Ok I’ll get straight to the point – I eat in the bathroom.  Sometimes in my car, too.

You see, I’m part of a growing group of folks who carry the Internet everywhere they go. Between the iPhone, PDAs and other Internet-enabled devices, getting online is no longer something you need to visit the library to do.

For instance: Every night my wife asks me to take her up to the tanning salon, and I do.  While she goes in, gets naked and scorches her skin, I sit in the truck and read interesting RSS feeds with my Treo via Google Reader.  It’s a nice 20 or so minutes alone where I can catch up on some of my favorite SEO bloggers.

You’ve Got to Make It Easy to Get to Your Content

My cellphone’s  interface isn’t the best, and those buttons are mighty tiny to push, so I prefer not to push more than I have to.  So I’d prefer to click and get straight to the full text, not read a small portion and then have to click 1 for the original post.  Three clicks just to read what you’re blabbering about?

What’s even worse is feeds like Sphinn’s Top Ten.  At first I thought – wow, cool – all the good stuff on one page.  Then I started to read them on the Treo, and what a headache.  First I get the summary feed, which upon clicking takes me to the sphinn Top-Ten page (full of summaries) where I have to click it again.  Then it takes me to the Sphinn page where (once again) there’s the description, some comments, and oh – a link to the actual post.

Your feed should not be this difficult to get to.  People subscribed to read your content, get it to them immediately.

Offer Multiple Feeds

Since you already know how important a blog is to your business, you must also understand that providing a convenient way for people to read your blog is just as important.  What’s the point of posting if no one can read it?

I suggest to my clients that they offer multiple feeds on their website – a summary feed, and a full text feed.

A summary feed is a RSS feed that contains the first 30 or so words of your blog post.  It’s quick to download, and people can decide quickly whether or not they want to read the rest of your post.  The biggest con is that it requires the person to click and download the full post.  When you’ve got limited time, a slow connection, or a small phone, this may not be the best choice.

A full text feed contains the entire text of every post.  This is a great option for those (like me) who prefer to download once and not have to click (and wait) to read the rest.

SEO Impact on Multiple Feeds

There are no real SEO impacts by offering more than one feed.  The entire point is to make it convenient to all of your readers.

Setting Up Multiple Feeds

There are numerous ways to do this, I’m not going into all of them.  Personally, I use FeedBurner’s services.  I set up multiple accounts for each blog, one with full feeds and one with summaries.  Then I link to both of those feeds in my blog, therefore offering my first time readers the option of how they’d like to consume my content.

Make it Easy

As I said before, the point is to make it easy for people to read the content of your website/blog.  Sites or links that require several clicks will send your visitors away to other, more convenient sites (your competitors).  Don’t let that happen.