What is RSS?

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 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.

Full or Partial Feeds – Which to Choose?

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 pros and cons to both full and partial feeds. If you allow the RSS feed to publish the whole post, your reader won’t need to visit your web page any more – they are able to access all your posts straight from their feed reader. You may find this doesn’t suit you as it does mean that your readers aren’t going to see the ads on your site. However, this has now changed since Google set up a way of allowing ads to be embedded into your feed directly.

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.

Using an RSS reader allows them to read all their chosen blogs nice and quickly without having to navigate around a bunch of websites. If you make your RSS feed partial in order to force the reader to click through to your site, you are likely to find that many of your readers simply don’t bother to click and may even unsubscribe. In other words – your content does not get read.

It is my recommendation that to grow a social blog and to build a loyal audience that are going to read absolutely everything you ever write, you must make the feed a full one. On the other hand for a heavily monetized and commercial blog that does not require such a large readership, a partial feed would be better.

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 are using the unchanged WordPress theme then you will not need to do anything for viewers to be able to subscribe to your feed. However there will be no way to see how many readers have subscribed. If this is an issue and you want to know your subscriber number, then a Feedburner service will allow you to be able to track it.

The Feedburner service is completely free and is run by Google. It is also incredibly easy to set up. All you need to do once you are signed up, is give your original blog’s URL to Feedburner and it will create a new Feedburner URL for you to use. You can then edit your WordPress theme to use the Feedburner URL instead.

What is Google Analytics?

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!

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.

You can manually add the code on to your WordPress blog but this will involve editing your theme files, but if you change themes, you will then have to do it again. Alternatively, I would recommend Semiologic as this will manage your Analytics for you. The download page shows complete instructions about how to use the plugin, so it need not be repeated here.

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