9. RSS Feeds

I have talked about the significance of RSS feeds on this Blog Critique post and the WordPress - From Install to Pimped Out post before. So let me summarize the key points here.

Thanks to RSS and feed readers it’s become common-place that your blog’s content gets read from a source other than your website. Because of this, you should optimize your feeds. Here are my recommendations:

• Some people estimate that half their bandwidth goes to RSS feeds. Let FeedBurner take the hit for you by offloading your feeds to FeedBurner. Try the FeedBurner Feed Replacement plugin. This plugin will detect all ways to access your feed and redirect them to FeedBurner so you can track every possible subscriber.
• Enable FeedBurner’s FeedFlare feature - It’s located under the Optimize tab once logged into FeedBurner. FeedFlare allows you to place a footer at the bottom of each post with such choices as to Digg this post or to add to Technorati or del.icio.us. FeedFlare is certainly worth checking out.
• In the WordPress Admin Panel, under Options - Reading, make sure the ‘Full text’ radio button for Feed Syndication is ticked.