Blogging Tip #4-Help Your Readers Navigate

I have been asked many times for ways to improve PageViews and bring people deeper into Blogs to provide information that has already been posted and is still relevant. The answer lies in Navigation. Give your visitors and regular readers a way to find information that is important to them.

I wrote a post back in September, 6 Ways to Improve Navigation and Increase PageViews for the How To Writing Project that Darren had on ProBlogger.

In it I had tips that included…

1. Add Categories

2. Use Intra-links

3. Include Related Posts

4. Show Recent Posts

5. Show Recent Comments

6. Provide a Link to Series you have written.

Click the “intra-link” above or below to see the post for more information on each point.

I have refined the list to include…

7. Popular Posts. If you use any statistics package, you know which articles seem to be the one’s that people look for and read. Make it easy for people to find other Popular Posts by creating a page containg all of the Favorites your visitors and readers look for and access the most.

8. Archives. Some Bloggers have a tendency to overlook their Archives. There is a treasure trove of information in there and your readers my be looking for something that you have written previously. Give them the opportunity to surf your site, they could find what they are looking for and more. If nothing else, they may just get to know you better.

9. Previous and Next Posts. This sounds like a give me, but not every Blogging Platform provides a way to navigate from the post readers land on to the previous or subsequent posts. Blogger does not and I never found a way to accomplish this. It is one of the major reasons for the change to WordPress for me. Some of the templates available in WP do not always provide fool-proof ways to go foward and back from a post. I wrote an article on how to do this in Andreas04 which can be applied to other WP templates as well.

10. Use Pages. Most Platforms and Templates provide a way to include Pages (usually in the Head or Sidebar). Pages usually give the reader information about the site, you, and your projects. You can also create Pages for anything you feel is important such as #7-Popular Posts or #6-Series you have written. Make the Page Name obvious, so there is no question of the Content within.

It seems that every time I write a post like this, I find new things to add after the fact. I started with Six, now I have Ten ways to Help in Navigation. I’m sure there are many more I haven’t thought of yet, can you add to the list?