An often annoying thing of running a blog is that your best content is not being read. It is indeed become increasingly common for many webmasters to find that, while they are getting tons of visitors who are leaving comments and spreading their content, their best content is often ignored in favor of other content. Obviously, as a blogger, you always want your best content to be more popular since the latter can arguably do a better job of increasing your popularity and getting even more visitors to your blog. Thankfully, there are straightforward techniques you can use to ensure that this content gets the popularity it deserves without impacting your other content.
Cross-linking your posts
Cross-linking your various articles is probably the easiest way to bring your visitors to your most beloved content without really having to come up with a whole new content optimization strategy. It is something many bloggers are actually doing, albeit incorrectly. The key when cross-linking your posts in to do so in two stages instead of just the single stage usually used by webmasters.
The first stage consists of linking to your other posts at the end of the article, which is what many webmasters regularly do. It is important that you keep relevancy in mind while doing so though, as you do not want to frustrate your regular audience. The second stage, which is more effective, involves linking to your best content from within the blog post. These links have a better chance of being clicked as they are often regarded as a natural follow-up to the current article.
Make them one click away from your homepage
Most blog layouts do a great job at separating your content into categories, labels and archives. While categories do a great job of grouping similar content together and labels are useful for visitors that are only interested in a certain type of content, archives are often the ugly duckling of blogs. They are often prominently displayed, yet rarely used as they offer no real way of finding specific content.
The strategy here is thus to remove the archives if possible and to replace them with an entirely new section. You can name the latter “Popular posts” or something equally catchy that will attract attention. Moreover, this new link list should be placed in a prominent place since you want people to click on it. It should definitely be above the fold since you want people to be able to visit one of those links without having to scroll down.
Keep your best posts updated
Regularly updating your best posts is also an effective way of bringing attention to them, as long as these updates are visible on your homepage. This is easier done with posts that deal with a time-dependant topic (such as Search Engine Optimization, which is a constantly evolving topic). The great news is that since you already consider these posts as your best work, you will never actually lack motivation to work on them.
About: Ashvin Sawmynaden, the author of the Fast food in Mauritius website, blogs about various topics. His recent articles include a unique outline of the Paradise Cove hotel ile Maurice and a great look at its excellent ile Maurice spa, which is perfect for stressed tourists.