Mike Clough
Many years ago, a young marketing guy approached a major manufacturer of hair shampoo and promised that he could double sales of their product by simply adding one word to the label. (No, the word was not “sex” as you were probably thinking.) The word was “repeat”. Up to that point the directions were “wash and rinse”. He suggested changing it to “wash, rinse and repeat”. History was made that day. Just try to find a shampoo bottle today that does not have the word “repeat” in the directions.
What has that got to do with driving traffic to your blog? Well what I am going to share with you is a tiny secret that many bloggers often overlook that can increase page views by as much as 33%! It is a SEO technique that anyone can use because it is simple and easy. You do not need to know anything about FTP or HTML. There is no need to install a widget or plug-in. In fact, you can do everything you need to do right from the admin control panel of your blog. It is so simple… just like “wash, rinse, repeat”… that you will wonder why you never thought of this before. Here it is:
When you complete an article, think back about other articles that you have posted. If someone was interested in the subject matter of this post, what other posts have you made in which they would also be interested? At the end of your article place something like the following:
Those enjoying this article also enjoyed:
Article Name #1 (with embedded link)
Article Name #2 (with embedded link)
Article Name #3 (with embedded link)
Of course, you will also need to go back to these older articles and do the same thing by linking forward to the newer articles. This is pretty easy when you only have 25-30 posts on your blog but becomes a lot tougher when you have 250-300. Nonetheless, for an additional 33% in page views, you may find it well worth it.
Mike Clough
America’s Best Business Practices
Best Business Practices On Twitter
Nice post Mike,
One of the things about search engines is that what you need to consider first is the Human Element, linked stories and supporting information to other parts of your blog are great for providing information for your readers, and if it’s good for readers it is good for the search engines.
There is so much ‘smoke and mirrors’ around SEO and often what is forgotten is that your readers are looking to be:
Informed
Entertained
Updated
Educated
If you do one or more of these in your blog posts, and remember to keep focused you will be on your way to successful blogging, and dealing with your SEO issues.
Richard Smith
This is a really good tip, Mike; So good, it’s kind of “hiding-in-plain-site”
. Going to definitely start putting up a “Those who enjoyed this article also enjoyed” and links at the end of my posts wherever possible.
What a great post, Mike. Totally makes sense and so easy to do. I think we assume our readers will check out the “categories” section for more information, but why not make it super easy while boosting views?!
Thanks for sharing it.
Another thought you might want to consider is that the search engines understand the idea of narcissism. If you only link to your own material, it’s a world in a bubble, so to speak. If you can find at least one external article to add to your “also enjoyed” links (preferably from a different site each time), it expands the size of your “world” as seen by the search engine.
If you REALLY want to take it up a notch, make sure the link is with someone you can contact. Ask them to include “This article was used for reference material by others,” somewhere on their page. The words “used for reference material” should be linked to your page with all the usual tag tricks.
Hi and thank you for this information it was very valuable.
Many thanks
Jennifer David
While it does mean installing a plugin, for those using WordPress there are a plethora of “Related Post” plugins. One that I am going to try out (installing it tonight) is the “Contextual Related Posts”. You can find it here if you are interested: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contextual-…
Cheers, Marc
Hi Mike,
Great tip and I am going to incorporate that into my blog! I've never heard of that tip before and it certainly makes sense! Thanks for sharing and make it a wonderful day.
Sometimes it's the simplest things that make the most sense. And this one sure does. Great tip.
Hi Mike
Great tip – will adopt.
Many thanks
Barry Harvey
Thanks for the Great Tip. I am use a WordPress Related Posts Plugin that does the same thing and it helps a great deal