As I’m continuing to see more and more “Most Popular” lists pop up on blog sidebars, I thought it was time to share my experience with them and give a couple of reasons why they are probably a good idea for your blog.
A while back, on my largest blog, I went into my stats and made a list of the most popular posts on that blog … then I simply listed them on the sidebar.
Of course, they weren’t all necessarily THE most popoular posts. I editorialized a bit and listed the ones that had the best content that would also showcase my blog’s topic.
[BTW, Although there are plugins for this, I wouldn't personally mess with them.]
Since I did that a few months ago, I’ve noticed those posts continue to be among the most read (and found via the search engines) on the blog. So when I went to redesign this blog (yet again), I realized that this feature would be one of the first things I added here …
Here are three benefits I’ve found to making a “Most Popular” post list on your blog’s sidebar:
- It gives first-time guests a place to start – it gives those single posts visitors a roadmap to surf around your best content.
- It highlights your best content — duh! And demonstrats what topics you write about.
- It enhances search engine visibility – if you put those posts on the sidebar, you’ve given them site-wide link love. The spiders can help but notice that.
A neat alternate name for this list: SkellieWag calls this her “Reader Favorites.” And uses a graphic to link to her popular posts.
This is basic ecommerce strategy applied to blogs. With an online store around 20% of your products account for 80% of your sales and with your blog a minority of your posts will be read the most.
On a blog your posts are products that you need to promote to your customers. Therefore, it makes sense to promote those posts as much as possible for maximum profit/readership.
It would be helpful to know specifically you determined which were most popular.