Improved WordPress RSS Feeds

The Better Feed WordPress plugin has been just the thing I have been looking for to improve the value of my RSS feed and to provide higher user interaction between my feed and my website.

RSS feed readers and web surfers are truly two different audiences. I have been looking for ways to help feed readers interact more with the main website. With this plugin I am able to add the following three lines to the bottom of my feed:

• The first line contains a copyright notice, a link to the permalink, and a link to any comments.
• Each feed reader is different. While all link back to the original post, the link is often encoded with their own linking structure. Including a straight, pure permalink allows users to easily copy the link without any included garbage.
• The comments link indicates how many comments have been placed on the post. Before, if a reader was curious whether anyone has left a comment, they needed to actually go out to the original post and look. Now, they can easily see if any are there. If they are interested in reading the comments, they can easily click to them.
• The second line includes links to bookmark the post via del.icio.us or Spurl. This not only serves the reader by providing them a means to easily bookmark a post, but can also lead to extra traffic. Every time a page of mine gets bookmarked on delicious or spurl I see a tiny bump in traffic. Tiny bumps mean extra exposure. Extra exposure means potentially more readers. Etc.!
• The third line includes the following statement “Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under (link to category).” The category is filled in with whatever category I have placed the post. If the reader wants to know about about a topic, it is easy for them to do so.

I am also toying with the idea of adding a “featured article” line. I would link to a monthly featured article on my site. I think having three extra lines per post is enough. So before I add a fourth line, I will wait and see how well the current lines perform.

If you want to see this plugin in action, add my feed to your RSS reader! (wink wink!)