Blogussion » pageviews

Very Straightforward Methods to Draw Traffic Back to Old Posts

Alex — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:26:31 +0000

As much time as it takes to write a great post on your blog and get some attention from it – it disappears. That amazing post that was so well off just moves on from the front page and goes off to page two…three….and sooner or later it is buried so far no one remembers it!

That is a major problem for all blogs, and one that is not always given much attention to. Keeping old posts alive and in the loop can really bring a lot more traffic to your blog than you think. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it can’t still bring in traffic to your blog!

There are a lot of posts here on Blogussion that are buried pages back that I would love to still have on the front page of the blog. I can’t just do that, because the newer posts on the blog wouldn’t get noticed this way. So, I came up with a few ideas of my own that can hopefully solve this issue and get older posts viewed by my readers again. Ideas that are going to be implemented here very shortly!

Numbered Page Navigation

Okay, so I included this as part of my 5 Improvements, 5 minutes post and a lot of you seemed to react the same towards it. Basically, if you look at the bottom of the homepage here on Blogussion – you will see a a numbered list of all of our pages of posts, opposed to the standard “previous” and “next post” links.

Not only is this useful for better page navigation, and some have even argued for SEO benefits – but it will make getting to older content easier. With a numbered navigation, a lot more possibilities open up as to where someone might end up reading on your blog.

The plugin I use on my blogs to display the numbered pages is called WP Page Numbers. In the comments of “5 Improvements, 5 minutes,” a reader pointed out an alternative to the plugin called WP-Pagenavi. Do you guys have any preference between the two plugins?

Keep your Popular Posts Popular

Do you list the most popular posts on your blog? If you do, then great work! If not, I advise you get a list of your popular posts up on your blog as soon as possible!

I like to have a list of the top posts on my blogs because it gives newer visitors a taste of some of my best content. If you notice in the sidebar here I have done that, and any other blog I have designed does the same.

You have to make sure your popular posts are very visible on your page. My best advice to keep them “above the fold.” In web design, “the fold” is what the user sees before they have to start scrolling down the page. Because it is so hard to impress visitors at first glance, you have to put your best content above that fold.

A popular place to show the most popular posts on blogs is in the sidebar. I keep them there, and thousands of others do too. Place them as high up in sidebar as you can so when someone visits your site, the first thing they see is your best content.

If you have banner ads high up in your sidebar, I strongly advice you push them down or remove them from your sidebar and replace them with your popular posts list. That is exactly what I did when I talked about the negative effects of banner ads on my community, and I do not regret it at all.

Try this at home: If you do have poor performing banner ads on your blog, try removing them and in place of them put your list of most popular posts. Leave it there for about a week and check to see if you see any changes in pageviews on the posts listed. I almost guarantee you that they will get viewed more.

“Stick” posts to the front page

WordPress has a new feature which I believe was released in version 2.7 called Sticky Posts. Basically, it’s an option you select in your posts panel and for whatever post you activate it for – that post will always be on top of your blog and never be pushed down the page by newer posts.

This is a truly great option as you can get a post from months back that may be extremely valuable and have it hanging out on your homepage for all of your newer visitors to check out.

I find that the sticky posts option and the teasers option in Thesis work great together. Since you can fit more posts on a single page with teasers, you can make multiple posts sticky and still keep new posts visible.

I’m not going to lie here, I actually got this idea from the marketing genius Marko Saric who uses this technique to keep his older, but extremely informative articles up top for his newer audiences to see. Don’t think it’s a smart move? This, and some other techniques contributed to Marko getting 200,000 visitors in his first year of blogging. Way to go man!

Create a list of YOUR favorite articles

Just like listing the most popular posts on your blog, a section where you pick out your favorite articles can work very well for getting older posts read.

Some of my best, most well received posts are sitting in the archives of this blog collecting dust. I hate the idea of that, so later this week (coming along with the design refresh…yes you heard it here first folks) there will be a big change to that and my older articles will get read.

If you’re unsure of what I am suggesting here, check out the homepage of ProBlogger. He picked out his favorite posts on his blog and he organized them into a little list on his blog. I’m sure those posts do very well on his blog now, and of course are buried back dozens and dozens of pages.

Quickfire tips

I always love this little section! I have already broken 1,000 words in this article and don’t want to explain each and every idea I had in full depth, so here are some more quick tips for you:

Internal Linking – I linked to a couple of my past posts in this article. If you are reading this blog for the first time, chances are you never read those articles. Hopefully with the anchor text I used to show the link, you got interested and maybe opened the link in a new tab to read right after this post!
Link to similar posts – At the end of each post, in your post footer, add a list of posts that are similar. You can do it inside your article, or you can put all of your trust into a plugin and have that generate similar posts for you.
Add a search bar – Search bars are probably more valuable then you think. All people need to do is type in a keyword, and can automatically get linked to dozens of posts with that keyword in it.
Archives page – Most bloggers have an archive page already. If your blog in particular doesn’t have one, think about adding one. When you really think about it, your archives page is really the best gateway to your older posts.
Create a sneeze page – A sneeze page is a page you create and list your favorite posts, or posts you think are very valuable. Darren Rowse explains it great as a challenge in his 31 Days to Better Blogging challenge.
We have a sneeze page if you would like to see a great example of what one might be. It’s part of our From Planning to Earning guide, and we have created our sneeze page in our blogging guide section of the guide.

Just trying to keep your blog tidy

I hope you guys enjoyed this article. What are your tips for keeping old posts in the loop? Is there anything you would add on to anything I mentioned in this post? Let me hear all about them in the comments!

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5 Ways you are Unknowingly Harming Your Posts

Alex — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:00:44 +0000

It’s common that once you start reading around the blogosphere, you will find trends that others have been partaking in on their blogs and you may want to get in on it. You learn things people are doing to make their blog better, and more “error free” if you will.

On blogs just like this one, writing tips are provided to help you become a better writer. The typical tip would usually consist of big trends that are going on around every blog. Tips like “use short paragraphs when you write,” “write about multiple topics,” and of course, posts consisting of fixing common writing problems.

If you have been blogging for a while, you should probably have a rough idea of what things you should and should not do while writing a blog post. But believe it or not, whether you know it or not, there are still quite a few things you have on your blog that are hurting it that you don’t realize.

While no blogger is perfect when it comes to writing, I think some of the things I point out below will help some people tidy up their posts a little bit and really do some thinking about every aspect of their writing.

1. Putting a date on your posts

A post published in 2006 that still has relevancy today. How many would read it with that date on it still?

A few weeks ago, I decided that it would be best to remove the dates on all of the posts here at Blogussion. A few people had actually asked me why I did it, and I have been trying to answer it in a blog post for a while now. Here’s my answer.

Over time, dates make blog posts seem unappealing to others. Search engine traffic, which should be a large source of your traffic stream had a huge impact on my decision to do this. When people go on Google and search for a keyword, they hit a blog post that may have been written December 2008. They see the date on it, and just because it’s old – it looks out of date. Maybe the content was out of date, and maybe it wasn’t. The posts I try to write here are timeless, meaning they will always be relevant.

So with search engine traffic hopefully being a large source of traffic for you, is it really worth people seeing old content, but leaving just because it was posted months ago?

If you use the Thesis theme, removing the date from your byline is extremely simple. Just navigate to the Thesis Options page, and toggle off the option to display dates in your byline.

If you don’t use Thesis, look for a line similar to this one in your index.php and single.php file and remove it:

2. Take better care of your first paragraph

Your first paragraph is your most important paragraph in your article. Besides having a great headline to peak someone’s interest, your opener needs to be just as interesting and as attention grabbing as your headline.

Developing a hook, or something you have to say that is very interesting is important. Usually a hook is one sentence, and just has something that grabs a readers attention. They’re not easy to create, but they are incredibly important.

If there are any paragraphs you want to keep short in your post, it’s the opening one. Get to the point immediately in it, and keep it short. Have fun with it, but don’t go over the top.

One thing that makes an opening paragraph look great are drop caps, or a big first letter. It makes the paragraph look a lot more appealing, and very professional. I use it on all of my blogs since I use Thesis, and I think it just makes the posts look even more beautiful. I explained how to create and use a drop cap in a past post on HTML tags you can use to enhance your post structure.

3. The More Tag

I am still debating with myself as to which is better: using the more tag, or not. Each side comes with its own benefits, and disadvantages. I will not say that using the more tag is bad, or good. Here are the arguments for both sides:

Using the More tag

Creates less of a scrollbar on your page allowing more people to see more post excerpts.
It gets users clicking on more pages of your blog, and hopefully learning more.
Creates more hype around the post, and if your introduction is good enough – you will get the “Continue Reading this post” link clicked a lot more.

Excluding the More Tag

The full content is shown on the page requiring no clicking and potentially more views.
More links can get clicked within your post, potentially a big boost for affiliate marketers, or if you just link to old posts a lot.
Creates a large amount of scrolling on the page which may not be ideal.

So both sides address one main issue: readability. I won’t say that the more tag harms your blog, but one or the other may be better for you. What are your thoughts?

4. Your post structure is too weak

The key to good readability is structure. You have to balance out your posts between paragraphs and headings. Know when to use an unordered list and a numbered list. Large blocks of text are very unappealing, and unless divided by headings, bullets or other styles – won’t get read much.

There is also a thing as going overboard on your different post styles. It’s easy to use too large of a headline for a small block of text when creating a large list. It’s all about balancing things out, and if it gets too crazy, your readers will find it very difficult to read your posts and will stop reading them altogether.

5. Weak Post Footer

The information you put after your post is surprisingly important for the performance of your post. If you don’t know what a post footer is, just finish reading this article, scroll down a tiny bit and you will hit some information like “post highlights” and “recent posts.” That is a post footer, and it is very important to your blog.

A good post footer should contain the following pieces of information:

A place to subscribe to the RSS feed, follow you on Twitter or just stay connected with you in some form.
A box that has information about the author. Who you are, what you like, etc.
A box with posts related to the article so people can read about similar topics and learn more about something.
Buttons to share the post on social networks or other sites. Here we use the Tweetmeme plugin, and ShareThis.

Resources for creating a nice post footer:

In “4 Ways I customized my Thesis theme,” I went over how to create a Blogussion like post footer. It is very easily adapted to non Thesis themes as well.
Matt Langford described how he made his social media box on his theme in his latest blog post.

Did you know?

Did you have any idea about these possible mistakes you were making on your blog? If not, I hope you take them into consideration as you may see some great little improvements on your blog.

I hope you enjoyed the post, see you next time!

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