RSS feeds are a considerably excellent addition to any website, preexisting or in development. RSS helps to increase your quantity of readers, and how frequently they return. Though RSS feeds are an important feature for your website, don’t rely solely on them to help your site. How many subscribers you get will depend upon your brand of website. There are certain groups of people who are very savvy in the RSS kingdom, and others who would care less.

Supplying as many options as possible for your readers/users is always a good idea. Not so many that they get confused, but just enough where they don’t get frustrated. For instance, providing more than one way to get to the same spot. Linking an image and a title, or maybe providing your navigation menu at the top and the bottom of your site, in the same order and design, so people can familiarize. Once people get comfortable and find consistency, they move through your site quicker and see a lot more, all without getting frustrated and leaving. Oh, and guess what, they’ll likely return!

There will always be the one-timers on your site. They come, they see, they click, they leave. It can’t be helped if you’re supplying information they are simply not interested in. But for those who are interested in your site, you can help promote your site by giving them an RSS option. Not only could they add your website to their RSS reader, but you could supply an email update for them as well. Even though there are people not that into RSS feeds, chances are they have an email, and RSS feed or not, they will connect with an email subscription (which coincidentally can be set up through your RSS feed sign-up on FeedBurner). As Michael Gray calls himself and other people who utilize RSS feeds the most, if you’re not a “techno-weenie”, you’ll likely not be interested in a feed subscription, so emailing is the way to go when keeping in contact with everyone else.

So, even though RSS feeds are almost a necessity for any website (in particular WordPress sites), don’t rely entirely on it to promote your content. You’ll have many people interested if you’re doing it right, but you should come up with other methods of bringing people back for more. Email is always a good idea. Of course you should always keep the basics of website maintenance in mind. If you keep your website well updated, then when people return in a couple days, there is fresh content and they don’t feel like they’re wasting their time. Very important to not your site be run down. Neglect doesn’t just kill plants, it also kills websites.