Blogging: Why Feedburner?
I had a blogging question from a friend, who asked why Feedburner might be better than a plugin she’s using in her WordPress blog right now. I can’t say that I’m familiar with the plugin, but I can tell you, Renee, that Feedburner is the bomb!
Why? Well… it’s owned by Google now, for starters. That doesn’t always mean good things for SEO purposes, but in terms of blogging metrics… Feedburner tells you tons of stuff that you just can’t get elsewhere.
Feedburner tells you how many subscribers you had on a day-to-day basis. It shows you what they clicked in your feed, and what feed reader they’re using. It also shows you which posts got the most hits, and how many people clicked on which links in your feed. You can also get a map of where your readers are coming from.
You can also see where your content is being published, which is pretty cool, and you can publicize your subscribers with some of their buttons.
The whole Optimize section is sweet, and you can tell Feedburner what you do and don’t want it to do with your feed. You can have it compatible with any browser and select the subscribe buttons to go alongside it. You can make your feed compatible with any reader, too. Feed Flare lets your subscribers email your feed, save it to a bookmarking service, and tons of other stuff that flat feeds just don’t allow, and gives you the code to add these same buttons to your blog.
A very cool SEO advantage is that Feedburner allows you to add a title and description to your feed. Very cool. You can make money from your feed, too. You can add Google AdSense and your Amazon Associates ID, and be paid as you would from any other location.
I could go on and on because there’s a lot more stuff at Feedburner, but it’s definitely worth a look, and here’s the best part… it’s free. You don’t really have to do anything very technical, except add the feed address for your blog. You can find that in the META data widget in your blog, which shows “Entries RSS.” Just copy the link to that page, and you’re all set.
So, Renee? Think you want to try it? 
