Blogger, Feedburner, Sitemaps and Submitting All Your Posts

Blogger, Feedburner, Sitemaps and Submitting All Your Posts


Blogger users who wanted to submit a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools have always had some disadvantages. Since we can't publish a real sitemap to the domain we are using we had to settle for only submitting a partial sitemap by using our default site feeds (which only contain the last 25 posts). Add to that confusion when Blogger introduced Feed Redirection (to FeedBurner or others) made things even trickier, as for awhile if you chose the feed redirection option, then you couldn't submit a sitemap. Fortunately Blogger came up with a super secret option (so secret they never bothered to tell anyone) that fixes the problem for submitting a sitemap when feed direction is enabled ( hat tip to Amit for letting their secret out). And in the same step opened up a way to submit all your posts in a sitemap, instead of just the last 25.

So, starting at the beginning. To submit a Blogspot hosted blogs feed as a sitemap to GWT, you have to use the root-level feed that Blogger provides.

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/rss.xml

Of course change yourblog to your blog name, or using your custom domain. Which one you choose doesn't matter really, one is Atom and one is RSS format. Either will work.

Taking care of the redirect

If you are using the redirect option on your feed, you can add a query parameter to stop the redirect on your feed in the format of (I'm only giving the filename paths here)

atom.xml?redirect=false


That will keep the feed from redirecting and is now usable as a sitemap at GWT.

Submitting all your posts

Previously the root-level Blogger feeds did not accept any query parameters, but when Blogger added the redirect=false one, they also seemed to open up those feeds to all the known Blogger query parameters. And that's how you can submit more than the standard 25 posts. First off, figure out how many posts you have (you can do this at the Blogger Edit Post page and selecting only published posts, it will tell you how many total you have). Then you can use the max-results and start-index parameters to expand the number of results obtained, and to submit more than one map if needed. Note: Currently Blogger limits the max-results to 500 entries. This has gone up and down a couple of times so it could change. As of right now the upper limit appears to be 500. But 100 was the limit at one time.

I'm going to use the max limit of 100 in my examples, you can use more if that's what you want. So to get the first set of 100 posts the url I'd submit would be

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100


Then, if I have more than 100 posts (I currently have 105) I can create another sitemap with the url

/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=101&max-results=100


If you notice, just increase the start-index number by the amount of results you are getting. So the first sitemap started at 1, and returned 100 results, the second sitemap would use the start-index of 101 (100+1). Now that should automatically cover me for the next 95 posts. If I had more than 200 posts, just create another sitemap with the start-index of 201 (you get the idea). GWT will automatically download the sitemaps (usually about once a day) and if I've made a new post it should get added to the mix. Here's a screenshot of my current sitemaps in GWT, which I've been doing this way for almost a month.



Having said all that, two last things. One, I don't really think all of this helps any (if at all). Blogger blogs aren't that difficult to crawl and Google will probably crawl your blog just as well with or without a sitemap of any kind. Two, if you really wanted to create a non-feed sitemap with some sort of sitemap generating tool, then according to this recent post at Google Webmaster Central Blog, you could upload a sitemap for blogspot through another verified site (like maybe googlepages? I haven't really tried it).

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Using Images to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

Using Images to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

This is the second post in a series on How to make your RSS Feeds POP

One technique that many successful bloggers use to stand out from the crowd is to use images in their feeds. This means switching your feeds to full feeds, enabling html and putting up with a little more bandwidth but in my experience of surfing through thousands of posts a day in RSS it makes a big difference.

Images draw the eye, they pique interested, they grab attention and they have the potential to make what can otherwise be a dry and text filled environment (news readers) a more visually pleasing and sensual space.

I know when I’m scanning my feeds that it’s often the posts with images in them that I pause to take a second look at.

The images you use might illustrate a point you’re trying to make – or they might simply be the equivalent of an image title for your post (like I’m using in this post).

3 Examples

A few blogs that use images regularly and effectively in posts include:

3 Examples

A few blogs that use images regularly and effectively in posts include:

TechCrunch who uses lots of logos and screenshots of companies that it reviews.



Copyblogger uses title images effectively – I know when Brian uses one that I’ve got to pay attention because he’s writing original content. It’s a visual cue to his readers to listen up!



Richard at Read Write Web uses a lot of images in his posts. This is particularly useful for his blog which often features longer and pretty in depth posts that without images could look like large slabs of text.

Readwriteweb


Using Video in RSS

Over the last year Videos have increasingly been appearing on blogs and over the past few months some news aggregators have worked out how to show them in RSS feeds.

The same principles that apply to images in feeds seem to apply with video – they add another dimension!

Perhaps it is the novelty value or perhaps that it’s an ‘active’ thing to press the little play button – but there’s something about seeing video on a blog or in a feed that sucks me in every time. It catches my eye and draws me towards it – I suspect that it does the same for others so smart and relevant use of video in posts can add a new dimension to both them and the feeds that they appear in.

Tomorrow I’ll continue this series in writing for RSS – but in the mean time I’d love to hear your thoughts on images in feeds.

* Do you use them?
* Do you like them in other’s posts?
* Who uses images in posts well?
* What type of images work best for you?
* Can bloggers sometimes use too many images and videos in posts?

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How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

RSS has become an increasingly important way of engaging with blog readers over the last couple of years – but in more recent times with its integration into web browsers and operating systems it’s potential power for bloggers to engage readers has increased.

However – if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably not put a lot of thought into thinking strategically about how to engage with readers through feeds. Most of us simply know we have a feed, ensure we have a link or button to let readers know we’ve got one and hope that people subscribe.

But is there a way to engage readers more effectively through RSS?

While many tips have been written on how to write blog posts, I’ve not seen any that focus upon feed readers.

The Problem of Clutter

I have around 700 feeds that I attempt to follow each week. Some of them only post once or twice a week but some can have up to 100 posts. You can imagine the massive quantities of information that many heavy RSS readers are confronted with in their news aggregators.

How can bloggers break through this clutter and make their RSS feeds get noticed? How do you make your feed ‘Pop’?

How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

This week I’ll be presenting a series of short posts on writing for RSS readers. As always – my invitation to you is to join in with the tips. Like everyone – I’m still making sense of new technologies and how to use them most effectively – I’m looking forward to learning from you also.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series.

PS: it should be said up front that some of the tips for improving RSS feeds that I’ll share in the coming days also have the potential to improve the blog posts that actually appear on your blog. Consider that a double bonus for the series!

The Series so Far

* Using Images and Video
* Scannable Content
* Titles with Bling
* Opening Lines
* Avoid Clutter
* How to Get More Subscribers to Your RSS Feed
* 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get RSS Readers Visiting Your Blog

Bonus Post: 34 Reasons why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog

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