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Apr 27, 2007 at 7:15pm ET by Danny Sullivan

What’s the deal with that big giant button? I wrote recently in The Blogs & Search Blogs With The Most Readers about a new list of search blogs ranked by the number of RSS readers they have. We’re at just under the 10,000 mark, which is great for a blog that’s less than five months old.

Still, I want more readers. In particular, a lofty goal. By the end of May, I want to break the 20,000 subscriber mark. Help us reach this goal! Take the feed! Tell a friend to take our feed. Tell whatever feed reader provider you use that we ought to be a default feed choice!

Need more help understanding our feeds? See this page, that explains how we actually have two — along with two email newsletters. The icon above is for our main feed that gives you everything we publish on the blog.

For those who will say you’d subscribe if we were full feed, my response remains as I said earlier this year. I’m still considering it. Strongly, and within a couple of month. FYI, we’re actually what I call a "mixed" feed, in that some shorter items go out full text, and the daily round-up post SearchCap also goes out full-text.

Want to accelerate that decision? Here’s my throw-down. If we hit 50,000 subscribers by the end of May, we’ll go to full-feed except for exceptionally long posts (readers know we can sometimes post really, really long articles. I want to test exactly what that does to our feed before I can commit fully to those types of posts).

Oh — like that big icon? Help yourself here. And if you like the "Subscribe!" idea, go for it. But give this post a hat-tip link if you’re inspired, maybe a mention people should take your feed and ours? Please?

Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and can be followed on Twitter here.

See more articles by Danny Sullivan >

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15 COMMENTS ON Subscribe!

BFranson, April 27th, 2007 at 7:54 pm ET:

Done and done. If you haven’t done it, git ur dun!

DavidDalka, April 27th, 2007 at 9:11 pm ET:

Done.

That is on my wishlist too, please add me as you add SEL. Thanks.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DavidDalka

Jack, April 27th, 2007 at 10:09 pm ET:

That gigantic RSS button is HIlarious! I thought something was seriously wrong with my display for a second.

I subscribed when this site was just a baby. I remember it like it was a few months ago!

I’m totally stealing that RSS button - and sending over some friends.

justinph, April 28th, 2007 at 1:06 am ET:

You know you can get vector versions of the feed icon at http://www.feedicons.com/. Pixelation = pain.

feedthebot, April 28th, 2007 at 3:27 am ET:

I’m sorry, what were you saying? I couldn’t hear you because that button is so #&*@ing big.
If anyone asked me anything right now, I would probably say “orange”.
I made a history of SEO using Bloom County characters (Bill the cat, Opus etc.) you might get a kick out of.

GaryTheScubaGuy, April 28th, 2007 at 7:23 am ET:

And thank you to the 10,000 that have made this 5 month old site a 7/10…incidentally the same as Matt’s :o)…..withing just 5 months.

Rick Klau, April 28th, 2007 at 7:47 am ET:

Hey Danny - Thought you’d get a kick out of my slight tweak to your feed icon. Might help in the subscriber drive:

http://www.rklau.com/tins/archives/2007/04/27/subscribe-to-sel-or-the-dog-gets-it.php

Good luck. ;)

DavidDalka, April 28th, 2007 at 7:55 am ET:

Now, now Rick, won’t the PETA folks that are friends of the Naperville Democrats get their feathers all ruffled at this graphic?

Wait, maybe that isn’t a problem, you are the only Democrat in Naperville, right? ;)

SmartArsery, April 28th, 2007 at 6:40 pm ET:

Oh, the giant RSS button thing is so old.

http://davidrothman.net/2006/11/16/worlds-biggest-rss-button/

GaryTheScubaGuy, April 28th, 2007 at 7:18 pm ET:

typical

Danny Sullivan, April 29th, 2007 at 2:04 pm ET:

Yep, I’ve seen the big RSS button thing before. Didn’t mean to suggest it was new! Now a big subscriber drive, that might be new. If not, the main point is we’re pushing for it here with our readers. We have lots of new people who come to Search Engine Land for the first time, so I’m wanting to do more to remind them of our feeds and newsletters.

Rod, April 30th, 2007 at 1:35 am ET:

Danny, I’ve followed your lead, and was subscribed to your feed already!

http://techfold.com/2007/04/30/subscribe/

Marek Wawrzyniak, April 30th, 2007 at 6:25 pm ET:

Danny,
I did that a looooooong time ago! ;) I like the idea with the big icon. I am so doing it on my blog today, and yes, I will give you some link love, as always.

Thanks

Marek (jazyfko)

Ryan Lash, April 30th, 2007 at 10:51 pm ET:

uncle, uncle!

mollermarketing, June 13th, 2007 at 6:58 pm ET:

Great post. I’ve done this too. Got the idea from Marek Wawrzyniak, he got it from you. It’s really helped me get more subscriptions to my blog. Thanks for the idea!

http://mollermarketing.com/2007/06/01/why-is-it-important-to-subscribe-to-a-blog/

I subscribed to your feed too.

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