Every major blog is using FeedBurner to burn their RSS feeds because it is a free feature rich system that you cannot turn down. FeedBurner provides statistics, feed optimization option, feed publication option and much more. Integrating FeedBurner and Google Analytics is a must for every WordPress blog. In this article, we will show you how you can setup your WordPress blog feeds with FeedBurner and use it to help take your blog to the next level.
Why FeedBurner is Important for Bloggers?
FeedBurner is a free service that is loaded with options that you do not get with the default WordPress feed. Some of the features include:
- Statistics about your RSS Subscribers so you can analyze and optimize your blog posts.
- Give your users multiple options to subscribe such as Email, and other feed-readers (Netvibes, Google etc).
- Social Proof (Subscriber count)
- Option to customize your feeds such as modify post headings, branding and more.
- Option to ping various feed-reading services once you publish your posts.
- Integrate Google Adsense to monetize your RSS feeds.
- And more…
Just with the short list of features, you can see that it is a must have for all blogs. Now we can move onto setting up the FeedBurner Account.
Setting up Your FeedBurner for WordPress feeds
First you will need to have a Google account (any gmail account will work). Visit the feedburner service page to begin this process.
In the first step, you will type the link to your WordPress Blog Feed. If you have SEO Friendly WordPress URL Structure, then your feed link should be like yourdomain.com/feed/
In step 2, you will choose the title of your Feed and the address of your feed. It is advised to keep the title of your feed the same as your blog. It is best to keep your feed address short and memorable.
Technically your feeds are created, so you don’t need to follow the steps any more. Click on the Skip directly to Feed Management.
You will see a page with a link to tons of blogging platforms. Ignore all that as we will revisit them later in this article. Just cilck on the optimize tab that you see in the image below.
In step 5, we will work on optimizing your WordPress Blog Feed. You need to make sure that you haev Browser Friendly option activated, Smart Feed activated, and FeedFlare activated. You can activate other services if you want, but these 3 services are a must have. BrowserFriendly makes subscribing much simpler. SmartFeed ensures maximum compatibility with all feed reader applications. FeedFlare builds interactivity into posts by adding email this and other sharing options.
In step 6, we will take a look at all the publicize options for the feed. You need to allow Email Subscriptions on your site because there are users who prefer to get email updates rather than using Google reader. Pingshot must be activated because it notifies services when you post. Feedcount widget lets you show off your subscriber count. It is one of the best social proof methods. Awareness API comes handy if you are trying to list yourself on sites like BuySellAds because they can extract your subscriber count easily. There other snazzy options like Headline Animator, BuzzBoost that you can activate if you like.
Monetizing your feed is another good features of FeedBurner except it only allows you to use Google Adsense. So sign up with Google Adsense and follow their direction.
Once you have done all the above steps, you can click on the Analyze tab. Most likely you will see a screen like the one below because the stats are not recorded. Give it up to 24 hours and you will start seeing numbers there. Use the subscriber count, clicks and other useful data to improve your blog. See what your users like and don’t like with this stas, and then focus on the type of posts that your users like and enjoy.
Integrate FeedBurner into WordPress
Even though you have setup your feed with FeedBurner in the steps above, but you have not yet really integrated it with WordPress yet. First thing you want to do is stop diluting your feed and make it one. You need to create a redirect, so when users try to visit yourdomain.com/feed/ they are redirected to your feedburner feed page. This way you can keep track of the subscribers on your blog.
There is a plugin called FD FeedBurner which lets you create this redirect easily. You can also redirect your feeds using .htaccess file, but we will not be sharing that method because it is not something we recommend for beginners.
Most WordPress Themes are now coming with FeedBurner integration such as Headway Theme, Standard Theme, and others. If your theme is not compatible, then use the plugin above.
Add the Email Subscribe Box on your site
First visit Publicize » Email Subscriptions then copy and paste the code they give you in the template file that you like (mostly sidebar.php). Remember to customize the look of your email form, you would need to have prior knowledge of HTML and CSS.
If your blog does not have FeedBurner feeds, then get it right now.
Thank you very much! I am hoping you can assist me with a problem I have run across with my moms blog. We set up her feed, her website is deliciouslyinspired.com, and it looks like it is working but we can never see her images on bloglovin. We have tried everything. Any ideas?
Thank you.
Not sure. Never used bloglovin.
You always have very clear and easy to follow tutorials! I did able to set up a feedburner, but I would like to set up a second one w/ same google account but different feedburner url (for different website). How do I do this? I have looked everywhere, but can’t find a solution. Thank you.
When you login to your Feedburner, there is a field that says Burn a feed right this instant. Enter your new feed there and follow the process.
Hi. I wonder if you would mind explaining something about Feedburner that has been puzzling me. I’ve spent hours googling for answers and found none.
I used to have my WP blog hosted as a subdomain of one of my other websites, before migrating it to its own dedicated domain. When I log into Feedburner, it seems I still have feeds and subscribers connected to the old sub-domain URL. In fact, in all, I have 3 listed Feedburner feeds showing, all under the title of my blog, and each with different numbers of subscribers.
For each of the 3 listings, the blog title is the same (ie: my blog title), but the ‘original feed’ and ‘feed address’ are different in each case.
Should I should delete the two Feedburner feeds that relate to the old subdomain address, do you think? Would I lose subscribers if I did?
Feedburner is showing that there are still subscribers on those old feeds. Would this be because they are automatically re-directed to the new URL and therefore continue to be able to receive newly posted blog articles through their Feedburner subscriptions?
I’d be most appreciative if you could help me understand what is going on with these 3 feeds, and what to do to reduce them to one, relating to my current blog address but without losing subscribers.
Cheers!
rolanstein
How does this all fit in with Google’s RSS reader going away ??
see here >> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/13/the-google-reader-shutdown-is-yet-another-nail-in-feedburners-coffin/
Not sure what you are speculating there. Blogs like TechCrunch make their living by writing catchy headlines
Yes sure FeedBurner might go away, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it.
Great tutorial. Just to keep things current, your reference to the plugin “FeedBurner FeedSmith” is no longer available.
Keep up the good work.
Bryan
Thanks Bryan. Just updated that with a new plugin
At last, I understand!! Thanks so much ….wish I’d found you sooner!
Great post! Thanks!
i have set up rss for my blog but can i’m not able how to give category so that user can tick mark like you have done for wpbeginner. i dont want every user will get all news.
Our newsletter is not handled via feedburner. We wrote a tutorial explaining how to do that here:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-create-a-daily-and-weekly-email-newsletter-in-wordpress/
I just moved from blogger to WP and am trying to transfer my feed burner subscribers from one blog to the other. I have tried every possible combination and still have not managed to move my subscribers. Please help. I’m at happy and blessed home dot com (no spaces). Thanks!
Fantastic post. Very informative.
Some feedback: try to separate your text from text screenshots in some way. Bit hard to read.
Thanks for this great tutorial. Is there a way to include the featured image from a post in the feed? I get my blog’s feed in my email box, but there is no picture included. I get emails from other sites that do include pictures. Are they using something else?
Yes it is possible. Follow this tutorial:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-add-post-thumbnail-to-your-wordpress-rss-feeds/
Thank you so much for this article. This takes some of the mystery (and fear) out of setting up a feed. I just set up my first site so I can use all the help I can get!
Excellent Post. This made my feedburner sign up a breeze. I mostly use Genesis and most child themes have the feedburner subscribe widget built in. Thanks again.
Wow, thanks so much for this. I’ve been struggling with RSS subscription management for weeks now. I’m so grateful I found your post–I’m all set now! You guys are awesome.
Thank you! It is surprising how few step by step tutorials there are, but this is the only one you’ll need! Do you still recommend Feedburner Feedsmith as the best plugin to use, or has a better one come along recently? Thanks!
Most theme frameworks now let you redirect your /feed/ URL. We don’t know if there is a new plugin that has come along.
Please help! if i put the Feedburner details it comes out in the widget perfectly but in the setting of the theme, no luck!
It could be a theme problem. Which theme are you using?
Thanks for the great article. Question – when does your Readers number adjust? Is it daily? For example I had 60 confirmed people sign up today for my feedburner feed and the reader number on the site has not gone up or changed. When does this typically happen? Thank you in advance.
@TVDinner I think it updates daily.
How do I add a second blog that I do not own but that I manage to my existing feedburner account. This blog needs everything setup from scratch including a Subscriber Box Widget in the sidebar. I need to manage 2 blogs independent of each other.
Thanks
@SBlasnik You just say Burn another feed.
How is your feedburner showing full summary, i tried everything but still not showing, only the title of the post is showing.. please help
Settings > Reading (there is an option in there)If only your titles are showing, then it could be something wrong with one of the plugins or theme functions.
How come i didnt see all these steps when I created my feed?
Many thanks for the article. Now that WP has integrated subscriptions in Jetpack, is Feedburner still better due to its google integration (adwords)? Any advice as to how else they differ?
Thanks a lot for the step by step guide, my feed wasn’t working and I followed your steps, it helped greatly. Thank you
Thanks for this tutorial! It definitely made the process easy to do. One quick question though…Everything seems to be working fine but the posts in my feed don’t have any titles at all. Did I miss something about how to title posts? I went back through and did everything again and its still the same. My feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/familytreehelper Thanks in advance, Kelly