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10 Simple Ways to Retain Blog Readership
April 29th, 2007 by Matt HugginsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Retaining visitors is an important aspect of keeping a blog going, especially one intended to generate revenue. However, there are a number of things that some bloggers don’t recognize as what I consider to be fundamentals for retaining readers. After blogging for several years on various blogging platforms, here is a list I’ve compiled of 10 simple ways to retain blog readership for new and current bloggers alike.
Satisfy Your Visitors’ Needs
- Content is king. Write fresh content frequently. However, don’t try to simply write for the sake of writing. In the end, the quality of your posts will suffer, resulting in the opposite effect as is intended.
- Don’t simply link to other blog posts saying they’re interesting. Sure, it’s okay to link to a blog crediting an author, but put things in your own words. If your blog consists of posts that are only several sentences and a link to go somewhere else, then you’re not truly providing the visitor any value.
- Categorize (or tag) your blog posts. This will provide your readers a quick way to find posts on a specific niche that interests them. The more interesting, relevant information a reader finds, the more likely he is to return to your blog in the future.
- Include a search form on your blog. Sometimes your visitors won’t necessarily be able to find what they’re looking for just by clicking through your categories or going page-by-page. This is particularly true as the amount of content within your blog grows. A search form will provide your new and returning visitors an easy tool for exploring your blog’s contents. Also, make sure it’s easy to find. The default WordPress theme includes the search form as the first item on the navigation side-bar, making it easy to find. I recommend keeping it near the top of the page along with your other basic navigational links.
Keep Them Coming Back
- Make your RSS feed link easy to find. Keep it “above the fold”, preferably at or near the top of your page. Presently my RSS subscription link is the first thing below the search form in my navigation bar on the right. Also ensure that you use the standard RSS feed icon (or a similar variation of it) that is easily recognizable by visitors to your blog.
- Join several blog directories. This will enable potential readers to find your website easily through sites such as Top Blog Area, Blog Toplist, BlogFlare, and Blogarama.
- Join MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog is basically another type of blog directory, but it provides much more than those that are mentioned above. It allows members to find and communicate with one another, and it even includes widgets for tracking what other MyBlogLog members have been reading and clicking on in your blog. While the widget isn’t a necessary component for your blog, the service itself has proved itself to be a useful utility in attracting readers, new and returning alike.
Utilize Plug-ins and Themes
- Keep visitors reading by installing the Related Entries WordPress plug-in. Allows them to find more information on a topic they’re already interested in. Why let them run off to find it somewhere else?
- Similarly, allow visitors to find more interesting information through random post searches. The Random Redirect plug-in will allow you to do this easily in a StumbleUpon-like fashion.
- Use a theme other than the default layout that comes when your blog is installed. A default theme makes your blog appear amateur. There is a plethora of free themes available for WordPress, TypePad, and Blogger. Even better, create your own custom theme if you possess the talent!
Related Posts:
- 55 Essential Articles Every Serious Blogger Should Read
- 5 Simple Ways to Encourage Blog Participation
- Increase Readership with Forum Post Icons
- Mutual Blog Review
- Back to Blogging
April 29th, 2007 at 4:02 am
As an addendum for those blogs with a fairly significant number of posts that are receiving a fair amount of traffic, I would also like to recommend the Top Posts by Category WordPress plug-in. This will help save your readers time by directing them to the posts that will most likely serve them the most information while wasting little of their time.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Nice article, good links - Thanks a lot! I put you here on my essential reading list for bloggers:
http://blogorama.eisbrecher.net/2006/09/14/bloggen-wie-warum-und-wozu/
April 30th, 2007 at 1:36 am
Thanks, Rudi! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to load up your blog; it’s simply displaying as a blank white page.
April 30th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Nice tips, very interesting post. Thanks…
Just to toss in another idea for retaining blog readership (although I don’t know if my own blog even has any regular readers… and I can’t blame anyone, my blog is more like a boring diary a lot of the time
)… I actually have a method of blog post organization which I haven’t seen elsewhere.
I have a table of contents link at top of every page on my blog, which simply links to a page on my main website…
…and, that page (which I’m not going to link directly to in case doing so qualifies as “spam”) features an iframe, a bunch of links to my blog which all open up in that iframe, and a Javascript-based feature which makes it so when you right-click on the page, your browser jumps directly to the iframe.
I wish my blog automatically generated such a page so I didn’t have to put it together manually…
I get pretty frustrated sometimes with the way most blogs are organized - how there’s usually no comprehensive list of every article available, but only a search box, or nothing but tags, or monthly archive pages with no table of contents, etc.
I think there’s no substitute for a simple, single page of links listing every article in chronological order. (And a simple, single page of links with brief summaries of what each article is about would be even better).
I would have a much easier time finding what I want in blogs if more blogs would put together such a table of contents page. It would probably lead me to spend more time reading blogs than I generally do.
So, just thought I’d mention that idea (which is based more on my perspective as a blog reader than as a blogger).
Best wishes,
Apollia
April 30th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Apollia, I really like your idea about a table of contents. I definitely agree that blogs in general could use something like this as a quick way to simply scan post titles. Allowing readers to search for posts by date/month is not intuitive. Readers are interested in topics, not researching what the author decided to write over time.
The lack of such a function built into WordPress by default is one of several reasons I installed the Top Posts by Category plug-in. It displays a collection of my most popular blog posts for each category, allowing readers to find things rather easily that they otherwise may not have come across. It obviously doesn’t include a listing of all posts like your blog, however.
I’d be curious to see if there is any increase in page views per visitor using the TOC method as used on your blog. Perhaps this would be a great idea for a WordPress (or other blogging platform) plug-in if there isn’t one that already does this!
April 30th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Yes, a plug-in for that would be really cool, and would save me some time copying and pasting my newest post links into the TOC by hand every so often.
I did notice your Top Posts link - it is definitely helpful. I wish more blogs had that…
When it comes to the statistics of either my blog or my website, I’m unfortunately rather lost, so, I don’t really know what effect the TOC has on my traffic for sure. I just assume, since it makes it easier for _me_ to get around my blog, that that’s probably true for others as well…
Best wishes,
Apollia
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July 9th, 2007 at 10:53 am
My two cents: write only when you have something to say
July 12th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Nice post, i will use some of yours ways
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