Adding your feed to Google Webmaster Tools is a fairly recent addition. SEO-wise, how does this help by having your feed submitted? It let’s Google know you’re staying fresh.

Like using the WordPress XML sitemaps plugin for normal sitemaps, it’s also good to submit your feed. This will let Google know immediately when you have new post.

Unfortunately, Feedburner has a bug in it and if you’re redirecting your feed to Feedburner to analyze your subscribers, Google Webmaster Tools will throw an error.

The method I’m using to fix this is by creating a separate feed just for Google Webmaster Tools to use. I’m using a plugin called Feed Wrangler to do this. Feed Wrangler will let you create as many custom feeds as you want with custom names, and these feeds won’t be redirected to Feedburner. So note, you shouldn’t create a custom feed and advertise it, if you want Feedburner to analyze your subscribers, but this is great for private uses like Google Webmaster Tools.

To create your own feed, go to Settings » Feed Wrangler, then create your feed. Here’s an example of what it will look like.

After you’re done, with that, submit your feed to Google Webmaster Tools and Google will now have access to your feed to know exactly which content is fresh.

This isn’t critical for SEO efforts, but it’s a nice little addition.