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 should look for is that the RSS icon is prominently displayed in the top part of your blog theme. If the reader has to scroll to see it, pick another one. Make sure the icon is fairly large and prominent. Basically, you want to ensure that your reader’s eye is drawn towards it. If it is hidden away then it 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 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.
The thing to realise about RSS users, is that these people understand the internet. They know all about RSS, have already chosen their RSS reader and they chose to subscribe to your feed as they want to read what you have to say. There is much less chance of these people clicking on an ad than someone who came to your website via a search engine. These are people who are hungry for information, that is why they use 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 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.
Feedburner is a completely free service which is run by Google and it is extremely easy to setup. Once you have signed up all you need to do is to give Feedburner the URL of your original blog feed and it will create a new Feedburner URL for you. Then you edit your WordPress theme to use this URL instead.
Google Analytics – What is it?
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.
Related posts:
- What Direction Is Your Blog Going In?
- Earn Money Online – Blogger Vs. Word Press
- Guidelines for Picking a Great Blog Topic
- WordPress Goldmine – Create Your Own Money Making Blogs
- Stop Blogging…POWER Blog Your Way to Massive Traffic Generation
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