Link up your Blog « Scraps of Mind

Link up your Blog

May 22, 2007 at 10:10 am | In Blogging |

There is so much blogging info out there that many people don’t have time to delve down into the archives of your blog and experience many of the other fine things you have written. That’s a great pity. And there is something you can do about it.

Hopefully you are already categorising your posts with meaningful categories that make it easier for your readers and yourself to navigate through your archive of posts. But why not take it one step further and reference previous posts in your current articles and link back to them? You can see how I’ve done this at the beginning of this paragraph by linking the relevant text back to my earlier post, Blogging 101.

This gives your readers the option of accessing some of your previous masterpieces easily and adds support to your current article.

Bonus tip: If your blog platform gives you the option to ‘Open link in another window’ (WordPress does but I’m not sure about Blogger and Typepad) always select that one. This way if your reader goes off on a bit of a surfing tangent they don’t have to try to navigate back through multiple screens to get back to your original post.

Another linking technique I have started using is putting a small list of related posts at the bottom of each article (see below). If a reader is interested in your current post then there’s a good chance they might be interested in reading others on a similar theme or in the same category. By presenting this to them at the end of reading your post they are more likely to feel like clicking on one than if they had to go to the relevant category to find one.

I’ve found that since I started using these two techniques a lot more people have accessed my earlier posts (which of course makes me feel very good) giving them a new lease of life.

Ultimately it’s about finding ways to make it easier for your readers to read your stuff. And for me at least, that’s what it’s all about. Hope you found this useful.

9 Comments »

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More great tips, as usual!

Comment by Hannah — May 22, 2007 #
I tend to link back to previous posts unless I at stuck for time!! It’s a good tip!! LIke your second tip as well.

Comment by Janine — May 22, 2007 #
Karen,

As a new blogger, I am enjoying your blog and all of your great advice. Keep it coming.

Michelle

Comment by scrappyhour — May 22, 2007 #
Thanks a lot for your encouragement Hannah, Janine and Michelle.

Comment by Karen — May 22, 2007 #
Thanks for the tips Karen. I still have so much to learn and that’s what I find so much fun about blogging ~ so many sites with great info!

I see you have been visiting my blog and leaving comments ~ thanks for dropping over!

Comment by Kahshe Cottager aka Jen — May 23, 2007 #
Glad you find them helpful Jen

Comment by Karen — May 23, 2007 #
Awesome tip, I had just started doing doing the link part a couple of times recently but hadn’t thought of the related links - what a great idea.

Comment by pacifictonz — May 27, 2007 #
Glad you found it useful Toni.

Comment by Karen — May 28, 2007 #
[...] a earlier post I talked about injecting new life into your previous posts by referencing them, where appropriate, in your current posts and providing a link for readers to [...]

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