SIX Ways to Improve Navigation and Increase PageViews

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?

Write your answers on the comment  box below...

The seven web design errors and how you can avoid them

Seven Common Web Design Errors

1 . Busy pages make bad pages

Trying to cram too much on to a single page is a sure fire way of putting visitors off. Not only is this practice generally a bad idea, but it can actively impede users logging on via a mobile device (of which there are ever-growing numbers).

White space is a good thing and gives users valuable breathing space to digest content. Make sure you’re spacing out columns, graphics, text and especially links. Above all, don’t try and do too much on one page.

2 . Hiding your links away

Links are arguably the most important feature of your website, so don’t hide them away or obscure them. First and foremost, you want to be consistent with how you highlight links, then apply this format across your entire site.

The opposite also applies, so don’t make un-linked text look like linked text. Some easy ways to distinguish links from regular text are with colour, underlining or bolding.

3 . Needless navigation is a no-no

It’s hard to overstate the importance of navigation on web design. This element will impact how easy and ergonomic your site is to get around, so spend some serious time putting yourself in the shoes of a new visitor.

While arty navigation (e.g. turning the page on a virtual book) is both pretty and tempting – and was fashionable for a period – it’s remarkably unintuitive to use. When setting out navigation for your site, bear in mind the key tenet of content being easy to find with the least amount of effort.

You should apply this doctrine to every aspect of your site, from drop-down links to images and beyond.

4 . Where’s your call to action?

Having a brilliantly designed and easy-to-navigate site is all well and good, but if it doesn’t prompt visitors to do the thing you want (i.e. click on something, share something, sign up to something), then it’s of no use at all.

You need to make sure that you include a clear call to action in a relevant place. However, this should by no means be intrusive, nor should it annoyingly interfere with navigation.

5 . Search and ye shall find

If you’re running a website (and particularly an e-commerce site) there is no excuse not to include a search function. Whether you have the resources to create this yourself or outsource it to a specialist, this is a necessity in the 21^st century.

Not only will this improve the functionality of your page, but it will also help to keep visitors who couldn’t immediately find what they were looking for on-site. One easy solution for newcomers to site design is Google’s Custom Search. By simply copying over the appropriate HTML code, you can incorporate a custom Google-powered search box for your users.

6 . Testing

Like GLaDOS from Portal, this should be your watchword. People will visit your site via a growing variety of means and it’s more important than ever to ensure an ergonomic experience for all.

Some common issues to look out for include being able to view the site in different environments, browsers and with different settings (e.g. having JavaScript disabled). There’s a vast variety of tools for such tasks available for free or at a marginal price, so there’s nothing holding you back from getting stuck in and keeping your website functioning at its peak.

7. Keep your content coming and current

If you do opt to include a news, blog section or social media feed on your site – make sure to keep it up to date. If you fail to keep content relevant, it can make it appear like you’re out of businesses or are vastly behind the times.

Even if you have nothing to say yourself, it’s always possible to curate content you – and ideally your target audience – will find interesting and relevant.

Lastly

Successful web design is more of an art than a science, but what doesn’t mean you can’t be empirical about the process. Look at your competitors’ sites and see what they do well – and badly – and then co-opt or discard these elements as needed.

Test the functionality of the site on those who’ve never used it and above all, have empathy. When viewing your work, try and put yourself in the shoes of a first-time visitor and alter elements accordingly.

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If You’re Worried About Likes, Avoid Posting To Facebook From Twitter

Facebook is showing your content to far fewer people than they used to, says Nick Bilton at the NY Times, pointing out that while his subscribers have soared, the number of likes per post has declined rapidly. Josh Constine writes his thoughts here.

Bilton’s theory is that Facebook wants to incent people to pay to promote their content, so they show unpaid content to far fewer people. Hunter Walk has other theories (and correctly points out that comparing old data to new could be explained in other ways as well).

Occam’s Razor suggests Bilton is right, simply because Facebook has the incentive to make the free views scarce to increase demand for the paid views. But I just don’t know. As an aside, when I promoted a post back in November, Facebook told me I “had 969x as many views because you promoted it.”

Here’s what I do know – if you really care about Facebook likes, don’t just post your stuff to Twitter and then rely on it being republished automatically to Facebook. In my sample size of one, Facebook penalizes you significantly for that and shows that content to far fewer people.

I have Twitter auto post to my Facebook page, and I occasionally post things directly to Facebook as well. I’ve always noticed that the direct-to-Facebook approach generates far more likes, but I’ve never actually gone back and run the averages. Today I did, although only for the last few weeks of posts.

Here’s what I found. The average post published to Facebook by Twitter gets 13.6 likes. The average direct to Facebook post gets 81.1 likes.

I don’t care enough to change the way I publish to social networks. But you might.

Disclosure: I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture firm. I and CrunchFund each own shares in Facebook. CrunchFund owns Twitter shares. More information is here.

How to Increase Pageviews of Your Blog?

This article describes about some powerful ways to increase pageviews of your blog. Because in today’s blog is not only a platform to share ideas and knowledge, but also it is a wonderful way to earn money. You can even earn enough money to live your life happily without having any other job. A simple blog can entirely change your lifestyle. But all of these is possible only if your blog is significantly popular and receives thousands of visitors everyday. Because these visitors will earn you money. If you don’t have enough number of visitors, you can not even expect of earning a few dollars every month. If the visitors turn into loyal readers of your blog, that’s wonderful. But the question is how to make it possible. If you are looking for some ways to increase traffic to your blog, you may read the article How to Get Traffic to Your Blog. This article describes the best ways you can apply to increase traffic to your blog.

But most of the time, getting traffic is not only important part of blogging. The more important part is how many of your visitors are actually turning into daily readers of your blog. It is said that people don’t really read any article on the Internet. They just scan the content or read the first paragraph of your article to understand if it is really valuable or not. So you have to make your articles very interesting or informative that people would like to read. When they would understand that there is something special in your blog, they will become loyal readers.

How your blog is being taken by your visitors can be understood by the number of pageviews your blog receives. It’s not how many visitors you are getting to your blog everyday. But it is how many pageviews your blog is receiving everyday and it determines how popular your blog is in front of the world. You may receive one thousand visitor in a day to your blog. But if the total number of pageviews on that day is somewhere around eleven hundreds, your blog is certainly not very interesting. Your blog is not being able to attract readers’s attention and this is the reason that most of your visitors are living your blog giving you only one pageview. This kind of situation is dangerous in terms of your blog reputation. You need to do whatever you can to increase the pageviews of your blog.

There is another thing that you need to consider that if your blog doesn’t have good number of pageviews, you are not going to earn a lot of money. As you have already understood that it is bad for your blog reputation as well. Let me tell you that you should never think that you are unable to do it and leave blogging as you are not being able to attract your reader’s attention. Most bloggers online are not great writers. They just started sharing their knowledge and ideas to the world. Fortunately people liked what they were writing and they became famous blogger. So follow the following ways carefully to increase the pageviews of your blog.

1, Write More Quality Contents

In your blogging journey, you would always be advised to write more quality contents. Because contents is the lifeblood of a blog. A blog is a platform to share ideas and knowledge through articles. So the more content a blog has, there is more to learn. Give your visitors something that they would like. Think about yourself as a new visitor to your blog and criticize your blog yourself. You would find out what you are missing. Remember that a blog becomes popular for its contents. A blog becomes popular for what it has to offer to its readers. If you blog doesn’t provide any valuable information or doesn’t solve any problem of your readers, nobody would ever visit your blog. So create more valuable contents and share the best you can with your readers. Let them feel the value of your blog. To make it possible, choose a niche you are comfortable with and you must have enough knowledge on the subject. Starting a blog on a subject about which you don’t have proper knowledge or you have started the blog only to earn money from it, you are actually wasting your time. Because this kind of blog will never become popular and can never attract readers.

2, Interlink Your Articles

Interlinking your articles is the best way to give your readers a chance to navigate your blog in a much better way. Do not way use a related post plugin to show some readers articles under every article. Because most viewers don’t really on any one of those links if they are not really interested about your blog contents. So while writing your articles, whenever possible, try to link another article that you have already written before. But remember, the linking article must be related to the subject of the article. Do not make irrelevant links as it will show your inability to share the best related contents to your readers. This is also harmful about your blog reputation. Remember not to create a lot of unnecessary links within a single article. Rather limit number within one or two links per article. While reading these articles, visitors may click on the link to find out more. This will increase the pageviews of your blog. This process doesn’t only help you to increase pageviews of your blog. But it also gives you blog so called Seo-Juice.

3, Create a Best Article page

Create a page about the best articles you have written on your blog. Promote this page everywhere online as you promote promote your blog. Also make a link on your blog to promote this “ Popular Article “ Ask readers to read this this page. Most of them will click to read what you have written. Many of them may even turn into your readers. You can also show your most popular articles on the sidebar of your blog. It is not like related posts as it shows only the article which have got the most number of pageviews. As previously mentioned, the more pageviews, the more popular the article is. So promoting your best articles on the sidebar of your blog is a nice to way to increase pageviews.

4, Use a Search Bar

Put a Search bar on your blog to let your readers search the contents of your blog. This process really increases pageviews. If someone likes one of your blog posts, he or she would most likely be interested to read some more articles from your blog. If they have something in mind and want to search an article on that topic, you need to help them. Using a search is the best choice. If your blog has a search bar, people can use it to find more contents of your blog.

5, Show Your Online Reputation

If you blog is already popular enough, you can show your blog popularity on the sidebar like showing how many rss readers you have, how many email subscribers your blog has or you can also show the Alexa rank of your blog. Any new visitor would be more interested to know more about your blog. So it’s not bad to tell your new readers that you blog is really popular and there are hundreds of many others who like to read your blog. This way, some of your new visitors may turn into daily visitors of your blog. You can also activate links in rss feeds, showing only excerpts of your blog post while sending email updates to your subscribers. You can also start a forum on your blog where people can join to ask questions and discuss about the subject of your blog.