Sticky Posts

Stephan Spencer adds another SEO for blogs tip to his growing collection with his post Make “sticky” posts:

‘Why would you ever want to make a post sticky? Because it’s an easy way to improve the keyword prominence on a category page or tag page. If you’re not familiar with the concept of keyword prominence, it’s simply this: the higher up on the page your targeted keyword is, the better you’ll rank. So, having keyword-rich intro copy that consistently appears at the top of a category page or a tag page will give you good keyword prominence and help you maintain a stable keyword theme for the page even when old posts fall off the page and new posts appear.’

He gives a good example of a sticky post at the top of a category page here.

I’ve not used sticky posts to this point on my blogs but do know of bloggers that use them effectively both as an SEO strategy but also (and more importantly in my mind) as ‘introductory’ type posts. I find that they are most effective when they actually add value to your readership by explaining what readers are looking at or how to use the blog in some way.

This can be especially important on blogs because I’ve long suspected that some readers visiting a blog for the first time could be a little disoriented. For instance if a blogger were to enter a blog on a category page (or any other page for that matter) via a search engine they are in effect entering a conversation at a midway point and (depending upon the last post) could be reading something that might not be the best post for them to read first time up on your blog. A sticky post can help with this by briefly putting a little context around the page and by suggesting better starting points for exploring your blog.

Of course some blogging purists are anti sticky posts as they move away from the chronological ordering – but I’d argue if they make the blog more functional for readers then they are worth considering.

Do you agree?