’, then ‘Reading’.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. If you provide a full text feed it means that your reader doesn’t ever need to visit your website again – they can get all of your material directly through their feed reader. Some webmasters don’t like this because it means that those people won’t see their ads that they have on their site. However, all that has changed now as Google has setup a system to allow ads to be embedded directly in your feed.
Now there is something to understand about RSS readers – these are people who understand the Internet, they know what RSS is, they have chosen their RSS reader, they have decided to subscribe to your feed because they want to hear what you have to say and so they are far less likely to click on an ad than somebody who arrived at your website from a search engine. Also, these people are hungry for information which is why they are using RSS in the first place.
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.
I would recommend that, if you want to grow a social blog and you are keen to build up a loyal audience who will read everything you write, you will need to make it a full feed. But if you are looking to create a commercial blog that is monetized heavily, and that you are not so concerned about readership, you can do a partial feed.
However, the best revenue from your blog does not come from on-page ads! When you learn to use your blog to launch much bigger revenue streams then it doesn’t matter if people read your content through your RSS feed or your webpage so for nearly all cases I would recommend a full feed.
Utilization of a Feedburner
If you are using the default WordPress theme then you don’t need to do anything in order for your viewers to be able to subscribe to your feed. This would mean, however, that you would not be able to see your subscription numbers. If you want to know how many people are subscribing to your feed then you can use the Feedburner service to track this.
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 nice piece of software that allows you to track all kinds of stats about your website such as how much traffic you have had, what keywords are used to find you, other links that point to you, the location of your visitors and a lot more. It’s damn good software and it’s completely free!
Once you have signed up you will need to add a website profile for your blog. All you need to do here is put in the URL of your blog and perhaps set your time zone if you want. You will then be shown some code that you need to display on your pages – just click on the code to 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.