In my recent popular post: Are You Still Annoying Your Blog Visitors?, I shared some poor practices that could be ticking your visitors off.
If you still haven’t implemented my suggestions, then you’re probably losing readers, subscribers and potential customers as you are reading this.
Your goal is to get your visitors to stay on your blog and explore what you’ve got.
If you implement what I’m going to share with you today, then you’d be able to achieve this easily and have your visitors coming back to your blog all the time.
Remember, first impressions do last.
So, what’s the number one thing that would make your blog magnetic, that would make people stay on for hours on your blog? It’s your CONTENT! You guessed right! 
You need to help your visitors get more of it. And you know what, the more posts they read, they more comments they leave and the more they reduce your bounce rate! In addition, search engines get more posts to index.
Isn’t it great to get comments like this?:
Be sure to check out Kissie‘s blog when you’re done here…
Now, here are some simple but effective ways you can implement to give your blog visitors more than they have bargained for:
1. Blog Pages
I see some bloggers using too many pages or too little pages. With too many pages, you’re giving your visitors too many options and they would end up not making any choice. One the other hand, too little is not good. Have you seen blogs with just “Home” and “About” tabs?
That doesn’t do it at all. The key is to have a balance. I would say you need at least 6 tabs with valuable information, otherwise what’s the point? It’s all about quality rather than quantity. Make sure the titles are catchy to get your visitors curious and click on them.
2. Internal Linking
It surprises me why this strategy is often overlooked by many bloggers. Internal linking is not only beneficial for SEO purposes (a topic for a different post), but it’s also a great way to get your readers hooked to your other posts.
The cool thing is that you’re in total control – you choose which posts and pages you want to link to and the keywords for the anchor text. This is also a smart way to keep your older posts alive. It’s always ideal to keep updating your old posts, some of them may be outdated and irrelevant.
The more links or votes you get, the more Google will see your piece of content as popular and push up your blog rankings. The more you link to your other posts and pages, the more your readers will stay on and check out your “recommended reading”.
Just don’t overdo this and have your internal links plastered all over your posts – too many options lead to no choice made.
3. Related Posts
A great way to keep your visitors on your blog is to show related posts below each post you publish. They are likely to find something interesting or something they have been looking for. This also gives search engines more content to index. This is internal linking at its best!
You can have the related posts show up at the end of your posts by installing the WordPress Related Posts plugin. This plugin automatically generates a list of the related posts to your new post, using relevant tags. You can choose a number of related posts you want to show up.
Check out the related posts at the end of this post to see what I’m talking about
4. Popular Content
Why don’t you show off your best content on your blog? You need to let your visitors find your most popular content. Why? This is the content that your readers have indicated that it’s sooo good by leaving you a lot of comments and by sharing it all over the place.
When you display this, you can make it even more popular – your visitors would be curious to see why it’s popular, leave comments and share it as well. Simply install the WordPress Popular Posts widget and display the most popular posts on your blog.
5. Recent Posts
To give your visitors a quick overview of what your blog is all about and what you write about, use the default WordPress widget in your admin panel. Check it out under “Available Widgets”, drag it to the sidebar and activate it. It will display links to your most recent posts.
6. Recent Comments
Another technique to use is to display the recent comments – your visitors are likely to check out who said what and about what and then get deeper and deeper into your content. The widget for this is also available in your admin panel – follow the same steps as above.
7. Categories
Make it easier for your visitors to have a bird’s eyeview of your content and to help them find what they are looking for by using the “Categories” widget. This will display all the categories that you have all your posts filed under. Your visitors will then pick and choose what they want to read.
8. Archives
Most bloggers are using the “Archives” widget for a monthly archive of their posts. I’m not sure how effective is this as it’s only listing the months. Do people really click to check what you have shared in different months?
I think it’s much better if you have the actual titles and links if you want to grab your visitors’ attention. The months don’t do it for me, I hardly click on them anyway.
Solution: Create a page that links to your posts and pages so that your readers can go through them on one page and pick those they’d like to read. Furthermore, search engines can see all your other links when indexing. You can create this page by installing the plugin called, Dagon Design Sitemap Generator.
After installing this plugin, configure the easy settings. Then add the following line to your blog page where you would like the sitemap to display.
<!-- ddsitemapgen -->
Note: If you are using the new rich-text editor – be sure to click the ‘html’ button to edit the page source directly. Otherwise WordPress will wrap code tags around the line which generates the sitemap and it will not work properly.
Tip: Make the label/tabs “Archives”or “Posts” , instead of “Sitemap”. Some of your visitors may not understand what “Sitemap” means and those who do, would think it’s just a page to make it easier for the search engines’ spiders to navigate your blog and not click on it.
9. Search Box
Your visitors will likely want to search your blog for more articles using different keywords, based on your niche. Be sure to display your search box where your visitors will be able to see it.
10. Read More Option
When visitors arrive at your blog, they are likely to scroll down your home page to get a glimpse of your content. This exercise can be very tiring and frustrating if you leave your posts long.
So, you need to use the default “read more” option in your admin panel and display the post excerpts. This will encourage your visitors to stay longer and click on the posts that they may be interested in.
Key Takeaway
Remember the golden rule: if you give your visitors too many options, they would feel overwhelmed and choose none. So, you need to display the widgets strategically, you can use your footer as well. Check out how I use some of these techniques on my blog.
As a blogger, your goal is to give your visitors what they’re looking for, however, you need to exceed their expectations so that they spend some time on your blog and keep coming back for more.
Have you got any other suggestions to share? Please leave a comment below.
If you enjoyed reading this post, make sure you fill out this form to receive my post updates via e-mail, leave a comment below and share this with your friends and followers.
Mavis Nong is the creator and author of this blog.
She is passionate about helping others create success online.
{ 62 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Mavis,
you are definitely over-delivering again…cool advice and cool plugins.
It’s absolutely crucial to update older posts – because you can add internal links to posts you created later.
I am amazed how many older posts are perfect in oder to link to my Think and grow rich series, for example.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Take care
Oliver
Oliver Tausend invites you to check..Books That Impacted You The Most In Life And Business
Hi Oliver,
Thank you very much for your kind words.
That’s a great example, Oliver. See, older posts can be put to good use
All the best,
Mavis
That’s a really good point Oliver.
I’ve been doing a bit of that lately, going through a few older posts that are relevant to some of the newer ones and updating them with more internal linking.
This is something I NEVER did when I started, do every time now, and am gradually fixing in older posts.
Very good tip!
Susanna
Susanna Hess invites you to check..Kill Your Internet Video Marketing Campaign Before It’s Too Late!
Same here. I never paid a lot of attention to my older posts until recently…
Wow! Mavis, that was more than two handfuls!
I’m not sure how I can carry all that.
You definitely practice what you preach concerning over delivering.
One thing I want to try to do more of is, internal linking.
I am learning SO much, and it’s hard to find the time to implement all of these incredible ideas.
Keep em coming.
Maritn
Martin invites you to check..Don’t be a Jerk on Facebook!
I couldn’t carry all that myself, Martin
Thanks for your encouragement. Internal linking is very powerful. You’ll get there, just keep practising.
All the best,
Mavis
Oh,
I forgot to say also, I LOVE the picture.
It totally caught my attention.
Great Choice
Martin Dale
Martin invites you to check..Don’t be a Jerk on Facebook!
Thank you, Martin! That’s the whole idea – to catch people’s attention
nice post mavis…i must say you have good observation powers.
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Thank you, Tushar.
For the “Recent Posts” widget I recommend that each comment link to the post, and not the comment. That way search engines will index the link to the page, and not a specific div element
Zac,
The “Recent Posts” widget does display links to the posts, not the comments.
Mavis
I am already using many of the above points to get more traffic and will soon implement remaining to get some other extra visitors or to just increase my page views.
nazimwarriach invites you to check..Wall Street Journal Discount
That’s great to hear. Yes, the remaining techniques will help you to achieve that.
Mavis
Mavis, you never cease to amaze with your insights. I shall change the names of my pages straight away to entice my readers to look at them. I shall also install the WP Related Posts Plug In.
I’ve just added the Evernote elephant icon so that readers can ‘clip’ any posts or parts of posts to their notebooks, to read again perhaps.
Linda at Positive Spin invites you to check..Take The Positive Spin Challenge – What Do You Want Really
Hi Linda,
Thanks for your kind words. Your pages are still not enough, I’m sure you’ll add a couple more
I would suggest you create a “Contact” page instead of using the contact form on every page.
The Evernote icon is ok if people want to save your posts for future reference. Have you had any success with installing the Related Posts plugin?
Much success to you,
Mavis
Hell again Mavis,
I tried to install the Related Posts plug in but it threw up this error messgae,
Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_site_admin() in /home/lindahouse/positivespinblog.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-related-posts/related-posts.php on line 81
My friend Arvind is going to sort it for me but it means I can’t get into my site to change my pages or write a post at the moment.
As soon as all is well I shall get to it!
Linda at Positive Spin invites you to check..Take The Positive Spin Challenge – What Do You Want Really
Thanks so much Mavis.
I shall install the WP Related Posts Plug In, start linking to old posts, and change the titles of my Pages.
I’ve installed the Evernote icon to enable readers to clip pots or patrs of posts. Is this a good idea do you think? I’d appreciate your view.
Linda invites you to check..Take The Positive Spin Challenge – What Do You Want Really
Hi Mavis,
A really good post here.
The popular content tidbit is a reminder for me. Time to put the page back up. Thanks for the inspiration
I resonate with your golden rule: keep options to a minimum. Fight the urge to include more. It’s normally drive by fearing you don’t have enough content out there and decisions driven by fear usually bring poor results.
Keep the pages to a minimum. Include a few internal links per post, if that. Less is more.
Thanks for sharing your insight Mavis.
RB
Ryan Biddulph invites you to check..Why Be a Clown – Work Less Hours to Supercharge Your Home Based Opportunity
Thank you so much, Ryan. Glad you found this inspiring
So true, less is more. It can be tempting to put a whole lot of information on your blog but you won’t get the desired results.
I appreciate your visit and input, Ryan.
All the best,
Mavis
Hi Mavis, all powerful strategies for giving your visitors a quality experience on your blog.
You struck a chord with me in #1 though, I do need more pages and that’s something I’m working on, in between posting
Liz
Liz invites you to check..Simple Ideas For Improving Your Online Business
Thank you very much, Liz. I look forward to your new pages
All the best,
Mavis
great post!I think I really learned a lot in reading it. I really don’t want my visitors whom I worked on so hard to visit my blog to just leave after 5 seconds of taking a look at it.
Staci Gauny invites you to check..Boring Business Crank it up in 100 days!
Hi Staci,
That’s great to hear that. I’m sure your blog will be even better
All the best,
Mavis
Mavis,
Yet another value packed post! I’m in the process of changing the structure of my blog in regards to many of these factors so it’s great to read your thoughts on them.
I actually had the Dagon-Design map installed for some time and had neglected to activate it so thanks for the reminder and start-up tips on that one!
Brilliant post, this will be very helpful to anyone looking to improve their blog…
Cheers,
Jym
Jym Tarrant invites you to check..Essential MLM Mindset Tip 3 – Remember What the Dormouse Said…
Hi Jym,
Glad you found this helpful. Yes, you need to put the sitemap to good use
I look forward to your new blog structure, Jym.
All the best,
Mavis
Hi Mavis!
Wow! Looks like this post took you a least two days work…
well, that’s the impression anyway!
You hit on a very nice list of points!
I do blog design myself, and I do add a point here,
that one would also need to consider the graphical
layout and design quality of the blog.
The color scheme is very important too. It is what
grabs the eyeballs in the first 3 seconds. Visitor
bounce rate can be reduced a lot with a pleasing look.
This also includes font choice, paragraphing content
in small chunks so its easy to consume, typography,
line spacing, etc…
Only after the eyeballs pass the “look and feel” gate
then quality content comes into play.
From my first glance, you do very well on this blog in
both color choice, (easy on the eyes) and nice graphic
layout and design.
By the way,
Your title of this post is set on the main tag line of
my blog: “Cast your Bread Upon The Water, It’ll Return Buttered”
In short, always over deliver… You’ll get over-paid!
Robert
Robert Peil invites you to check..Will Your MLM Opportunity Die Ty Tribbles Did!
Hi Robert,
No, it didn’t take me long. This one did though: http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/attract-targeted-endless-prospects/
You are sharing very good points about blog design, the colours and all that. First impression do last. It’s important to make your blog welcoming.
Thanks for your kind words, I’m glad you like my blog design
Yes, I saw that when I visited your blog: “Your Success Secret”. Very encouraging, Robert!
I appreciate your visit and awesome comment.
All the best,
Mavis
Wow, Mavis you’ve done it again.
So many ideas that I haven’t used. To think, I could be getting 10x as much traffic as I do now. When I got to #3 I knew I had to fix something about my blog.
Also, I need to start putting up my popular content as well. I’m sure that would be a good way to get visitors looking at more than the first page on my blog.
Gah, there’s so much to learn from this! Thanks for putting up all this information for us to learn from!
Have a great day!
Adrian Padua
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Thanks for the encouragement, Adrian. It looks like you have some work to do now
I’m glad to help.
All the best,
Mavis
Another insightful posts Mavis. Great work.
#Blog Pages – I see the most common issue is showing very little pages, i see many bloggers even don’t have about me page.
#Related posts – I remember the day when i install the YARP and after an hour hostgator suspend my blog for the high cpu usage. From that time i never used yarp. WordPress Related plugin is much much better then YARP
.
#Archives – I just updated my archives page by putting categories, last 25 posts and tags. Now writing tutorial on it.
Anyways, Thanks for sharing this great post Mavis. Keep rocking.
Have a great day.
Devesh invites you to check..Education And Dedication – The Key To Becoming An Expert Blogger
Thanks, Dev.
Having no “About me” page is a huge mistake a blogger can make. Yes, I am happy with the WordPress Related Posts plugin.
That’s fantastic that you are putting a tutorial on that together. Keep up the good work, Dev!
All the best,
Mavis
Interesting Devesh, I’ve head others also had issues with YARP and Hostgator, not me though.
Dennis Edell invites you to check..How DEDC Contest Sponsors Will be Linked
Recent Comments Tip: be sure the plugin allows you to remove YOURS.
As s blogger one of your obligations is to reply to comments. This can be detrimental to the purpose of the plugin as it would most likely only show yours
Dennis Edell invites you to check..How DEDC Contest Sponsors Will be Linked
Great to see you here, Dennis and thanks for the tip
Mavis
Hi Mavis,
Great list of resources here. I’ve played around with some of them, added and taken away… I’ve been thinking of bringing the recent comments back.
We want our visitors to stick around as long as possible, and this post is packed with wonderful information to help make that happen. Great job!
Susanna
Susanna Hess invites you to check..Kill Your Internet Video Marketing Campaign Before It’s Too Late!
Thank you very much, Susanna. I like that “played around with some of them”… It’s all about testing and tweaking to make our visitors happy
I appreciate your visit and comment, Susanna.
All the best,
Mavis
Content is definitely the thing that will make your visitors want to stay around for as long as they can. One of the best strategies you covered in this post is Internal linking.
This is a great way to keep your visitors on your blog by reading all of your other articles. I think you do a good job of this in your posts.
This method is definitely overlooked but I think you’re doing a great job of getting the message out. Thanks for sharing your insights as always Mavis.
John invites you to check..How To Find The Best Guitar Lessons
That’s right, John – if your content sucks then people will not stick around for long.
Hopefully people will start paying attention to internal linking after reading this post
Thanks for stopping by and for adding value to this conversation, John.
Mavis
Brilliant as always! You do over deliver and I love that about your blog! I was using the dagon sitemap in the past but I stopped using it for the archives on my blog to clean it up. I’m thinking I should go back to it. Love your feedback?
Great job!
Heather
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Thank you very for the encouragement, Heather. I would advise you to go back to it to have your posts and pages on one page
I appreciate your visit and comment, Heather.
All the best,
Mavis
Hi Mavis… This is the reason why I keep on visiting your blog.. A worth the read post like this is what I always got every time I visits your blog. thanks a lot for sharing and keep it up!
Hi Michelle,
That’s great to hear!
Well, keep coming back as I have more to share…
I appreciate your visits and comments, Michelle.
All the best,
Mavis
Mavis,
Great information!
I like the information about the tabs because I’ve seen blogs where you don’t even know where to find their content and end up leaving.
Another idea, if you must create several pages, I assign a parent page to some of them.
For example, my ‘Tommy Recommends’, is a parent page and I created a ‘Magentic Sponsoring Series’ pages.
Now within the MS series page, I created pages for the products that takes you directly to the products that may interest you.
Thanks for this post,
Tommy D.
Tommy DiPietro invites you to check..MLM Blogging & Social Networking Plugins For Your Self-Hosted WordPress Blog You Should Like
Hi Tommy,
I know what you mean… I have just been to a blog with just a home page
Thanks for sharing the idea with us – very effective in directing your readers to various pages within your blog.
All the best,
Mavis
Hi Mavis!
Well, your blog is definitely a great example of what keeps me coming back! For a newbie like me, it’s almost intimidating to leave comments on the blogs of the “big dogs.” But it’s also a confidence boost, too, because when I see your comments around other blogs I know you’re a real person who cares about your fellow bloggers!
All of these tips are really great! As soon as I finish moving my blog from Blogger to Wordpress, I’ll definitely be taking a lot more notes. However, do you have any tips on what to use if, like me, a blogger is still relegated to a free Wordpress blog? It seems everyone is only talking about paid Wordpress blogs and plug-ins, but that’s just not feasible for me right now.
Any tips?
Thanks again, Mavis!
Delena
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Hi Delena,
That’s really great to hear. Thanks for putting a big smile on my face
To be honest, a self-hosted WordPress is the way to go, you own it, you are in total control of your content and everything else. However, you can start off with a free WordPress blog and use it with caution, abide to their rules and then upgrade to the paid one.
I appreciate your visit and kind words, Delena.
All the best,
Mavis
Hello Mavis,
Thanks for sharing this awesome post! When you do internal linking, do you go over to your previous posts manually and open that related post to a new tab to copy the blog url, OR you have some tool that does this for you? Like lets say a plugin that automatically detects your keyword and automatically links that keyword on your previous posts? Hope to hear from you. Thanks again and I look forward to reading more from you
`Sonny
Sonny Lanorias invites you to check..How My Blog’s PageRank Went From Zero To PR3 And How You Can Do The Same
You’re welcome, Sonny. I’m not using any tool.
See you soon!
Mavis
Great info as always. I always find myself coming back here. I’m lost for words. One post is as good as the next.
Thanks for your kind words, Dan. Always a pleasure to have you here.
All the best,
Mavis
So much valuable information. I’m still in a blog “re-vamp” but I am guilty of the calendar-style “archives”, but using the titles does make a lot more since.
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Great post, Mavis! I think that you are so right about the importance of having something for the people who come to the blog. These are some great tips. There are a couple that I didn’t have, so I’m definitely going to have to look into these for my blog. Thank you so much for continuing to provide great value on your blog.
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You’re most welcome, Steve. Glad you found this helpful
All the best,
Mavis
I really Enjoyed this post Mavis, Oh Sorry…where are my manners?
I am Lavar Storr and I am glad to work with you as some of the things on this post is clearly true. Tch, I didn’t even know about some of this stuff for wordpress and i must say that I am impressed. As I start to blog more and more I hope I can see more blog visitors but until then I am just a small fish. Good Luck
Welcome to my blog, Lavar! Glad you found this helpful
Keep coming back to learn more about how to attract tons of traffic to your blog!
Mavis
Some excellent tips mentioned here. As you say sometime too much also could be bad. I think you should experiment and see which works best for your blog. Usually the highest click through comes for popular posts, especially when they are shown with comment counts. curiosity gets the better of most visitors.
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That’s right, Nishadha. Thanks for stopping by and for your comment.
Mavis
All these “technical” add-ons are good, of course, but they are no replacement for what counts the most – well-written, well-thought-out, original writing that readers have not read 10 times on other blogs.
Zoomit invites you to check..Photo Contests Canada
I couldn’t agree with you more, Zoomit.
Thanks for the visit and input.
All the best,
Mavis
I can’t tell you for how many times, I’ve visited the site because I could not just forget the manner in which is has been presented and written.
First impressions last.
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