The biggest flaw of many bloggers is their inability to market a post. We all know the common marketing strategies – social media, blog commenting, forum posting. These are all ways to bring in some traffic, sure. But, they require a lot of effort to work effectively.
It is perceived by most bloggers that to find a successful marketing strategy, you have to look outside your blog. You will not find much traffic if you never leave your blog to do some marketing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get traffic by using methods to market articles within your own blog.
Just like finding inspiration for articles, you can market articles without even leaving your own blog. This isn’t the only marketing strategy you should come up with, but the ideas I am about to suggest will basically help keep people who find your blog on another site on your blog finding new content.
Increase Interlinking
Interlinking in posts is huge. Not only is it useful for the SEO of your articles, but it can help direct traffic to older posts very effectively. Read about the significance of interlinking ?
To interlink, you just have to find a post on your blog that relates to what you are writing about, and then create relevant anchor text to describe it. It’s good for SEO because you can target a specific keyword and link to it on many different pages over and over again, which can help with how that article ranks for the keyword.
If you can make the link you create interesting enough, people will click it and go to that article and read that. If you linked back to older posts in that article, the chain can continue and you have people reading through dozens of articles in no time. Think of how this method could work for you if you linked back to a lot of past articles in a post that goes viral on Twitter or Digg for example.
Put the Spotlight on the best
I’m all for keeping traffic flowing to old posts, and sometimes the posts we write months back are actually our better pieces. They just often go unrecognized because, well, they’re buried by all of your newer articles.
The more quality content the readers of your blog stay, the more inclined they will be to stay with your blog and even go out of their way to share it with others. The best way to do that is to put your best articles right in front of their faces, not pump out a lot of mediocre articles. You can do that in two ways.
1. A “Favorite posts” section
If you check out the sidebar here on Blogussion, you will notice a section that lists our favorite blog articles. These are, in our opinion, our best articles and we want our readers to be able to have quick access to all of that amazing content.
This method of creating a favorites post page has proven to be very effective in getting traffic to some of our old posts. Whether or not you want to set up a category of your favorite posts or write a post about your favorite articles is up to you, but any way you do it will bring in some huge benefits.
If you want to create a list like we have in our sidebar, read our tutorial on creating a favorite posts page.
2. Rotating banners
This is really to target your absolute best content and requires a little graphical work, but is very much worth it. If you would again look towards the very top of our sidebar here, you will see some banners that are in rotation that link back to other articles and pages on our blog. So basically every time someone visits a new page on our blog, a new banner shows up. If it’s interesting enough – maybe it will get clicked!
We used the Multimedia box in Thesis to create the rotation effect, but if you want to create something similar – check out this article on creating rotating banner images.
Make Sharing Easy
You know those little “Retweet this” and “Digg this” buttons that go around? Yeah, they’re not just for your readers to use – you can use them too. Most of the buttons that are available now let you share on social media sites without even leaving the comfort of your own blog. Convenient, right?
Make sure that you have plenty of sharing options available. Don’t just depend on Twitter to bring you in all of your social media traffic, throw a Digg button next to your ReTweet button. But don’t stop there either.
It’s important not to throw out dozens of buttons at a time. You can use widgets like ShareThis or Sociable to make every sharing site there is compacted into one widget, or you can just weigh out your best options and only put sharing buttons of the sites that will bring you in the best traffic. Of course, you can figure these things out with experimentation, but it’s important that you don’t overwhelm your content area with sharing options.
Lists Galore
Just like your “favorite posts” list, you should be creating other lists on your blog. These kinds of lists like “popular posts,” “recent posts” or “similar posts” are all pretty effective at sending people back to past articles on your blog.
Let me give you some ideas of where you can place these other lists:
- Similar Posts
- Recent Posts
- Popular Posts
Always have a list of similar/related posts after each article. Chances are, if someone found your article through Google, they are searching for as much information as they can on one topic. So, if there is a list of posts that are similar to what they just read, they will most likely go there.
I would put a list of recent posts in all of these places: Footer, Archives page, 404 page. I think it’s very repetitive to place a list of your recent articles in the sidebar, so I wouldn’t add them there for the sake of saving space.
A list of your best posts is always great to have all over your blog. I would place this list in the sidebar since it will be on just about every single page of your blog.
These lists are pretty powerful and you can do a lot with them. Just take a look around our blog and how we use them. They are very effective at driving traffic to posts all around your blog.
What’s your battle plan?
How do you market articles in your own blog? If you haven’t discovered the power of self-promotion yet, then you have been missing out on a lot of possible readers. Take what I suggested here seriously. I can vouch for everything I have said in this article because they are all techniques I use here and they have all proven to work very well for driving traffic to posts.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?Really good post, Alex!
I agree that getting traffic to older posts is really important. After all, doesn’t it seem a bit pointless to spend all that time writing them, formatting them (and so on) just for the sake of a day or two in the top spot in your blog?! Once posts drop off the first page they’re unlikely to get much coverage, so YOU as a blog owner need to do some work to prevent that.
I hope you don’t mind me linking, but I did a post recently about the same sort of thing!
.-= Simon | Teenius´s last blog ..57 Awesome Articles To Keep You Occupied Over Christmas! =-.
I absolutely agree. Every Tuesday I do a post called, “Archive Spotlight” where I re-purpose older content. Doing so also allows me an opportunity to change up the title or add a few bits of extra goodies within the content as well.
.-= Rod Kirby´s last blog ..The Ultimate Entrepreneur Holiday Gift Guide – Books =-.
Cool Simon! So you are really bringing that old post to back to life eh?
Btw… Congrats on huge success of your competition. I was really inspiring.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Upgrade Your Mind: 5 Free Upgrades =-.
Thanks mate!
There’ll be another contest in January sometime hopefully; depends on when my new site is launched…
.-= Simon | Teenius´s last blog ..57 Awesome Articles To Keep You Occupied Over Christmas! =-.
Hey, Alex, great article man. I think it’s soooo important to optimize your blog to increase traffic and the “depth” of a reader visit. Tons of great advice here. I’d also add – keeping good relations with other bloggers and having them comment and share your articles too. If you’re already connected with bloggers then you’ll be going a short distance away from your blog but bringing the prize back to home-base. Great job sir!
.-= Rod Kirby´s last blog ..The Ultimate Entrepreneur Holiday Gift Guide – Books =-.
Definitely, the more interesting you can make any content on your blog look, the deeper and deeper people will travel into your blog. A lot of people tell me they spend 10, 20 minutes just going through this blog (hey, I think you told me the same thing :p) and I definitely think it’s because of how appealing I make my content look.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Gotta say, one excellent article. Especially the hands on tips like adding the lists to your blog.
I have been thinking for some time to start linking to other similar posts and this was a great reminder to do just that. I’m off to add a similar posts plugin.
.-= Blogging Handbook´s last blog ..Introduction to Blog Communities – Beginner Guide =-.
Similar posts is something that should come pre-added to any blog platform I think, it’s just such a useful feature!
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Awesome post Alex. It really is important and at the same time beneficial to both your blog and your visitors when you interlink within your blog. However, I’m not so sure if the “Popular Posts” section is as effective as it is meant to be because if you aren’t getting a significant amount of visitors everyday, your “Popular Posts” are simply going to be the same posts that your regular visitors would have seen mlutiple times.
I really like the “Favorites” section you mentioned and am definitely planning on implementing that in the future in my blog too because some posts, I feel like I put so much time into it and it came out so well, yet I am a little upset to see it drop down everytime I add a new post.
Eck a killer when it goes to the next page!
.-= Static´s last blog ..WordPress 2.9 Ready For Shipping =-.
What you said is true, but I feel as if they serve as something to help guide new readers and turn them into regular readers I think.
Glad you like the idea of favorite posts. It has really worked out great here, and it makes me feel better that our best stuff is being seen by our newer audiences as well.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Favorite Posts – thats a very good idea. Once my blog has 20 more article, I will use it
.-= Agent Deepak´s last blog ..List of 10 Awesome WordPress Plugins =-.
It wouldn’t hurt to start early.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
These are all terrific points and they’re points that I’m going to focus on putting into practice back at my blog. Thanks for the great ideas.
.-= Nicholas Cardot´s last blog ..Growing Our Online Success from A to Z =-.
Thanks Nick, they really work out well for us and keep comments coming in on older posts. Definitely show us some of the things you do.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Hey Alex,
LOL
Nice to hear from you again dude. To be honest, I was expecting results for the competition? I so wanna win the SMASHING Book
Back to track, Thanks for inspiring me to take some steps. I think I’ll plan things our right away. Great ideas you’ve shared here.
Another idea I’d like to add: Why not have ‘Lest read’ posts? I mean that’d be attractive, right? And soon Least Read will change coz they will receive so many hits and then we will have new least reads… which cannot happen in case of most read.
Just an idea. Are you doing a post on ‘How to launch a new blog’ any soon? I really want to hear on that subject from you.
Cheers!
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Upgrade Your Mind: 5 Free Upgrades =-.
Will have to talk to Seth about the prize! I think someone won it already though. Oh well, there is going to be another contest within the next couple of days.
That’s a good idea of putting posts that are less read than others. I’m going to have to search that and see what’s out there! But may the post was read by so few people for a reason.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
The favorite posts is a great idea! My new blog only has a few so far and they are all fav’s I guess!
Lists are good too, people seem to flock to them and can go viral if you are putting out something new!
.-= Keith @ Business3.0´s last blog ..Free or Self Hosted Blog? =-.
As you add more content, you will definitely have the urge to get your most liked posts back to the top somehow.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Thanks for the article Alex. I think doing a SWOT analysis on every part of a blog will also help optimize the blog for better performance. I will like to do a guest post about this on Blogussion
.
I had to Google “SWOT analysis,” I think that would make a great guest post as I have never heard of that!
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Right on Alex. I admire the way you reply to all your reader’s comments. It’s a great way to build trust. I posted about that on my blog recently.
.-= Kwame´s last blog ..7 Best Ways to Build Trust On Your Blog and Keep Readers Coming Back =-.
Most of your tips work very well, but what I liked most is your mention about rotating ads.
I’ve wanted to put them on my blog some time earlier, but now, as you’ve described it working, I should do that tomorrow:)
.-= iWoodpecker´s last blog ..Insane List of 140 Do Follow & Nofollow Blogs with CommentLuv 2010 =-.
They’re very cool, and they make your blog look pretty cool. They are the only kind of ads I will ever want to place on my blogs.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Great & impressive article. Each Point indicates in this are awesome they can easily help us to grow with our blog. Thanks for sharing this with us
.-= Gurpreet Singh´s last blog ..Top 3 ways using goo.gl for shortening urls =-.
Glad you like these ideas, what will you be implementing?
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Good practice! I will do the interlinking more effectively. But i have a question. Do i need to put my new post link in my older post? If yes, then there are many works to do, aren’t we? Thanks for sharing!
.-= Kok Siong Chen´s last blog ..Say No to Cancer! – 3 Approaches to Prevent Cancer =-.
It doesn’t hurt to put new links in old posts. It’s actually something I have been trying to do! But, if I were you, I would go into your oldest posts that get the most traffic and add the newer links there.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Seth all are some best practice that you mentioned here. I specially like the strategy to interlink the related post within the content. Another great strategy for to stay longer the visitors on our blog is to provide them some free ebooks. After all it is good if we provide our reader the full of resource on our blog.
Free stuff definitely makes people want to stick around, no doubt about that.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
I definitely need to pay more attention to interlinking. Good explanation, I get it now.
I recently made a Popular Posts section more noticeable on my site, and have started seeing more activity on the articles it displays. Nothing huge, but it’s still early.
.-= Chad´s last blog ..Forget All Those Folders and Stay Organized With Desktop Search. =-.
Interlinking is tough sometimes, but it can really be worth it in the end!
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
I think that “favorite posts” section is an awesome idea, it definitely will explode the old but good articles you have written overtime. Awesome idea.
I am actually right now doing nothing, well some interlinking, but otherwise I’m not. I am thinking about a method that would be good to share my old content.
I am going to make an end of year post. You know -Best of DaneBlogger 2009
.-= Mikkel “DaneBlogger” Juhl´s last blog ..Why You Comment On Other Blogs =-.
The favorite posts section has brought some life back to our old posts, and we are really happy to have added it to our blog. Some of our readers are as well.
So you’re telling me you don’t have popular posts, similar posts, etc.? You better get on that, they’re very important!
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
My plan is by creating articles in different language so I will distribute the non-English to other blogs and then the English article will be published in my blog.
.-= Reza@Blogging Guide´s last blog ..100 Adsense Tips – Part 4 =-.
That’s an interesting strategy, how has that worked out so far?
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Fantastic! What a well thought out blog post and just what I was looking for. Well done!
Great post Alex. I think it is more important in a blog to optimize proper way in order to get good ranking in search engine and drive more traffic.
So we should always optimize according to the reader view. Interlinking play major roles to keep visitor long time in our site.
When you interlink, the anchor text you choose for your links are extremely important as well for good SEO. You should always be as consistent as possible in the keywords you include in your anchor text to help the SERP for that article.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Good tips. Actually Im really starting now to incorporate those steps so to really maximize the potential of my blog and really never leave any old articles useless…
No article should go unnoticed right? These tips definitely help keep that idea true.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Interlinking not just give your old article life or boost your SEO, it also helps you to reduce bounce rate which is specially helpful for tech-blogger. I always try to give my article maximum chance to get expose. I follow blog commenting, interlinking, list article, social submission and so. And I think all this is very good way to maximize blog traffic.
.-= Arafat Hossain Piyada´s last blog ..Following Microsoft Virus Scanning Advice May Push You In Danger (Security Alert) =-.
Interlinking does have a lot of benefits, and I didn’t mention the effect on the bounce rate in the article. Glad you pointed that out, because it is very true!
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Another fantastic article! I often find myself using these techniques without even thinking about it or calling them “marketing”, but it really does work and it helps get the name of your blog out there
.-= Blogger Den´s last blog ..Best Resources To Find Free Stock Photos For Web Designers | W3Avenue =-.
You would be surprised what someone would consider a “marketing scheme” nowadays.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Before the blog era, we used to have sites there had pages that were changing time to time and the older pages were sometimes gone. Now that blogging has come into the picture, there is a way to keep the past articles still available.
It’s really very helpful to display the past posts and fav articles visible. Old does not mean they are outdated.
People have the tendency to check the date of the post and if its some months old, they skip it. Its just human nature I guess. So I think that recycling older entries is a good idea. The “Archive Spotlight” by Rod is also sounds great.
For that reason, we removed the dates on our articles. I think we are going to add them back, but to the end of the post because sometimes an article (like a a tutorial) may lose its relevancy. But I agree for the most part, that dates can really make people lost interest in reading an article.
.-= Alex´s last blog ..10 questions with 11 year old blogger, Gloson =-.
Blog comments become part of the content, and if some people comment regularly and interact with one another, a community can grow from your blog. Business Marketing
Internet and your blog is totally open road … you just have to learn which way your visitors should go and how you can change their direction.
.-= ZK @ Web Marketing Blog´s last blog ..Aweber gets even better with the New Form Generator =-.
I only have one featured post at the moment.. checking the link you gave for setting up a Favorite Posts section now ^^
.-= Michael Aulia @CravingTech´s last blog ..Razer Imperator Review =-.
Most Popular above the fold is a MUST! Some of mine stay up for MONTHS before getting replaced by others because new folks keep coming by and commenting on them, and some of those would be up even longer if I had more then 7 at a time.
Socializing my own (as well as other bloggers) articles is on the top of my “ramp up” list for 2010. However, there is a need to be careful and be sure to do it to other bloggers at the same time…too much of just your own articles can quickly get you labeled as a social spammer and even banned from some sites.
One tip on how to choose which buttons to display – survey other bloggers; the people that will be using them. This is what I did, and it worked out nicely.
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..The $10 Winner And More Good News….. =-.
I’ve just started my blog, I really need to learn how to interlink now! I guess it’s quite simple but I’m not sure how to do it – or how a certain keyword can be linked to more than one blog post (unless it is a keyword that you used as a tag word for more than one post).
Making your site easy to share is definitely critical to promoting your blog. There have been several sites that i wanted to share, but didn’t have retweet buttons for readers to use.
Also, promoting previous posts, popular posts, and related posts is critical not just for keeping people on your site, but making people want to read in the first place. I can’t stand getting to a blog and not being able to find their best stuff right away. I often judge a blog based on its most popular posts or recommended posts; if I can’t find those easily, I question the credibility of the author (especially if they are writing about how to blog/make money online).
.-= Blake @ Props Blog Reviews´s last blog ..Could Your Site Benefit More From Social Bookmarks? =-.
I am all set to get to work on creating my Favorite Posts list using rotating banners. I wonder..is there a plugin that can do the same thing?
.-= Ms. Freeman´s last blog ..5 Entrepreneurial Goals for 2010 =-.
Also…is there a plugin that helps with Inerlinking?
.-= Ms. Freeman´s last blog ..5 Entrepreneurial Goals for 2010 =-.
Great ways to do inner linking are highlight posts. Highlight your articles from the last month, quarter or year (especially effective around this time [new year]).
.-= James | Cogroll.com´s last blog ..4 Tools to Create Amazing Domain Names =-.
In addition to your interlinking suggestion, I have found that removing the time stamp of posts (as mentioned in another article) helped keep visitors jumping from interlink to interlink as they never thought a linked post was too “stale.”
.-= Chaos P. Bennu´s last blog ..Wyclef Jean X Play Cloths “Haiti Relief Effort” Tee =-.
Interlinking is something that most bloggers fail to do but it’s a very effective thing in terms of making people discover your old posts and also in terms of search engine optimization cos it’s all part of link building.
Also I think that the Favourite Posts section, and the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, and Popular Posts are all very great ways to bring your old posts back to life and market them to your readers be it old and new ones. Before I forget, I think the social bookmarking buttons are also helpful as you have stated, in terms of sharing your posts and making them go viral
.
.-= Shirley´s last blog ..27 Young Internet Entrepreneurs Who Inspire =-.
What are your thoughts on inter-linking when you know that the same post will appear on the Related Posts list. I’ve been leaving the in-post reference linked and allowing the automatically generated list to remain as well. Is this over-kill? Does the Related Post info count for SEO or does it only count when it’s part of the content?
.-= Cheryl from thatgirlisfunny´s last blog ..Results Kenny Florian Trivia Game – UFC Fight Night 21 – Florian vs Gomi =-.
I love the idea
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