On Sunday, I published a post basically recapping on 20 of my favorite posts on Blogussion. The post received some decent attention, but what’s more important about it is what attention the posts I linked to received.
All I did was take time to round up some older posts on Blogussion and link them in one post. I wrote a post about my older posts that can be easily found by scrolling through the archives here. It was something that was so easy to do, yet had so much positive results!
It had so many benefits, that I want to share what happened specifically and even encourage you do take my advice and do a post like this on your blog. This will only be useful if you have a lot of posts (I’d say somewhere around 100 minimum), so if you just started then this won’t really help right now, but down the lines as your blog grows of course.
The point of that post was to simplify the way older posts can be reached. All of the posts listed in that collection were posts from months back that don’t get as much attention as they probably deserve. By bringing these posts up again, you will have an impact on two different groups in your community.
1. The Impact on the “Newer” Community Members
If you post a recent post about older posts on your blog, the newer community members of your blog will be more likely to read them, and even encourage them to start digging into your blog more and looking for more amazing posts.
If you can hook these newer readers (even first time visitors) to your old posts, think of how more interested they could be in your newer articles! Chances are, you have improved your writing techniques since the older posts you linked to, so that can definitely sway someones opinion on your blog too.
2. The Impact on the “Older” Community Members
Surprisingly enough, that recap post showed some of the longer term viewers of my blog content they’ve never seen before. I received comments from some Blogussion frequents like Simon & Jake who have been reading and commenting here for quite some time now and have missed out on some of the articles listed!
The Exposure Benefits
So it turned out that a few of these articles got more exposure than just being posted on the blog. A few of those articles got some retweets on Twitter, got some stumbles on StumbleUpon, and even a few Delicious Bookmarks.
I can almost guarantee you that none of those posts would have gotten those extra stumble or retweets if I hadn’t brought them back to the top of the blog for a little while. As bad as that sounds, it’s probably true.
My Next Day Traffic Pattern
The post was published late in the day, and didn’t much attention until sometime in the next day. But if I look back in my statistics panel, the day after it was published I had a big increase in traffic.
Here is a little graph of that growth:
What made the jump though? It’s pretty significant in my eyes, because I more than doubled the amount of Unique Visitors to the blog, and increased the number of Pageviews by about 500+.
The spikes in traffic came from, like I said, social media sites like Twitter, StumbleUpon and Delicious. On any normal day at Blogussion, the most recent post will be getting retweeted and stumbled. But when I brought these older posts to the front and the recap post gained popularity, they became more active on social media sites, hence the jump in overall traffic (which is still coming in from the same sources as of this post).
Tips For Building These Lists
To leave you off, I want to share with you a few tips I came up with that you should keep in mind if you choose to create a post like I did.
- Make sure the posts you include are pretty aged
- DON’T choose popular posts
- Choose a post you don’t interlink or even bring up much
Anyone can click to go to page two on your blog to see a post. Try to include a post from months back, that are buried in your archives.
Look at it this way: your older posts are from the period (the beginning) in which you were most inclined to write top quality content, right? So, with your aged up blog, those “top quality articles,” or “pillar articles” may have gotten lost. Those are the kinds of items you want in your list!
Popular posts are the posts that have had the most exposure on your blog. Chances are you have a list of popular posts somewhere on your blog, like the sidebar for instance. The objective of your post is to show people posts they probably haven’t seen before, so it makes sense not to show them your popular posts!
Even look at my 20 posts, not a single “popular post” up there.
Interlinking is just mentioning other posts in a post in your articles. Interlinking and “link loving” yourself are different though, as “loving yourself” is purely dedicated to your past posts.
The posts that have received the less attention out of all your other blog posts are the ones that are ideal for this type of post!
What Are You Going To Do?
Did my little extra traffic jump convince you to do a post like this on your blog? Let me know how you feel about this idea in the comments!
21 Discussions
Excellent tips! Thanks for posting them Alex!
Monty | Make Money Online’s last blog post..How can forums help you?
I thought it was a great idea! At first it seemed a little lazy on your part, but I quickly realized the purpose of the post. According to those stats, it was obviously beneficial to your site. But it also benefited your readers quite a bit too. As I mentioned before, that was my favorite post! Thanks for sharing the results. I think you should do it about every 6 months.
Nick Tart’s last blog post..Setting Up Your Blog: With Some Security
The idea was born out of laziness, but it actually turned out to be very successful in my opinion.
Six months sounds like a pretty good balance of these posts actually, if I remember in six months then I’ll totally go for it! :p
Hey ! Alex you really rock with this idea. Never heard these things before. You rock wiht this post man. I loved the fact of not choosing popular posts. This blog is now becoming an inspiration for people Alex. Great job !~ !
Harish | Blogging Kid’s last blog post..List Building – Why And How ?
Thanks for the really nice comment Harish. I don’t think this is really an innovative idea as I’m sure someone has done it before, but it is a beneficial idea!
Great idea. I am coming up on 100 posts and I think I will create a “best of” and link to 10-20 posts to commemerate that.
Tycoon Blogger’s last blog post..Another Twitter Follower Tool
Cool idea. I saw on another blog that the blogger used their 100th post to create a list 100 item deep. I think it was really cool!
The linking is something of an implied call to action. A random searcher who landed on a page would probably not check out another page without the implied recommendation. I always try to tailor my popular pages to drive traffic to another page.
DisMarks’s last blog post..Disney Podcast Synopses: 6-6-09
Cool post Alex
It’s something that I’ve started doing (and intend to do more often), and I’ve already noticed the benefits. Even from one tiny little link to an old post, I received two additional comments on it.
As my blog is quite new I can’t do anything like your Top 20 posts as most the posts would be on there (lol), but it seems like a great idea for the more established blog.
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..4 Small Changes That Can Make A Big Difference To Your Blog
I guess you couldn’t, you only have about 50 posts right?
Nope, I only have 37, but I’ll be writing the thirty eighth in a matter of minutes
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..4 Small Changes That Can Make A Big Difference To Your Blog
Interesting tips.. I dont have “popular post” on my blog. Instead am using random post plugin on my sidebar which shows a random selection of 10 or more post and changing them at every hit or page refresh. In this way i brought my older post to the front page and saving them from doom:) Simple.
Random posts are awesome, I have it on the archives page here. But, on my other blog, Asnio I really highlight random blog posts in the sidebar. It’s a really good idea in some cases.
Good thinking though, I don’t think enough people use the random posts plugin enough.
Looks like I have some linking to do! I like this idea a lot for multiple reasons. First of course is the traffic and other then that it is a great seo tool to build an internal link structure which is good for pagerank and traffic.
I am amazed with your stats. You guys are getting great traffic!
Seth W’s last blog post..How to Get Your Blog From PageRank 0 to PR 4 in 3 Months
Great post! That’s awesome. I’ll definitely try this. Got to get quite a few more post on my blog first though
Caden Grant’s last blog post..Wordpress Plugins To Increase Your RSS Subscribers
I try to slip in links to other posts into new posts whenever I can.
I also used to publish a monthly post with the most popular posts of the past month, which would push them to the attention of the readers again.
Dean Saliba’s last blog post..May 2009 Blog Income Report
Great point. Are you using Thesis Theme? Your theme is very nice ^_^
Toan Nguyen Minh’s last blog post..ClickKT With New Design
Great tips Alex! One of the things I don’t like about blogs is that the content can easily be forgotten. When it moves from the front page, only a fraction of visitors check it out. It is always all about creating new content.
So doing stuff like this, that can bring your good, old posts back to the top is a very great strategy of introducing your new readers to your older articles.
Marko Saric’s last blog post..Top 33 silliest search queries people have found my blog with
wow brilliant idea! i never thought of linking to older post right inside the blog post. what i really do is to write view related post at the end of the post.
Anyway thanks i gained additional knowledge!
Alex, great ideas! I always try to link back to an older post, but I like the idea of doing a list. thanks for the tip.
Brad Officer´s last blog ..Housing Market Cycles
Awesome Brad! I am sure it will bring you some benefits.