There have been numerous posts written by many people on how to increase traffic to your Blog. This “How To…” is for after you have gone through all of the basic steps such as SEO and Linking etc.
Once you have gotten people to come to your site, how do you get them to stay?
Navigation…
Most Blogging platforms leave a lot to be desired in helping your readers find anything on your site other than the landing page and Archives listed by week or month. Here are some simple steps to help visitors find things that they may be interested in or if they want more information on something you may have written previously.
~~ Use Categories. Not every platform (especially Blogger) has the capability to enable Categories. They give a quick reference to what other Subjects you have written about that may interest your reader. I explained in a post a while back on how I Added a Category List to my Blogger Blog.
~~ Intra-link. There are a lot of times you’ll find that you had written something previously that is relevant to your current topic. If that is the case, provide a link within the text (as I did above) to that information so the reader doesn't have to go looking for it.
~~ Related Posts. After you have been writing for a while, there is usually something in your archives that you know about that will provide additional information or is related to the subject in some way. Put these links at the bottom of your post as a reference source.
~~ Recent Posts. Not every platform and template provides for a list of your most recent posts, in that case you will want to add some type of Plug-in. Luckily, I didn't use one but you want a reader to know what had been written recently. Most will allow various amounts of days shown, I set mine for 7 days.
~~ Recent Comments. I found the bdp-comments Plug-in to show comments on different posts and the author in descending order. There are many variations out there. If readers see that other people are commenting, they may be tempted to join in and voice their opinion.
~~ Link to Series. Most likely you have written at least one series of posts on a particular subject. In that case, you don’t want them to get lost. Put a link to the First post in the sidebar and make sure you have links on each post, one to the next (if you use Blogger). I found the In-Series Plug-in for WordPress that simplifies the process.
These are not the only ways to improve page views and length of time visitors spend reading your material. Can you add to the list?
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