Blog Maintenance Checklist #4: Check Your RSS Feed
/Every blog has a RSS feed. It’s just one way your readers can keep up-to-date on the happenings of your blog. Get in the habit of checking your RSS feeds every 3 months or so. Ideally, you should be subscribed to your RSS Feed to make sure it works correctly. Here are some specific things to check:
- Check to make sure your RSS feeds are working properly. Check on several different clients, including Google Reader and a desktop client. Sometimes feeds can work in one reader but not another.
- Make sure that people can find your RSS feed by typing your site’s URL into their RSS reader. Don’t make people scour your site for a specific RSS link in order to subscribe.
- If you have ads that are suppose to appear in your RSS feed, make sure they do.
- If you have a special message that is suppose to show in your RSS feed, make sure it does.
- If you have social media links in your RSS feed, make sure they work.
If something isn’t quite working with your RSS feeds, you want to know sooner rather than later. A lot people only read blogs through RSS feeds and you don’t want to lose any readers, especially over an issue that can easily be fixed.