Setting Up Feedburner for SEO
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You learned the basics of Feedburner and its relationship to SEO in the first part of this two-part series. Now in the second part, you will learn the detailed technical procedures for integrating Feedburner with your website to maximize subscribers and also increase the chance of getting organic links.
Before you read further, make sure you have a fully working Feedburner account; you'll need a Google account to get one.
I assume that at this stage you have already added your site's default RSS feeds to Feedburner by following the steps discussed in the previous tutorial (part 1). Now you need to configure that to get the most out of Feedburner.
The scope of this tutorial covers mostly the WordPress publishing platform since it is used commonly with popular blogs. Also, this tutorial emphasizes the use of Feedburner for self-hosted WordPress blogs (which means you can fully customize it, use FTP, full admin control or add WordPress plug-ins).
Redirecting all your WordPress feed URLs to Feedburner
WordPress has a number of feed URLs, which would comprise a long list and can be tough to manage. However, the easiest way to spot is to look for an RSS button, as shown below:
For example, all of the URLs below can be your WordPress feed URL:
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/wp-rss.php
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/wp-rss2.php
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/wp-rdf.php
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/wp-atom.php
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/?feed=rss
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/?feed=rss2
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/?feed=rdf
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/?feed=atom
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/feed/
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/feed/rss/
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/feed/rss2/
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/feed/rdf/
http://yourexamplewebsite.com/feed/atom/
It is important to redirect all feed URLs to your new Feedburner URL so that it can be closely monitored by Feedburner (which is useful for reporting accurate statistics about your feeds) and to ensure that all subscribers can benefit from free and useful Feedburner services. On the other hand, since it is also possible to add Google AdSense to your Feedburner feeds, redirecting all feed traffic ensures all impressions can help in increasing your AdSense income.
To redirect all feed URLs to Feedburner, you need to use a plug-in. Follow the detailed procedures below:
Step 1: Download the Feedsmith plug-in.
Step 2: Extract the zip file and find FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin.php.
Step 3: Upload this file to your WordPress plug-ins directory (/wp-content/plugins/)
Step 4: Log in as admin to the WordPress dashboard panel and activate this plug-in.
Step 5: Once activated, under Dashboard -> Settings, find the "Feedburner" control panel (see screenshot below, inside red box) and click it.
Step 6: Look for "Set Up Your FeedBurner Feed" and under this field: "Once you have created your FeedBurner feed, enter its address into the field below (http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed):", enter your Feedburner URL. Example:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/php-developer
Leave the third field blank.
Step 7: To see if it is working, use this tool and enter your default/old feed URL e.g.: http://www.php-developer.org/feed/
The desired results are that the old/default feed URLs should be 302 redirected to your new Feedburner URL. See example:
Results of the GSiteCrawler Server-Test
Tested at 12/21/2009 12:29:57 PM / from 125.60.235.221:
URL=http://www.php-developer.org/feed/
Result code: 302 (Found / Moved Temporarily)
New location: http://feeds.feedburner.com/php-developer
URL=http://feeds.feedburner.com/php-developer
Result code: 200 (OK / OK)
Next: Optimizing your feeds using Smart Feed >>
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