Getting Traffic to Your Older Posts

It tends to be the case with most posts that once they get pushed off the homepage, they get read less and less often. Just because a post isn't brand new doesn't mean readers wouldn't like it. So here are some ways of promoting those good old posts that have been forgotten.

Popular Posts Section

Display in your sidebar or footer a popular posts section where you can place posts that others found useful but are no longer on the homepage, or that you want to promote for some reason. On this site I have three popular posts below the first two posts on the homepage. These are three that I want people to take a look at for whatever reason. The great thing about popular post areas is readers really tend to gravitate toward these posts because if everyone else is reading them they must be missing out. If these posts have a large number of comments or have been frequently linked to via social media show this to the user. Readers always check out the popular stuff.

Best of Collections

Creating a post highlighting some of your best work in a specific category. It is a good way to bring up old content and can be a quick post if you have writer’s block. Just don’t do this one too often or you might turn readers away who are only there for fresh content.

Link Posts Together

This is a really great on and most blogs do not do it because it means going back and editing old posts. With most blogs you will cover the same topics accross many posts, so you should connect them with links. If you have an in depth post about beef jerky, add a link to it on your 101 Things To Do With Cows post. Links inside paragraphs of text are a lot more likely to get clicked then something in the footer or sidebar and they are good for SEO too.

Random Posts

Sometimes even you forget about the posts you have written so another possibility is displaying a random posts. Just anything from the database.

Suggested Reading

This can also be a very good way of getting readers to find older posts. At the bottom of each posts give a link or three to other similar posts the reader might like. If they made it all the way through the posts without leaving there is a good change they’ll want to read some more. So put it right at their fingertips.

Did I miss Anything

Do you have any other ways of promoting posts that I might have missed. If so leave a comment below.