SEO Optimization for FeedBurner Blogs
So after hearing the FeedBurner name get thrown around a few blogs I frequent, I decided to give it a try. So I registered for an account and was surprised that the “Pro” option was free. This put a smile to my face; the good. I also realized quickly (after clicking on a help topic) that Google bought FeedBurner out which is why and when they made the Pro features free.
For those not quite familiar with FeedBurner, It is essentially an RSS feed management service that was launched in 2004 and purchased by Google in 2007. As of the date of writing this article, FeedBurner has 1,057,910 publishers and have “burned” 1,879,482 different feeds. As you may be able to tell, most people seem to have more than 1 blog on average.
People use FeedBurner because of the features. It gives the user the option to subscribe using whichever aggregator they choose and can even allow users to subscribe by email which is an interesting option that many people may use. They also keep statistics of your feeds, give you an approximation of how many people are subscribed to your RSS (only aproximate because they don’t keep track of your subscribers that don’t use the FeedBurner service).
Is using FeedBurner really worth the features though? There have been many opponents to using FeedBurner as a means to analyze your traffic and data. Syndicating your feeds through FeedBurner comes at a cost. You will lose the link popularity that comes with managing your own RSS Feeds. mktgchelsea.com is one of those opponents and has written an inciteful article about the subject though, it seems a bit outdated.
What I think mktgchelsea has not yet discovered (probably for various reasons), is this article by FeedBurner about SEO. They recommend using a free product in addition to FeedBurner called mybrand. As quoted from their article:
“Our MyBrand service (one of our few paid services) allows you to map a subdomain so that your feed URL becomes “feeds.yourdomain.com” instead of “feeds.feedburner.com”. Either option gives you plenty of opportunity to rank well in search results, but publishers looking to have maximum consistency between their feed and site (not to mention publishers who are looking for maximum portability of feed URLs) might consider using MyBrand.”
Although they state that it is a paid service, it is now free. My guess is that the Google acquisition is responsible once again responsible. So, instead of directing users to feedburner.com/username for their feeds, you can now have them direction from a subdomain on your own URL. I’m sure Google is quite aware of the importance of inbound links, subscribers, and SEO in general and by using this method which is now provided by them, I think the SEO bugs have been fixed for the most part.
As always, I’ll keep you updated on anything new. Be sure to comment and Subscribe to my feed.
You can read a bit more from FeedBurner’s Wikipedia entry or from FeedBurner itself. For you new bloggers just getting started and are a bit lost, see my article on what RSS feeds are.
Tags: FeedBurner, RSS, SEO
