9 ways to increase page views
October 15, 2008 by Dan
Filed under Tips, Web Traffic
It’s a no brainer - besides the number of unique visitors, the number of page views your blog gets is very important. Here are 9 ways I have used at one point or another to increase the number of page views on my sites:
- Related posts - this is one of the most important features you can implement. I found Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) to be simple to implement, yet very effective.
- Cross-link your content - unlike Related Posts, this one will take some of your time, because you’ll have to cross link your content manually. The extra 5 minutes of your time will be well worth it, both for your visitors and your blog’s stats.
- Content Series - fairly simple concept. From time to time you will be covering a large topic, instead of writing a single large post, break it down into sections. Always mention at the end of one section that a continuation will be coming soon. Don’t publish all the sections at once or on consecutive days. You want people interested in reading more to come back every day to see if you’ve posted a continuation, but be careful, don’t make them wait too long (>1 week) or they’ll forget it.
- Mini-post-series - this one has its own mention because it’s different than #3 and it could be a “gold mine” if done correctly. Create a series of short (1-2 sentences) facts about your favorite subject… such as the “23 best widgets under the sun” or “10 widgets you need to retire with” or “17 widgets that I like” or “Incredible facts about widgets” or use widget pictures embedded one per page with links to the next one - this may seem old-fashioned, but will give you more page views than a fancy gallery application.
- Most popular posts -just embed a plugin into your sidebar.
- Latest posts - place this plugin in your sidebar.
- Most commented posts - another plugin for the sidebar.
- Giveaway - encourage visitors to signup for your newsletter, eBook, anything of value. Make sure there’s always a confirmation page with a “Continue” link of some sort. If a user signs up you will get three additional page views.
- Break posts into smaller pieces - this is my least favorite one. I’ve used it for a few weeks on one of my sites and got rid of it because it’s not user friendly. You may get an extra page views from visitors but once they leave they may never come back.
Why am I listing “9″ ways to increase page views instead of 5, 10, 15? Because I’ve only used these 9 so far.
Important: when you install the Most common, Latest, Most commented, and Related posts plugins, play with them to see what placement (top sidebar, bottom sidebar, bottom of post, etc) will work best for you. It may sound surprising, but I’ve noticed that the best places to drop these features differ between the sites (news vs monster-site vs blog). So make sure you test to see what the optimal placement will be.
Related posts:
This is good way. I however used to place the related links manualy because I linked to the posts that I feel they are wortly to read.
Reading other bloggers is very interesting because it help in increasing the knowledge of the person.