Over on Twitter last week @JapanNewbie asked me about how to get people viewing old posts on your blog once they drop off the front page. In this video I tackle the question with 5 suggestions including using:
- Best of Sections
- Autoresponders
- Related Links
- Best of Posts
- Repost Old Content
I’d love to hear your suggestions on how you drive people back to your older blog posts?
Related Reading:
- Updating Old Posts on Your Blog – how and why.
- Interlink Your Old Blog posts
Watch this video at full size on Youtube at How to Get People to Read Your Old Posts.
![How to Get Dreams Out of Your Head [And a Video of Me Wearing Tights]](https://problogger.com/wp-content/themes/problogger-redesign/build/placeholder.png)
The volume on the video was a bit low for me.
I have tried a few of these tactics in my short time as a blogger. I use the best of links in the sidebar. I have linked to older posts within the contents of my newer post. I also have reposted old stuff. It all works pretty well. I just need to stick to the techniques. I get too lazy.
I like the related links one because that brings other entries that people are interested in.
Archives based competitions !
I used the Related Sites (by Blog Traffic Exchange) plug-in to auto-generate related internal and externals links
I also manually link to other articles when appropriate.
I used to have a “best of” section, but they I became a multi-author site and didn’t want to have the headache of judging which articles were the post, at the risk of offending authors who didn’t make the cut.
I repost older content on a rare ocassion. One of those ocassions is coming up, as I’ll be reposting my review of the best baseball sites as we come upon the new season.
Nice! I also red something about a WP plugin to tweet your old posts. I kept it in my Read It Later List for later, but maybe someone could use it now?
http://www.blogussion.com/wired-weekend/twitter-traffic-bring-life-back-to-old-posts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogussion+%28Blogussion%29
@ Nibras – I haven’t done an archives-based competition before, but a friend of mine did. He gave away a gift card of some sort to the first person able to answer a question based on his archives. That seems like a great way to get people to delve into the archives.
Thanks for these tips and great video…could you recommend the WordPress Plug-in you refer to for providing recommended reading? I’ve been unable to find it.
I believe that an archive page is important where you list down all of the posts on your blog.
A blogger once criticised my blog and said that she hates how the navigation on my blog was like because she’d have to go back and forth from my archives page. So the two things I did for her is put a link under each of my posts, “next post, previous post”.
Just now, I added links on my sidebar to view posts together in one page according to their month. So when someone clicks on Jan 2010, they’ll see all the posts I’ve made on January 2010 in one page.
Still looking for new ways to get around this.
I highlight my best articles very prominently in the sidebar – in fact it’s my main discovery method, though I also offer search, Best Ofs and so on. Readers like to be teased first.
One thing you don’t mention is linking to old posts yourself from within new articles. It becomes a challenge to remember what you’ve got to link to, of course, but it does add a lot of value to newer posts, and helps with SEO, too.
Some great tips here. I already did most of these, but they are a great reminder. I also recently learned about a plugin called “Retweet old posts”. It a wordpress plugin that randomly chooses old posts and tweets them every once and while. This is a fully automated way to share old content and has proven fairly successful for me.
Thanks
Link posting.. where almost every blog post links to another (without over doing it) of, at least one, internal post from the same blog or a post from one of your other blogs :)
Best of the month posts perhaps. Even best of the quarter (year) posts. You can always create opportunities to drive your visitors deep into your archives, as long as you are creative about it. Also, I am a big fan of re-purposing content. You can create videos, audio files, or even mini ebooks and link back to the original post.
Hi Darren,
I run a blogging diary documenting what I do on my blog; I call it The REAL-TIME Blogging Report. Now through this I all the time link to my posts as I go along and readers going over the report can view all my posts.
I guess this is like an archive but has a timeline to it and of course statistics (which makes it interesting).
That’s my resolution to this issue.
Ami
Bee a Blogger | REAL-TIME Blogging Report
argh Darren – I can’t see the video from behind “The Great Fire Wall”, but I noticed how you recently pushed forward some posts from 2006 in a series for beginner’s blogs.
I’ve been drawn to them I learned a couple of things I could implement at once.
Cheers
I used Link Within and I love it, since I’ve installed it I’ve had lots more people viewing my older content and commenting. I really like the look of it too with the thumbnails at the bottom of your post, you can choose how many you want to apprear, the link is:
http://www.linkwithin.com/learn?ref=widget
I also find linking back to old posts which are relevant to what your writting works well too.
Having a best of section is a great idea, I’ll have to add that too my blog. Great suggestions as always from Problogger!
Thanks,
Jade
http://www.jadedickinson.com
I use Linkwithin and use links throughout the post. I also use words like, “I wrote a previous article”, or “I posted about this on”. Basically any phrase that lets the reader know they can find more like this because Linkwithin isn’t always accurate with related posts.
I use a random post widget in my sidebar along with an archives widget.
Waw, this is amazing information!! Thank you so much for sharing!
I stopped watching your video after you gave us the second tip and start applying your ideas to my blog! you have so many invaluable information here! Thank you so much for sharing.
I am going to bookmark your video and come back to it.
I want to tell you that I also enjoy your tweets very much!
Keep up the good job! and thank you again!
I retweet the old posts with different sentences (of course with link) and found this way is quite useful.
i used related post/article at my post footer so that maybe there will be a chance on reading it to.
Ei! Darren, Do you work with Starak?
Thanks for this. I already use the list on my heading. At the end of each month I place the articles I’ve written at the bottom of a pre-written page I have on my blog heading. This way all my articles get catalogued so they can be found by just clicking the appropriate heading at the top of my blog.
There is also a linkwithin plug in at the bottom of each post. Of course, like you said, Google sends in visitors from searches too. I hate to think my old stuff is going to waste.
Hey ,
First of thanks to @JapanNewbie for such a great question that I often wondered and I am sure many have.
I myself have found my readers do click most of the links in the post and also writing related post.
Secondly I have started newsletter for my RSS readers where I have linked some of my old post.
Well with all the content that you have to utilize you can link back to it, especially if it relates to key items in your new blogging posts. Nothing like some nice juice flowing through your blog. Or I know, in the past you wrote about “Follow Up Posts” to give it a new fresh breath of air, and well, maybe keep it going if it is possible.
While I certainly need to be more attentive to the strategies Darren just suggested, I spent a few hours working with some WordPress keyword plugins that redirect terms in my posts and pages to other posts and pages that I’ve written.
People like to use this approach for affiliate links but if you instead link to your other material, you can increase traffic to your other, older pages automatically.
I am still trying to get people to read my new stuff!
Here are some things I’ve been doing:
1) Link to older posts within new ones
2) Yet Another Related Post WordPress plugin
3) Highlight my favorites in the side bar
4) Best of posts- at the end of the year, highlighting several posts on a particular topic
5) Follow-ups to older posts
6) Free mini e-books with older posts on a single topic (just did one on “Secrets of Writing Killer Copy.”
Got the idea from someone’s guest post here (sorry, I don’t remember who it was to give them credit). I post those on the front page of the blog, along with other resources.
Great question by @JapanNewbie and some great solutions. Thanks fo sharing, it is easy to forget the archive of content your blog builds up.
Hi Darren!
First of all, I completely thank you for your accent. I am galician (spanish), and I’ve just arrived from a couple of days holydays Dublin, Ireland. The contrast is so huge!! Being clear and easy to understand (written and spoken) is one of the main success points of proBlogger, I’m sure.
I am a noob in this but, doesn’t a list of links to older stuff at the end of your post drive a lot of traffic away from comments? I have many clicks in what I put at the end of posts but, it seems to have a negative effect on the number of comments I get and, actually, since I am starting, I prefer to make a list of good content in a separate section rather than putting a list at the end of each post with similar posts.
Thanks once more.
I use Autoresponder and write extension of the old post that starts with a summary of and link to the old post.
Darren,
Thanks for the great ideas.
The one thing I know of you didn’t mention that works really well is internal advertising.
You literally create banner ads that only link to your own content.
It is best if you save this tactic for your absolutely premium content (top 1%) but it can work very well. Especially driving traffic to your pillar articles.
Alex over at http://bloggussion.com is very good at this. His sidebar always has a couple of internal advertisements for his best articles.
They are most effective when they don’t look like ads at all.
When the tried and true “best of” or walk through “link memory lane” doesn’t work … offer free t-shirts! (who can resist the power of the tee ;)
Great ideas. I will definitely have to try some of these techniques. Thanks a million.
These are great tips Darren. Right now I’m figuring out a way to get my previous week of posts (and do this every week) out there at different days that way, not only will my new posts get looked at and read, but those who missed my previous week’s posts, will get to see those too.
The trick is doing it without pissing off my followers and friends and so that’s what I’m working on.
Thanks for the tips. I’ll be sure to use them myself!
Linking to them from newer posts always works.
Me personally developing an auto-responder system and driving people to your old post is the best way to drive traffic to all your old postings…
Surprisingly, I find a lot of people seem to look at older topics if they are shown in my ‘recent comments’ widget! Go figure…
I find having thesis on my blog really helps a lot. Since changing from blogger to wordpress with a thesis template, my older posts are being viewed a lot more.
I want to use linkwithin widget, but can’t get it to work, but I have another related posts widget for the meantime, and I believe it helps. I also link throughout my blog posts to any other post that is related to what I’m talking about too.
Great suggestions!
I link within posts and I also have a related post widget. I often post the links to older posts on Twitter announcing that they are ‘from the archives’- or an ‘oldie but a goodie’. I have also I updated older posts with current info and reposted them drawing attention to the new information.
I just read this post they were very helpful to me and i would be using to get visitors to read my older posts. My bog is more than 2 years old and i have just got to know that my older posts have no visitors, so this will help me to a large extent.
The Most Popular Posts sidebar and Featured Posts (posts recommended by you) surely the best way to get people back to some of your better old posts. And Related Posts plugin just works wonder in my case.
I think, related links is the best way to drive people to read your old blogs. Rest of the tips too are great. Thanks.
Thanks for the video! It really helped me a lot. it is definitely a must-do for bloggers to get their old blog posts be read. Especially with me, my old blog posts seem to be the best i’ve ever did!
After watching this video, I decided to add a related links to my blog posts.
Its a great idea because when browsing your site, I find myself clicking these all the time.
why did you made a video out of it??
Personally I think ‘best of sections’ are the best, especially when they are covering quite a specific section, such as ‘gaining backlinks’ or ‘best layouts’.
Obviously you have a highly successful blog and probably don’t need to do this, but putting a ‘best of section’ into .pdf ebook format is awesome too!
Hi guys
i find that i get a lot of hits on old blog posts from the seo from google.
If you are new to Blogging i thoroughly recommend that you set up backlinks to your old posts or use long keyword titles for your blog posts and then it will easily flow through.
kind regards
sam
X
This article is very useful. And Thanks for giving such a great ideas. I will definitely use these techniques.
Thanks,
Chris
Thanks Darren. Putting related articles in the end of the post really help. I ll be using these tips from now on.
Yeah, I’m addicted to – and dependent on – a “related posts” widget in order to get readers looking at older posts. I also update an index to a large portion of my work, organized by topic.
I think this topic is already talked and discussed, isn’t it?
I send out a weekly newsletter with excerpts (and links) to the week’s posts, job listings, contest listings, Q&As and more. I also include a “blast from the past” each week highlighting an old blog post.
Something else I do is a list post. For example I’ll post “50 Posts About Setting Rates” and include all my past posts about rates. They always go over very well.