Chicklets: do as I do, not as I say
While it’s true that I advised against using chicklets until we could make them more reader-friendly, we’re going to generate a chicklet today in the name of getting our blog listed on Yahoo.
Submitting a blog to Yahoo is going the way of submitting a site to Yahoo. Yahoo site submission used to be free. Now, for only $299, don’t call us, we’ll call you. (Actually the free Yahoo submit still exists, it just carries less weight than, oh, $299.) Right now, it’s free to submit your blog to Yahoo. The day will soon come when that, too, will cost $299.
You? Meet You.
So consider it a priority to get your blog onto Yahoo now. You can do that through:
Yahoo RSS Submit, the fabulously easy way
My Yahoo is a content aggregator: it allows the reader to pick RSS feeds to be displayed on the My Yahoo page. In this insanely easy lesson we will pick our own feed to read, thereby telling Yahoo about our feed.
- Every My Yahoo page has a Add Content link. Click Add Content.
- Click Add RSS by URL.
- Enter your feed address.
You’re done.
Add to My Yahoo Chicklet
The next method of getting your feed into Yahoo will also allow your readers to put your feed into their My Yahoo.
In essence we will:
- Create a Yahoo account
- Create a Yahoo chicklet
- Click the chicklet
Yes. It’s that easy. Yahoo and FeedDemon create slightly different HTML but they both work.
- If you don’t already have a Yahoo account, create one
Either:
- Use Yahoo to make a Yahoo chicklet
or
- Use FeedDemon to create a Yahoo chicklet
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- In both cases you will generate HTML that tells Yahoo about your blog. FeedBurner already knows your feed address, but you’ll have to tell it to Yahoo. Yours looks something like this FeedBurner address.
- Click the button to generate the HTML. Copy the generated HTML and add it to your web site.
- Browse to your site
- Click the new Yahoo button
- Confirm Yahoo’s query:
Add eProgramming: Software for Web Marketing to My Yahoo! Home Page.
Timing
- Yahoo can take up to 72 hours to read your blog. Wait three days before subscribing again.
- When you click the add-to-my-yahoo link on your site, Yahoo might respond that it doesn’t see a feed. Just keep clicking until Yahoo changes its mind.
Did I mention? Promote. Promote. Promote. On Yahoo.
RSS Submit performs “automatic submission of your RSS Feeds to over 55 blog and RSS directories.”
I just downloaded the trial and I like it. In less than a minute my FeedDemon[ized] Blogger content (the stuff you’re reading right now) was submitted to:
Easy RSS, The Feed Directory, Memigo, Blog Digger, Bloogz, RSS Clipping, News Trove, Feedplex, Fyber Search, Yahoo and Read A Blog.
If I fork over the reasonable $35-$75 licensing fee I’ll get 40+ more auto submissions. A very nice tool.
Now that we’ve redirected the atom feed to FeedBurner we can direct all readers to FeedBurner. We’ll do that in our blog links and on the web site hosting the blog.
Display the FeedBurner feed in the blog links
- Open the blogger.com template
- Find the section:
<h2 class=”sidebar-title”>Links</h2>
- Comment out the default atom site feed link:
<!– <li><a href=”<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>” mce_href=”<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>” title=”Atom feed”>Site Feed</a></li>–>
- Add the FeedBurner feed link:
<li><a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” mce_href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” title=”FeedDemon Atom/RSS/Anything Feed”>FeedDemon RSS/Atom SmartFeed</a></li>
- Save the template and publish
Allow readers to autodiscover your feed
Make these changes to the <head> of your web site home page:
Create or edit any link alternate or link service.feed meta tags that might look like this:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” href=”http://mysite.com/rss.xml” mce_href=”http://mysite.com/rss.xml” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rdf+xml” title=”RSS” href=”http://mysite.com/index.rdf” mce_href=”http://mysite.com/index.rdf” />
<link rel=”service.feed” type=”application/atom+xml” title=”Atom” href=”http://mysite.com/atom.xml” mce_href=”http://mysite.com/atom.xml” />
And point them to the FeedBurner feed instead:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” mce_href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rdf+xml” title=”RSS” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” mce_href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” />
<link rel=”service.feed” type=”application/atom+xml” title=”Atom” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” mce_href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” />
This is part 6 in our series about FeedBurner.
See part 5 here.
Promote. Promote. Promote.
In FeedBurner – Part 1, About Syndication, we talked about the different feed formats (RSS and Atom).
In FeedBurner – Part 2, Point Your Feed Here. We’ll do the rest., we created a FeedBurner feed from our Blogger.com Atom feed.
Which feed are they reading?
Anyone who knew about your Blogger Atom feed before your FeedBurner syndication will use the old feed. Anyone who found your FeedBurner version of your Blogger feed will probably use that. As FeedBurner points out, multiple feeds only serve to fracture your feed statistics.
FeedBurner’s SmartFeed is your babel fish. RSS? Atom? From here on out we don’t care. We’re going to feed the world with SmartFeed. In this lesson, we will redirect our Blogger.com’s-only-some-readers-can-read-atom Atom feed to our FeedDemon’s-RSS-Atom-automatic-translator feed. SmartFeed will send RSS to RSS readers and Atom to Atom readers. No reader is left behind, and our statistics will include our Atom and our RSS customers.
How to redirect Blogger.com to SmartFeed
From the FeedBurner home page
- click the link under “Burned Feed”: ours is named “eProgramming for SEO and SEM”
- check Smart Feed
- click Save Feed Settings
Now we’re going to make some template tweaks.
- Browse to your blog: http://www.sitexl.net/eprogramming/web-marketing-software.html
- view source
- copy the meta and link tags that are grouped together
- On Blogger.com, open you blog’s template
- Remove the line <$BlogMetaData$>
- Paste in the meta and link tags
- Change the atom.xml line:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/atom+xml” title=”eProgramming: Software for Web Marketing” href=”http://www.sitexl.net/eprogramming/atom.xml” mce_href=”http://www.sitexl.net/eprogramming/atom.xml” />
- to the feedburner line:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/atom+xml” title=”eProgramming: Software for Web Marketing” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” mce_href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” />
- Add this line:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”eProgramming: Software for Web Marketing” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” mce_href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/eProgramming-for-seo-sem” />
- save the template
- Republish your blog
Your blog will now point to the FeedBurner feed for any atom requests:
type=”application/atom+xml”
and any rss requests:
type=”application/rss+xml
As you blog you will continue to publish the atom.xml file. RSS and Atom readers scanning your site for a feed will discover the meta tags for the FeedBurner redirect. FeedBurner will then send these readers the appropriate rss or atom version of your atom.xml file.
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