There is often a lot of talk in ‘how to blog’ type articles on increasing visitors numbers to a blog there is another statistic that is important to some bloggers also – page views.
Most statistics packages measure both for you – ‘visitors’ (or unique visitors) measures the number of people, but ‘page views’ measures the number of pages on your blog that those visitors look at.
The number of page views per visitor varies quite significantly from blog to blog (based on many factors) but there are a number of reasons why bloggers might wish to increase this statistic including:
- Stickiness – the more pages a reader views the increased chance of them coming back are.
- Revenue – more and more of the ads that we are running on your blogs are impression based ads (ie the more times the ads are seen the more that is earned).
Whether you want to increase page views or not is something that different bloggers will place as a different priority, depending upon the goals of their blog, but if it is something you’d like to work on here are 14 tips on how to increase page views:
1. Interlink your Posts
Perhaps one of the simplest ways to increase the page views on your blog is to send yourself traffic by links between posts from within posts. While for some of us it might feel a little funny promoting your own writing in this way I find that my readers appreciate it if it’s done in a way that adds value to their experience of your blog by linking to other relevant things that you’ve written on the topics that you’re writing about. Most bloggers touch on the same topics numerous times in the life of a blog and to link to previous times you’ve mentioned something adds depth to what you write.
2. Highlight Related Posts
One way to interlink your posts that doesn’t happen from within a post is to have a ‘related posts’ section at the end of your entries. You’ll see an example of this if you scroll down this page to the yellow section just above my comments section. On ProBlogger this is run by a WordPress plugin (called related posts) which automatically finds other posts I’ve written on similar topics (if it’s doing it’s job you’ll find that I’ve written on this very same topic before – hopefully my ideas have developed a little). Of course you can also manually run a ‘related posts’ section also by simply ending your article with other relevant things you’ve written that readers might like to check out.
3. Add a Newsletter or Post Notification Services
One thing that I’ve noticed on some of my blogs is the power of having an email newsletter to increase page views. Those of you that have signed up to my newsletter here at ProBlogger will know that I generally have a section called ‘hot posts’ in which I recap the 5 most popular posts of the week on this blog. While regular readers of the blog who will have seen those posts already probably don’t visit those links quite a few people do. In doing so they often seem to visit more than one of them, thus increasing not only ‘visitor’ numbers but ‘page view’ numbers also. Other services automatically notify readers via email of new posts to your blog which you might also find useful (for example Zookoda and Feedburner both have ways of doing this).
4. Highlight Key Posts in Prominent Positions
I watched a friend surf through ProBlogger recently on their first visit to the blog. One of the things I noticed that they did was surf through the posts that I have highlighted in my three menu boxes at the top of this site. I’ve written previously about why I have those boxes up there and how they are key posts from ProBlogger that help with creating stickiness on the blog. My friend surfed through all of the links in the top left menu and some of those in the other boxes also – racking up page views along the way.
5. ‘Best of’ Pages
The other thing about the posts that my friend viewed from my top menus is that many of them are what I call ‘best of’ or ‘compilation’ pages that link to multiple other pages on this blog. For example the ‘Top 20 Posts at ProBlogger‘ is a prime example and is a post that I know that many first time readers of ProBlogger surf through from start to finish (I can tell because I can see them leaving comments along the way).
6. Write a Series of Posts
Writing a series of posts on a blog is an effective way of building page views on two fronts. For starters as you write the series you will find it draws people back to your blog over a number of days because they want to find out what you’ve got to say next. Secondly it’s also great once you’ve finished the series because if you’re smart about interlinking them you’ll find that people will read your series (with each post on a different page) from start to finish. Probably the best example that I can give you of this is my Blogging for Beginners series which I highlight in the prominent position on this blog and which I know new readers surf through from start to finish (and in doing so they end up reading 30-40 posts).
7. Use Extended Entires on your Front Page
If you’re writing long posts use the ‘more’ (or extended entry) feature to link people into your individual pages. I wouldn’t do it on all posts as it can be annoying, but for long posts it helps keep your main page more manageable but also has the side benefit of increases page views. I think some bloggers use this feature too much – but in moderation in longer posts it can be useful.
8. Run a Blog Project or Meme
One of the side benefits of my recent group writing projects (like the recent ‘goals‘ one) is that I found they not only brought new links and readers to ProBlogger but they also drew people back multiple times in a week (and day) to see what updates there had been to it. While memes, contests or projects like these won’t appeal to all of your readers you’ll find that some really really get off on them and will keep coming back to participate. Again – it’s not my primary goal for doing them but is a nice side benefit.
9. Excerpts in RSS feeds
Longer term ProBlogger readers will be aware that I switched from partial to full feeds in my RSS feeds a month or two back. While I did this for a number of reasons I knew in doing so that I would probably see a drop in actual visitor numbers and page views to the blog. This has been the case (although keep in my that RSS readership has increased significantly). Obviously if you do not give RSS readers your full posts in feeds you force them to either only read the first part of your articles or to actually come and visit your blog. This is obviously something I’ve had a change of heart on but is something worth knowing if you’re considering moving to full feeds.
10. Entice RSS Readers to Visit
Don’t tease or suck your RSS subscribers into visiting your blog but be smart about using techniques that might get them to visit. Using Polls, writing posts in a way that invites comments, interlinking posts etc will all draw your RSS readers (who don’t create any page views) to come and visit your actual blog (I wrote a little more on this here).
11. Build Interactivity into your Blog
The more your readers participate in your blog the more they’ll come back to it and they more pages they’ll view when they do. For starters people will come back to a blog if they’ve left their mark on it (via a comment, a vote in a poll etc) to see how others interact there but secondly the act of interacting often means a second page view. For example the very act of leaving a comment means two pages are viewed (once in viewing the post and a second time once the comment has been made). Of course this is not the primary reason you want people to comment but it’s a byproduct of it. Interactivity on blogs generally happens around the comments section (find out how to get more comments here) but is also increasingly common around polls and other blog tools.
12. Draw People Back to Comments
To build on this idea of interactivity, especially around comments, a couple of techniques that people use effectively is to highlight recent comments (there are a variety of plugins that will help you do this in a section on your sidebar – here’s one such plugin) but also to give people the opportunity to follow your comments either by having a RSS feed for comments on your blog or by allowing them to subscribe to comments via email (here’s a WP comment that does this).
13. Add a Search Feature
Allowing your readers to look for previous topics that you’ve written about by adding a search feature to your blog can also add further page views. There are a number of these available – most blog platforms have them built in and AdSense also offers one that lets your readers search either your site or the web as a whole (and where you can make a little money on the side if they search and then click on an ad – see the search bar in my sidebar for an example of the AdSense one).
14. Give Your Readers a Homework Assignment
Over the last week or so I’ve started giving readers on my digital photography school blog homework assignments. Because the blog is a ‘tips’ one it is a natural progression for me to suggest something that they could go away and do having learnt the tip. I find that in doing so readers keep coming back to a page for a number of reasons. Firtly they come back to refer to the tip you’ve written – especially if it is a step by step tip that they’ll use over and over a again. Secondly they come back to the page to tell you about or show you their assignment (if you allow them to submit their work). At present I get users to submit their homework to a Flickr group I’ve set up for that blog so in effect I’m not really increasing my own blog’s page views – but it does add to the page views of that Flickr group which has become quite active in just a week.
Homework Assignment
You didn’t think I’d end this post without carrying out my own advice did you?
- Which of the above techniques do you implement on your blog already?
- Which will you go away an implement today?
- Go and give one (or more than one) a go and let us know how it goes in the days ahead.
sometimes i wonder unique visitors or page views are more important
Darren,
This is a great post. I find interlinking works amazing. In the beginning of blogs interactivity with my viewers was so easy, with so many trash blogs now it has hurt interactivity on my sites.
What do you think?
but what if a visitor visits the page sees an ad, clicks on it and is gone. is that bad?
Darren:
Great job as always. I do a poor job of item #1, and I think that implmenting the plug-in suggested in #2 will solve some of that problem. I am planning on doing that this week.
I have had a terrible time with spam (even with Akismet) and had to turn off comments so I lose out on that unfortunately.
Do you think that trying to get in on “Blog Carnivals” and similar events help boost a permanent readership?
I was inspired when I saw your related posts idea a while back and decided so I implemented that on each individual post page as well as a recent entries and random entries section. It’s hard to tell if it has increased my page views because I don’t write in a niche and I don’t get that many visitors, but there are quite a few people clicking on these links.
As for what I will be implementing, I think I need to interlink more.
very informative article..thanx
http://virtuously.blogspot.com/
I’ll admit, I stole the Related Posts idea directly from ProBlogger.
I also do the “More” thing as well, but less to do with garnering page views (though that is a side benefit) and more to do with the fact that my posts tend to be somewhat lengthy and unchewable if left to clutter the main page. And I always interlinked my pages anyway.
I’m thinking of implementing more of the box idea and a “best of” pages.
All in all though, awesome ideas Darren.
Valuable post, no wonder you have over 6,400 subscribers.
What I’d also suggest is having your categories listings closer to the top and not hide them somewhere on the bottom.
I recently used wordpress internal search to increase my page impressions. I interlinked my pages by search for terms. Example:
<a href="/search/the_term">The term</a%gt;
If visitors are interested in “term”, they will find more posts with the internal search.
Very interesting article, very informative and useful for all bloggers in the blogsphere, thanks for the tip.
I find the single most effective way to increase pageviews is to interlink posts. If you say ‘as I posted about here’ in a post, a reader feels compelled to check out the other post, sometimes starting a long chain.
On a side note, I was disappointed never to see part 3 of the ‘blog design for beginners’ series. The first 2 parts were great.
Hey, thanks for the great advice (as usual)! I haven’t tried interlinking my posts yet, but I will because I’m posting the second part to a 2-part series today and most people probably didn’t read the first part (posted on saturday).
Just one question though, as far as comments go, is it normal for the blog author to post comments as well? I know this sounds stupid, but do you, as the blogger, leave comments on your own blog in response to other comments? It seems like a common sense thing to do, but once a blog gets numerous comments for one post, it can seem very burdensome. How do you pick which comments to respond to personally?
Great article and good advice! Thanks!!!
Brad
Great post! pulls together a lot of your posts and tips all into one place, talking about “best of” maybe this should be in there :)
Excerpts in RSS feeds:, reminds me of your last vidcast, when can we expect the next one? I think they are great.
Also on a side note, I have been meaning to mention. In your 2nd vidcast after some comments you changed location to a clear white background, less clutter I think someone said. But I much preferred your first one where we could see the objects behind you, in your house where you blog from. It seamed right, in a comfortable location making money in your own house, a dream how it should be, and I felt the first video gave that feeling.
great tips Im trying to put them into action as we speak
Posting comments in repsonse is normal practice for most blogs.
Another informative post Darren…thanks! This is a topic I’ve been contemplating with the launch of my latest site since the subject/content differs quite a bit from my first site.
Darren, FeedBurner has a nice feature which shows the number of comments within your RSS feed entries. If you use it, it might be a way to get more RSS readers to not only visit, but also to leave comments.
Great Article, But can you tell me which plugin do you use to create “Most popular” or Top 20 page ?
I interlink posts and have related posts and that MORE thing too.
Brad: I usually comment on what others say. I notice that visitors tend to comment more. Also, additional comments on your entry boost that particular entry.
I’ve been putting off adding RSS for comments. I’ll take that as my assignment and I’ll report back next Monday.
I read something here about interlinking posts about the time I started my blog (6 months ago) so it’s something I’ve always tried to do.
If there’s a best Blog Post contest, this should be nominated. 2 Thumbs up!
I like the related posts and homework questions ideas. Plan to implement them. I think though my challenge is to get the word out about my blog more.
Great Tips…
I have took three of them and am going to put them into use in my blog as soon as i submit this comment.
Adding the adsense search bar, going to interlink posts more often and want to make it more interactive in the future.
Thank,
Michael Hepden
http://272blogcentral.blogspot.com
If a blog is a conversation, of course blog authors should add comments.
Instead of Categories: or Topics: try labeling it Read More in: then link out the related categories.
the Related Posts works well, but interlinking at least one other post can help the most, because it’s contextual.
http://www.idahofallz.com
This trick worked extremely well on my blog http://oniondosa.blogspot.com/ Page views increased 4times after i did this
.But the major problem is When i add related posts to any post..AdSense is showing Blogging&AdSense ads which are irrelavant to my Blog&it’s content.Just sent a mail to AdSense team.awaiting their reply.Any Suggestions Darren?
[…] ProBlogger: How to Increase a Blog’s Page Views […]
As an addendum to #12, I definitely recommend putting wfw:commentRss and slash:comments in your RSS feed. This allows newsreaders to see how many comments have been added to a post, without the RSS itself including comments (which I find very annoying).
I’ve written up some tips for adding this data to RSS produced by Movable Type.
[…] How to Increase a Blog’s Page Views 13. Add a Search Feature Allowing your readers to look for previous topics that you’ve written about by adding a search feature to your blog can also add further page views. There are a number of these available – most blog platforms have them built in and AdSense also offers one that lets your readers search either your site or the web as a whole (and where you can make a little money on the side if they search and then click on an ad – see the search bar in my sidebar for an example of the AdSense one). […]
[…] Darren has a very useful post that gives us 14 tips on how to increase a Blog’s Page Views. Here I have listed them with my own comments. […]
[…] Darren at Problogger has an excellent post (does he write anything but?) on How to Increase a Blog’s Page Views with 14 brilliant tips. Seems after reading that post i have home work though! Posted in Blogging and Blogging Tools […]
The big thing I DON’T do is email.
I used to, but dropped it shortly after I started producing RSS. My thought was that RSS eliminates the need for email notification.
I’ve been feeiing ambivalent about that ever since – maybe I should still offer email updates, maybe there really is no need. Back and forth..
Think I’ll do a little survey type post asking if folks still want ’em.
Good idea pcunix – but of course remember that you’ll mainly get responses from regular readers who probably have some way of tracking your site already – probably from RSS.
I find that my newsletter subscriptions on some of my blogs is actually higher than the number of subscribers via RSS (varies a lot from blog to blog).
I’ve been doing all of these things but have recently developed a new strategy -which has become quite popular. Once a week, I post a summary of “this week in blog history” entry. I go back to the year before and post a summary of the posts made during that time period. Since my blog is quite dense (lots of tutorials etc), I can re-play past series that newer visitors have never seen. It’s also been financially advantageous as I’m getting new donations for past material. I post the history entries on weekends (I don’t post new material on weekends) which ups my posting to 6 days a week rather than 5.
Great tips as always, Darren. I’m sure you could write 100 of these if you had the time. I think a lot of blogs get no more than 2 page views per visitor (and with most visitors only viewing one page and then leaving). These tips are very important to consider for those who want to increase their stickiness!
It may be worthwhile increasing the backlinks to your blog, to help it rank in search engines, though blogs generally rank very well anyway.
Something else you may want to do is investigate trackbacks, if you haven’t already. This is a way to get involved in a conversation that someone else has already started. I’d advise doing this when you really have something to add though, not just to establish a trackback.
Another tack, which may take some time and effort, is to get to know some of the prominent bloggers in your areas of interest. If they are already prominent and you develop a relationship with them, because you have interesting and useful viewpoints, then you might be co-opted into the community.
However, luckily, all of these avenues are generally related to the quality of your blog, because if you are one of those people posting mounds of crap in the hopes of getting traffic, nobody is ever going to invite you into their community.
I’m not sure I can relate how much I hate searching for some topic of interest only to find the search results filled with spammy entries consisting of the same keywords and the same content over and over again. Grrrr.
There needs to be some global “crap list” that lets the search engine companies devalue these blogs… at least if they aren’t able to recognize them algorithmically.
End minor rant.
I agree that your #1 of the charts shows very good results on blogs. Having a top 20 or top 15 posts in an easy to see place is also one of my favorites. Also, these are so simple to add to a blog.
Which do you think is best: a tiny amount of money from Google Search or all the benefits of Word Press search, including a new plugin I just found for getting stats of what was searched for?
I just found this plugin and lost one reason I switched to Adsense’s search, so now I’m wondering what to do. I’m kind of leaning toward switching back to Word Press’s own.
(Anyone can answer, of course.)
[…] To read the article click here. […]
I think I’m going to add a search feature and a poll to my blog. Thanks for the recommendations!
Great article Darren. I’m going to add the Related Posts plugin this afternoon. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Awesome post Darren. Don’t have time to check yup exactly how much I implement, but I’m guessing about half. I’ll have to get crackin’ on that.
[…] 原文:https://problogger.com/how-to-increase-a-blogs-page-views/ 作者:Darren Rowse 编译:柳絮飞 […]
Hi. I’m the guy who translate your post. http://lucifr.com/2006/07/07/how-to-increase-a-blogs-page-views/
I can’t help translating it into Chinese so that your good idea could be shared with Chinese bloggers. It’s a direct tranlation according to your post and I have made a clear statement in my post.
I won’t use it for business benifits, however, if you find it offensive, I will take it off my page right away.
Sorry I didn’t ask for your permission before hand.
My poor English… hope you can understand…
[…] 原文地址:How to Increase a Blog’s Page Views […]
hi~ thanks for this site and i learned a lot about it…
i’m thinking if you can help me with my problem because i dunno on how to link to my previous post. i searched on the net but i still i can’t get it.
could you give me the html.
Great post. I can’t wait to read it over and over till I finally take action.
Darren,
Interlinking and placing “related posts” links at the bottom of an article are probably the most powerful ways to increase page views. Both the regular readers as well as those that come from search engines are reading your article on a subject because they are interested in it. They are likely to go for similar posts too and you cannot rely solely on the tags or categories to drive that. The category archives are used by some experienced readers to do this if you have a simple enough category structure. However, the simpler you make it for users to click the more time they will spend in your site.
haha Pain bucket aint that a fact..btw pardon my ignorance, but whats the best blogging site to begin with? The one with the most exposure
I just started a contest on one of my sites, after reading this post (I did not think of being interactive before you gave me the idea, for which I thank you very much). I’ll come back in a few weeks with the results.
@Marco: earning from than click wouldn’t be bad at all, besides if the viewer really thought that your site was useful then he’ll definitely be coming back.
[…] 作者:Darren Rowse 中译:http://lucifr.com/2006/07/07/how-to-increase-a-blogs-page-views/ 原文:https://problogger.com/how-to-increase-a-blogs-page-views/ […]