Weekly Challenge - Mobilise your archive!
For this weeks task we'll be putting our archives to work for us. Most bloggers have large back catalogues of content that just sits there, not pulling its weight. So we're going to give it a kick start, and allow it to mobilise visitors to other parts of your site.
So with that in mind, this weeks task is as follows:
1. Pick the five best performing posts in your archive. Revisit them and look for ways to link to your newer content. Don't force it, you will likely find that there have been some common themes running through your blog that lend themselves well to cross-linking.
2. Schedule a time, this may be weekly or monthly depending on your posting schedule, to assess your previous posts and add links to your newer content. If you can, make this part of your blogging checklist, the list of tasks you perform before sending each post live.
Why you'll want to do this
When creating a blog post, it's common for an author to search through the archives to find related content to link to. This is an often used, and proven tactic for reducing bounce rates and keeping visitors on your blog for longer. However, bloggers tend to overlook the power of linking in the other direction. A link from an older post to a newer one is just as valid as a link in the other direction. In fact, it's likely that the older content in your blog will be better exposed to search engines and therefore, may be more likely to pick up that all important traffic.
How you'll gain
If you make this concerted effort you will notice a number of benefits. Firstly, it's a great way to see if your older content holds up today and remember, there's nothing wrong with updating anything that doesn't sit right, blog posts are living entities after all. Secondly, it serves as a very usefull way to assess how easy content is to find on your site - If you can't find it when you know what you're looking for how is anyone else. And thirdly, should you actually go back and add the appropriate links, you will notice increased page views per visit, better search engine rankings and reduced bounce rates.
If your blog is fairly new, concentrate on the second part of the challenge and try and build it into your posting schedule.
This challenge has been expanded on in this blog post.
So with that in mind, this weeks task is as follows:
1. Pick the five best performing posts in your archive. Revisit them and look for ways to link to your newer content. Don't force it, you will likely find that there have been some common themes running through your blog that lend themselves well to cross-linking.
2. Schedule a time, this may be weekly or monthly depending on your posting schedule, to assess your previous posts and add links to your newer content. If you can, make this part of your blogging checklist, the list of tasks you perform before sending each post live.
Why you'll want to do this
When creating a blog post, it's common for an author to search through the archives to find related content to link to. This is an often used, and proven tactic for reducing bounce rates and keeping visitors on your blog for longer. However, bloggers tend to overlook the power of linking in the other direction. A link from an older post to a newer one is just as valid as a link in the other direction. In fact, it's likely that the older content in your blog will be better exposed to search engines and therefore, may be more likely to pick up that all important traffic.
How you'll gain
If you make this concerted effort you will notice a number of benefits. Firstly, it's a great way to see if your older content holds up today and remember, there's nothing wrong with updating anything that doesn't sit right, blog posts are living entities after all. Secondly, it serves as a very usefull way to assess how easy content is to find on your site - If you can't find it when you know what you're looking for how is anyone else. And thirdly, should you actually go back and add the appropriate links, you will notice increased page views per visit, better search engine rankings and reduced bounce rates.
If your blog is fairly new, concentrate on the second part of the challenge and try and build it into your posting schedule.
This challenge has been expanded on in this blog post.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Simon Thomas on
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I think that's an excellent approach to take, and the two tasks do seem to fit quite nicely together. There is a related posts plugin available for wordress but the site that used to host it (w-a-s-a-b-i) has been down for some time. I did see mention of a new version for 2.3, but I haven't tried it out yet.
Personal experience has taught me that links that appear within the main content of the post work much better than the ones tacked on the end by plugins. It just takes quite a bit more effort.
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Permalink Reply by Robin on
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Simon, How do I figure out which posts are best performing? Unfortunately I never figured out how to do Google Analytics. My blogging platform is typepad. Thanks, Robin
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I intentionally left the ambiguous term "best performing" in there as different bloggers use different measure of success. This may be number of comments, traffic, conversions to a page, clicks on ads, trackbacks, incoming links or a number of other factors. It's really down to each individual blogger to decide what factors they will measure in order to determine their success. When you know what you want to measure, you can then assess the tools available to see what best meets your needs. Starting a new thread here might be a good place to see what other bloggers use.
Many bloggers will use something like the popular posts plugin for Wordpress or an analytics service to measure their traffic and other key stats. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with TypePad so I can't offer any specific advice, but Google Analytics is very easy to set up and use, and I'm sure there are specific type pad instructions out there for it.
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Permalink Reply by Suzanne on
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this is a good idea...but like a lot of the steps in the 31 days challenge, seems impossible on a blog at my early stages. I may have been blgging for almost a year, but the first several months at least were definately just for family and a few friends. I'm still not sure I have anyone other than a couple of colleagues and friends reading it. Thas why I am interested in these challenges...but I just seem to keep being pulled up short by the fact that you seem to have to have traffic to increase traffic.
its a mite frustrating really....
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Permalink Reply by Sue Waters on -
Sorry just had to add this into the forum -- it was Joel's birthday yesterday or today (time differences are doing my head in!) Any way just thought maybe you might want to drop past his blog and say HAPPY BIRTHDAY Joel (for today or yesterday?)
And apologies in advance been flat out with work commitments so will do last and this week's challenge next week!
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Permalink Reply by Joel McDonald on
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Hey everyone! I just wanted to thank those who visited my blog to wish me a happy birthday, or anyone who did so mentally. I did have a great day. Thank you!
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Permalink Reply by Michele Martin on -
Hi Suzanne--I know it's frustrating. It does take a while to build traffic. When you're new, the best strategies are to start interacting with other bloggers in your niche by linking to their posts and commenting on their sites. That starts to drive both them and their readers to your site. You might also try contacting some bloggers directly. Here are some tips for Problogger Darren Rowse that might help:
Building Blog Readership by Monitoring What Other Bloggers are Writing
Driving Traffic to Your New Blog
You might also browse through these reader tips.
It does take time, though. That I know.
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Hi Suzanne. I understand your frustrations, we've all been there in the beginning. One of the things about this challenge is that you don't need any traffic to participate in it. You don't even need any content, so long as you remember the second part of the challenge when you add new posts.
If you start this process now, hopefully when your blog does start receiving a lot of traffic, you'll be in a much better position to take advantage of it.
Good luck, I'm sure it will all click into place.
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That's interesting Danielle. If you don't mind me asking, what made you remove content from your blog in the first place? Or were they from an entire blog that has been deleted?
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Permalink Reply by Susan Sheehan on
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Oh this is interesting! My blog is about 2 weeks old but I can see the value.
Going to keep this in mind.
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Permalink Reply by Michele Martin on
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What really helps me with this task, Susan, is to try to go back to the old posts when I'm writing the new one. That way it's not a huge job waiting for me and I can keep up as I go along. I tend to do this mostly for topics where I tend to get a lot of traffic.
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Permalink Reply by Harriet on
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I'm another one of those without a heap of blog content to 'archive'. I suppose I'm also struggling with that. Given that to date I only have a grand total of 6 posts, I suppose it's difficult to archive them. I HAVE been grouping them, which I suppose will help me use them better as they grow.....
I'm finding my self drawn to blog more often, and this group is definitely inspiring me... In fact I found myself at my blog as first port of call when I got opinionated last night - http://technologytwitter.typepad.com Previously I'd probably have scattered my opinions across social networking sites and IM....
so I'm reading archiving with interest in the hope that it'll be me soon.
About
The Original 31 Day Challenge Members
The Building a Better Blog site started after a group of bloggers worked together to go through Darren Rowse's 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project. They were:
Brent MacKinnon
Brent MacKinnon
miniLegends Class (group of 9-year olds from Australia is joining in the blogging fun!)
Nancy Riffer
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