Thursday Thirteen #3 - Thirteen Ways to Increase Traffic to Old Posts
Thirteen Ways to Increase Traffic to Old Posts
1. Link to relevant older posts within a current one. Interlink. Interlink. Interlink.
2. Make sure each post is SEO friendly so readers can find it through search engine results
3. Have a search box on your blog, so readers can search for topics of interest
4. Choose your categories and tags carefully
5. Go “green” and make “recycled” posts a feature from time to time. You can also update them and add to them to make useful information more current
6. Use the Related Posts Plugin from our Wordpress Plugins Candy Store
7. Use the Popular Posts Plugin from our Wordpress Plugins Candy Store
8. Have roundup articles at the end of each month highlighting key posts from that month
9. Have a “blast from the past” roundup of random posts from the past
10. Do a roundup of your prevous posts on a particular topic or theme
11. Use the 5 Posts You May Have Missed Plugin or the Tumbleweed Plugin.
Update: The latter shows 5 posts with less than 3 comments. Read more about this from Rob, the author of both these plugins in the comment thread to this post.
12. Submit relevant older posts to blog carnivals
13. Don’t overdo this, but when commenting if there is a particularly relevant post you’ve written which adds to the conversation, add a link to this
Over To You
How do you highlight older posts? Do you have any further tips for increasing traffic to old posts? What works for you?
Hi Yvonne
Sensible list!
Thanks for the link, just to add to that mix I also use a slightly different version of the plugin you reference which I called the ‘tumbleweed’ plugin.
Its very similar to the 5 posts you may have missed plugin with a few added extras. Its funny, but Ive found that it helps act as a little reminder and sharpens me up a little!
Cheers
Rob
You are amazing, but of course… you already know that! You write with so much clarity. Maybe your site shouldn’t be “grow your writing business”. “Learn” makes more sense. Because you teach.
Hi Rob - I saw the Tumbleweed Plugin, but wondered if some people might not have 5 posts in the last 90 days with less than 3 comments. I do like the idea though. Anyone interested can also find details of this on Rob’s site. Can it be modified (easily) to choose any random 5 posts rather than limiting it to the last 90 days?
Hi Mig - Thank you so much. Coming from you that means a lot.
Hi Yvonne, I modified it a little to take account of those things and yes, someone who a little understanding of sql could tweak it a little further to look for posts with less thasn 2 or 4 or whatever threshold they wished to set. The default used is 90 days, but ive altered it so that where there are no posts in that period it’ll go back further to a maximum of 700 days and look for others.
Rob - Thanks for the additional information. That makes it more flexible which is great. I’ve updated the post to include the Tumbleweed Plugin.
Interesting list! Thanks for all the ideas.
I didn’t even know about the WordPress candy store.
You might be interested in going to PostieCon, the conference for bloggers interested in making money with their blogs.
Laura - You’re welcome. Hope you can use some of them.
Alice - The Wordpress Plugins Candy Store is my name for a quite extensive list of highly recommended plugins I’ve researched from around the web. I’ve gathered them together in one list. Check it out.
Great list of suggestions, Yvonne. Recycling previous posts…somewhat like the journalists’ idea of “getting as much mileage” as you can from one interview or research project or only selling one time rights so you can “recycle” that story to other publications. Great advice for this Internet blogging age.
Mary Emma - I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before but that is a great way of looking at it. I’m going to keep that in mind. Thanks for the insights.
Yvonne,
You seem to have pretty much covered it! Thanks for the tips!
Jeanne
Jeanne - I still need to implement some of these myself, so it’s a checklist for me as well. Pleased you found it useful. Thanks for stopping by.
Jul 13th, 2007 at 8:33 am
[…] Russell, at Grow Your Writing Business, has an informative post, Thirteen Ways to Increase Traffic to Old Posts, that gives you ideas for using related posts to inform your customers or blog readers. Also, if […]
Jul 25th, 2007 at 10:01 am
[…] posts which give a picture of Grow Your Writing Business. This is good timing as I recently posted Thirteen Ways to Increase Traffic to Old Posts and doing a round up of favorites was one of them. I’ve enjoyed a walk down memory lane as […]