How to solve “burried posts” problem?
If you are a regular blogger and if you have blogged for a year or more, chances are great that you must have faced or thought about this problem already. And that is, how to solve “burried-posts” problem? Different people have tried to address this issue differently, in this post I will list some of the widely used solutions for this problem. I will also include the solutions that I have implemented myself.
If you are a new blogger, then you should consider this issue in your long term plan. And you have to choose which solutions you will be using for your blog. Because when you have too many posts, it will be a lot more difficult to implement new strategies.
Solutions for Burried Posts
1. More Categories
When you have more categories on your blog, users will be able to read a topic of interest as specific as possible. And that will save time for the user from reading unrelated or unnecassary posts. I am using this strategy on my blog, currently I have over 40 categories. I personally think more categories is the most important solution that should be used regardless.
2. Related Posts
Another solution is “related posts links” that appear on every post of your blog. This can be done by WP Plugins, I am using this plugin (I was informed that the link is not working at the moment, hope he will restore it soon) for my blog. This plugin allows you to search and select the related posts for your any given post manually, this plugin gives you greater control than the automatic plugins. Because here, you decide what posts to show, and that results in more accurate “related posts”.
Automatic plugins work the other way around, they will select the related posts automatically and display them on the fly, without your intervention. You just activate the plugin and relax. One advantage of automatic plugins is, they are dynamic. That means all the new posts will be automatically indexed and included in the related links. This cannot be done in manual plugins, you have to update the “related links” every time you post something related.
You should decide what suits your need best.
3. Most Read/Popular Posts
There are plugins that can keep track of the visitors to each page and show the most 10 popular posts (you can set to anything, not just 10) and display them as a separate page or right on the homepage.
However this Popular Posts solution has a drawback. Since most of the time it’s determined by the visits to the particular post, it might give an undesired result. For example a post that has only one link to some site might get dugg! and since it will have the most number of visits, it will show up on your Most Popular posts page.
Surely you would want users to read your other interesting articles than an empty post with just a link to other site?
4. Interesting Archives
This one is my own invention that I have implemented on this blog. Basically I have handpicked some of the posts that I think will be interesting to my readers, and hard-coded them into the blog’s theme. They appear on the footer of the blog.
I am also thinking to make them random, that way I will be able to display more posts.
5. Creating eBook from the old posts
Some people like JohnChow have created an eBook from their old posts. I think it’s a great idea. This would be possible for bloggers who are blogging about particular topic most of the time. Since JC is talking about Making Money Online, he could create a Make Money Online eBook. So if you have your own niche, then you can start thinking about your new eBook.
6. Creating Tag Clouds
Creating Tag Clouds on your blog can be a great idea for blog navigation. It can also help the new reader to quickly visualize what topics do you talk the most, and what’s your expertise. If your tag called “Ramblings” is so big compared to… let’s say “Make Money” then probably you will end up loosing the new readers ;)
7. Most Commented Posts
Most Commented Posts plugins can help you to promote your most popular posts in different way. They display the Top10 most commented/discussed posts of your blog.
Again there is a downside for this, for example if an argument breaks out between the readers and they end up comment-fight each other in the comments section of the post, that post will show up on your homepage. And this post might not be the most useful post for your readers.
How about you?
My question to you reader-bloggers is, how have you addressed this issue? What kind of solution you have implemented so far? I think it would be useful to all of us to know more solutions for this issue, especially to the ones who have just started blogging.
Updated: This post has been updated from the readers suggestions. Thanks to Travis and Spud.
Related Posts
- Popular Posts, Best of AdesBlog.com
- 10 Free Softwares from DVDVideoSoft
- Solution to hotlinking
- Book: How to Make Money with your Blog
- How I shifted to Google (RSS) reader, finally.
14 Responses
to “How to solve “burried posts” problem?”
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- Jan 20, 2008: AdesBlog.com » Popular Posts, Best of AdesBlog.com
- Feb 23, 2008: AdesBlog.com » Book: How to Make Money with your Blog
By KingJacob on Aug 16, 2007
Interesting, turning your old posts into an ebook would never have thought about that. Itd be interesting to see someone take it a step further and make a real book.
By mara on Aug 16, 2007
Ades thanks for writing about this problem. I’ve been looking for a “related posts” tool for Blogspot. But I guess the only available plugins are for wordpress blogs. If anyone knows of a “related posts” tool suitable for Blogspot blogs I would love to learn it.
By Spud Oregon on Aug 16, 2007
Great list Ades. One other plugin for Wordpress is “Random Posts”, which returns a random list of posts from the archives. Click my name for the download page.
By Spud Oregon on Aug 16, 2007
Ah, I forgot to mention my Most Commented Posts plugin (again for Wordpress) which returns a list of the posts with the most comments. It’s just another way of pulling old but popular posts from your archives and bringing them back where people can see them. The link is in my name.
By Ades on Aug 16, 2007
Great plugins Nick! Thanks. How is little Rikuto doing?
By Spud Oregon on Aug 16, 2007
Good thanks, Ades. He’s now three and a half weeks old, and for someone who poos so much, he’s adorable! :)
By Travis on Aug 16, 2007
I have implemented the categorical view, related posts on every article (using meta tags to automatically generate them the easy way), and the most popular posts. I noticed an immediate increase in time spent on my site when I added the related posts section. People tend to browse around a little more when they’re able to look at posts related to what brought them to my site to begin with.
One idea you didn’t touch on, which I am thinking about implementing on my site, is a tag cloud. They’re very useful and they look cool.
By Spud Oregon on Aug 16, 2007
I’ve never really understood the purpose of a tag cloud. Is it a replacement for categories, or does it run alongside them? And if you already have a hundred non-tagged posts, do you have to tag them all before you can use such a plugin???
By Travis on Aug 17, 2007
Who doesn’t tag their posts? It’s the most useful thing you could do! It keeps your site search-engine friendly.
Tag clouds are basically a way for your visitors to find out what’s hot on your site. Check out Stage6 dot Divx dot Com and see how they implement their tag-cloud to see what I mean. Once you get the hang of them you’ll find them very useful (when implemented correctly, of course).
By Ades on Aug 17, 2007
Travis, you are right, tag clouds are very useful too, especially to visualize the gravity of the topics.
By HighFivez.com on Aug 17, 2007
Very nice suggestions. The eBook idea is new to me. Thanks.
By Robert on Aug 29, 2007
Do you have valuable experience in, or insight into, a subject like business, marketing, planning, or any other subject where your in-depth knowledge could be of great benefit to others then Create Ebooks