John Chow aRSSed for it

John Chow self proclaimed epitome of evil (not part of the axis of evil) is asking for reviews of his site. So in fine RSS tradition we will take a look at how an 'A' list blogger uses RSS.

One of the first things you notice about John's blog is that he places a link to his feed above the fold and at the top of the right navigation. John has also specified that he publishes full feeds and displays his subscriber count via the Feedburner counter.

Additionally at the top of his blog are a subscribe to link for both his blog posts and separately the comments for the blog. The site is also has one click feed subscription allowing you to easily add John's feed to your reader.

The RSS effect

I would say the RSS placement is optimal on this blog and with a very high readership of mostly web savvy readers I would have thought his RSS subscriber count would be higher than it currently reads. If you look at Problogger there subscriber count is much higher with not a proportionally greater amount of traffic.

A few thing s you can do to encourage new readers.

• Subscription button above the fold.
• Display your feed counter.
• One click feed enable your site.
• Use the feed icon.

Although making these changes is no guarantee of increased RSS traffic most webmasters should benefit from making these relatively simple changes.