What’s the biggest challenge the business blogger faces today? As we talked about in a recent post – it’s the lack of accurate RSS traffic tracking. With the click-and-mortar business coaching we do over at the Business Owners Coaching Club, we’ve seen the lack of syndication analytics as one of the main stumbling blocks for small business owners who want to start leveraging business blogs.

Right now we don’t have much choice. There are some serious compromises that need to be made with the few solutions that are available right now. For example, with FeedBurner you loose the SEO advantage of having your own domain in your RSS feed. (Honestly, that’s the only reason you don’t see a FeedBurner feed on any of our blogs.)

But I’m excited about FeedBurner none-the-less because of the experiential advantage they have. They’re in the RSS traffic-tracking race and at the front of the pack too. From what I understand, Dick Costolo over at FeedBurner has said they’re feverishly working on upgrades that will track user actions. Looking forward to that!

But now there’s another light at the end of the RSS optimization tunnel. (And no … it’s not a train bearing down on us at full steam. :)) There are some real exciting things happening – amazingly fast – in the world of RSS traffic tracking and monitization.

So what’s going on, and why should you be excited?

Well, Robin Good recently posted an audio interview with Stuart Watson from Syndicate IQ about the testing they’re doing with their Trigon Engine. And what Stuart talks about is nothing short of amazing.

The short story is that the Syndicate IQ engine tells you precisely how, when, and where your syndicated content is being consumed. It will give you the true number of subscribers to your RSS feed. And it does it without having to give up your domain name in your RSS feed.

How’s it work?

Stuart is a little protective of the in-depth explanation (can’t blame him there.) But basically what Syndicate IQ’s Trigon engine does is generate a unique URL in real time for each subscriber. It’s such a comprehensive approach that it even works in browser-based RSS aggregators.

All that’s required is a simple insert of HTML into your RSS feed if you’re willing to cede your domain. If you want to maintain your domain in the feed, Robin explains that there is some config work you need to do on your servers. I say, who cares about an hour or two of work if it’s going to bring the RSS syndication analytics we starving for.

Think about it for a moment. If you have a unique RSS feed URL for each user, it’s a snap to track and monitor exactly what a user will do with your feed. The time, the day, their content preferences, and clickthroughs – they’re all right there in plain sight.

With just one click you’ll be able to see what posts are pulling best. The time of day that brings human eyeballs vs. aggregators. What day of the week posts are actually being read. You get the idea, especially if you have experience with traditional web analytics. This is really exciting stuff for RSS traffic tracking!

Syndication analytics are on the way!

Apparently Stuart and his team over in Dallas are really putting their hearts and heads into this effort. Syndicate IQ seems to be all about comprehensive syndication analytics. From Robin’s interview it looks like this solution will give you:

• Basic unique visitors
• Page views
• Public traffic through the site
• Anonymous users
• Percentage breakdown across multiple feeds
• and more!

Further development holds even more to look forward to and be excited about including – personalization, micro segmenting of subscribers, and optimization. It seems like this could be the perfect companion for the business blogger who understands Permission Marketing.

What’s the hitch?

Well – right now the main drawback is that Syndicate IQ is not yet available to the public. It’s currently being tested with high volume suppliers of content in vertical channels.

But it’s only a matter of time before we have a number of solutions to choose from. Pheedo is at work on a tracking solution. And as I mentioned earlier, FeedBurner is pushing ahead full steam as well.

When I say “time,” don’t think years. Think months. Like I mentioned in one of our How to Master Business Blogging classes the other day – I think 60-90 days and we’re going to have some type of workable solution. I could be overly optimistic … but hey – that’s a much better way to live right!

John-Paul Micek
Click-and-Mortar Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club
http:/www.AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com