Adding your feed to Google Webmaster Tools is a fairly recent addition. SEO-wise, how does this help by having your feed submitted? It let’s Google know you’re staying fresh.
Like using the WordPress XML sitemaps plugin for normal sitemaps, it’s also good to submit your feed. This will let Google know immediately when you have new post.
Unfortunately, Feedburner has a bug in it and if you’re redirecting your feed to Feedburner to analyze your subscribers, Google Webmaster Tools will throw an error.
The method I’m using to fix this is by creating a separate feed just for Google Webmaster Tools to use. I’m using a plugin called Feed Wrangler to do this. Feed Wrangler will let you create as many custom feeds as you want with custom names, and these feeds won’t be redirected to Feedburner. So note, you shouldn’t create a custom feed and advertise it, if you want Feedburner to analyze your subscribers, but this is great for private uses like Google Webmaster Tools.
To create your own feed, go to Settings ยป Feed Wrangler, then create your feed. Here’s an example of what it will look like.
After you’re done, with that, submit your feed to Google Webmaster Tools and Google will now have access to your feed to know exactly which content is fresh.
This isn’t critical for SEO efforts, but it’s a nice little addition.
thanks
my site is
http://www.sndos.com/
how can you submit thise feed
http://www.sndos.com/vb/external.php?type=RSS2
http://www.sndos.com/dir/rss.php
Submit the feed like you would for a sitemap, and it should accept it.
But note, this blog is about WordPress, not vBulletin, so their feeds may be different.
Hi Jonathan, if you are a blog based on wordpress you can use atom feed to submit feed at google webmaster tools.
your atom feed link (if you have a permalink activated) is:
http://www.YourSite.com/feed/atom
Try It ;-)
Oh thanks Dudy, I didn’t think of trying that — I almost always just use the regular /feed/ and I forget that there’s atom and RSS2 available.
Thanks!
so do we need to use that plugin or not?
for some reason none of my sitemaps are working and the feed wrangler generated feed isnt working either.. on webmaster tools the sitemaps just end up having a red x… never had that problem with any platform, joomla, drupal, or wordpress till now..
The suggestion by Dudy does NOT work, if using the FD Feedburner Plugin which redirects feeds.
Anthony.
Anthony,
I tried it without FD Feedburner installed and it worked flawlessly. Not everyone has FD Feedburner installed, so I wouldn’t go and say it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work in your particular case.
I use feedburner and it works great with my skin care blog.
I’ve tried adding my feed to google webmaster and it is a pain in the arss. It’s not worth the hassle