FeedBurner is the only service (that I know of) that will re-publish a blogs feed in order to get feed stats. Being such a great service, many users use it only to figure out how many readers their blogs have. However, FeedFlare is a great addition to any FeedBurner feed as it builds interaction and social media links into each post.

FeedFlare allows publishers to easily build “interactivity” into the content they create, making it simple for subscribers to tag, email or share their content with others. Publishers can include a variety of services including a live display of the number of comments to each post, the ability to email the author directly and show the number of blogs that link to their item.

To enable FeedFlare, login to your FeedBurner account, go to the Optimize tab then choose FeedFlare from the left column. You can then check items that you want to display in your feed.

I suggest adding at least the following:

• Email This - Send the post via email to a friend or a co-worker.
• Comments Count - You may be able to increase click thoughs if people know there are comments on your post.

One of the most common problems with blog posts, email or just life in general is spelling. Sure, everything now has spell check built in, yet it doesn’t stop misspellings. Instead of fighting it, try using it to your advantage.

Names are one of the common misspellings that are easy to do. Did Jordan Sparks win American Idol? No. Jordin Sparks did. However, thousands of people are searching for Jordan and it’s pretty easy to get additional traffic off the minor typo.

Wikipedia also has a rather large list of commonly misspelled words.  I bet that a lot of people are searching on quite a few of them and getting frustrated because they can’t get any good results. This is where you could step in.

I know what your thinking, you don’t want to create typos as it’ll make your site look bad. Yes, there is always that chance but you could always pre-date your posts so that they don’t show up on the front page of your blog. Set the date as last month so that your normal visitors don’t see them, but yet search engines will be able to find and index them.

The SEO Title tag is a plugin that I’ve known about for a while, but never messed with. Boy was I missing out.

What SEO Title Tag does is add the ability to customize your blog’s title tags per post. No longer are they tied directly to the post title. You can customize almost any title tag across your blog giving your site a possible edge in search engines.

One can customize individual posts, categories or pages. The default Wordpress title tags are OK, Optimal Title makes them better, SEO Title Tag makes them into whatever you want them to be.

There is also the ability to customize the separator, create a shot blog name to show on post pages, remove the blog name from post pages, use category descriptions as titles on category pages and tie the Title tags into UTW (Ultimate Tag Warrior).

Title tags are easy to customize too. They can be mass customized though the plugin options under the Manage tab or you can also create the titles as you create your post as it adds a custom ‘Title Tag’ field to the post screen.

Wordpress has launched an official stats plugin named Automattic Stats. It a stats plugin that ties into Wordpress.com to track your visitors and works well, but it’s not available for everyone.

One of the Wordpress.com exclusive features is the ability to get blog and feed stats in your dashboard. Everything from the number feed reads to incoming links, keywords, clicks and top posts. A great feature that was sadly missing from anyone who installed Wordpress on their own servers. That was until recently when the Automattic Stats plugin was released.

The plugin is a snap to install. Just upload the file into your plugins directory, then put in your Wordpress.com API. Yes, you need one of those. If you use Akismet, then you already have one and don’t need another. If you don’t have one, signup for a Wordpress.com account and they’ll give you one. After that, just sit back and wait for your stats to roll in.

There are a few downsides to the stats plugin though. The main one being that it’s not integrated into your Wordpress install. You have to go to your Wordpress.com dashboard to actually see your stats. It does add a tab on your dashboard screen though, so it’s only a click away.

The FeedBurner plugin has got a new name and a new owner. Steve Smith from OrderedList.com handed off the plugin to the FeedBuner crew. It wasn’t a multi-million dollar deal like you hear with internet companies these days, but FeedBurner did rename the plugin in Steve’s honor. It’s now the FeedSmith plugin.

If you’re not familular with the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin, what it does is automatically reidrects your Wordpress’ feeds to the FeedBurner version. You don’t need to update your template or give out your FeedBurner URL, just update the setting via your Wordpress admin and it’ll do the rest. Quite handy and works well.  It’s a must install on my list.

Congrats to Steve!

[tags]FeedBurner,FeedSmith[/tags]

Now that you are searching everything on your blog, it’d be a good idea to know what others are searhing for. If you are running Wordpress, this is easy enough to do with the Search Meter plugin.

Search Meter’s job is to capture anything put into the search box. This information is then displayed on the admin side of Wordpress. It also comes with the functionality to output it on the public side of your blog if you’d like to.

Knowing what your visitors are searching for is important as it’s a clue to how they are using the site. You may find out that everyone is searching for information on a certain topic. If it’s not something you post on often, it may be a good idea to post on it more often. Or maybe you’ve created a tutorial or plugin that isn’t easily accessible from your main navigation. If everyone’s searching for it, it’d be a good idea to modify your navigation so it was easier to find.

Justin Shattuck has a great post about the things blogs do that he finds annoying. It’s a good read and he points out a lot of good items.

1. Link love, it makes sense
2. Make your content accessible
3. Wow, thats alot of ads
4. Echos are getting old
5. Admins, stop being lazy
6. I know who I am
7. Stop filling forms out for me
8. Direct linking is stealing
9. Snap sucks!
10. So many images, dumb.

When trying to come up with the things that annoy me about blogs I kept coming across the same things. To many ads, to much spam and that echo chamber.

I’ve realized that a lot of these things can be fixed by reading only feeds. 99% of ads are not included in feeds and that’s a magnificent site. On the blogs themselves, I’d rather not block ads as I do find relevant ones helpful at times and I know sites have bills. What I’d rather see are ads that are designed into the content, not a big block of adsense in the middle of the post.

FeedBurner has an easy way of promoting a blog post though FeedFlare. FeedFlare simply adds a few social options to each post. You can choose to add a Digg link, del.icio.us link, ‘email this post’ option, share on Facebook and a few other handy choices. However, there are many more possibilities as you can create custom FeedFlares.

The other day Danny Sullivan put together one for StumbleUpon. He said it was quite easy as even a non-techie like himself can do it.

Here is how you’d get the StumbleUpon FeedFlare working for your site:

1. Log into your FeedBurner account.
2. Click on your feed.
3. Click on the Optimize tab.
4. Click on FeedFlare
5. Copy this URL http://searchengineland.com/stumble.xml and past it into the ‘Add new Flare’ box.
6. Hit the ‘Add new Flare’ button and you’re done.

It is really simple to add and helps give your blog one more area for added exposure.

Have you created a FeedFlare? Or know where to get more custom ones? If so, do share.

[tags]StumbleUpon,FeedFlare,FeedBurner,Danny-Sullivan[/tags]

I’ve been testing out FeedBurners StandardStats package and it’s a great start for a free stats program. The data seem to be online with Google Analytics and the look and feel is great for the non-techie person.

Starting off, the setup is easy. Just log into your FeedBurner account and activate StandardStats. One click of the button and your done with step one. The next step is to implement the code on your site and I think it could be easier.

Currently, you choose your blogging platform from the dropdown and it gives you the code to add to your template. It tells you where to put it but I think it’s a bit much for average users. For example, you have to put the code in the post-meta loop. Everyone knows where that is right?

With that in mind, I created the FB StandardStats plugin for Wordpress to do all the code implementation for you. It makes it extremely easy for anyone to get the code in the right spot with very little work.

When I built the FB StandardStats plugin I built it to make it easy to add in the necessary code to get the new StandardStats up and running. People mentioned that it worked with FeedFlare but it didn’t hit me until today how cool this plugin really was!

“FeedFlare allows publishers to easily build ‘interactivity’ into the content they create, making it simple for subscribers to tag, email or share their content with others. Publishers can include a variety of services including a live display of the number of comments to each post, the ability to email the author directly and show the number of blogs that link to their item. Publishers can choose to include FeedFlare within the feed itself as well as on their blog or site.”

It first started to sink in the other day when I had to make the updates due to the FeedFlare confusion that may happen when a feed is burned though FeedBurner and this plugin was also installed. But it wasn’t until today that the light bulb when off. If you select FeedFlare items to show up in your blog, the FB StandardStats Plugin displays it!