Darren Rowse, blogging at ProBlogger, posts 11 tips for increasing pageviews. This is mostly in the context of advertising on blogs (nothing wrong with that: How do I put AdSense on my blog?), but the tips are good even if you don’t sell ads on your blog. After all, if you can get readers to read more of your blog the first time they come, they’re more likely to find something they like and want to come back for more.
I think the best of Darren’s tips are those about linking your posts together: referring to posts you’ve made in the past, writing posts in series, or even just highlighting your best posts in a spot on the sidebar (or at the bottom). You may recall that last tip from Jacob Nielsen’s usability tips for weblogs, something I wrote about a few months back. (See! I’m doing it! Go go Blogger Buzz pageviews!)
Personally, I discourage tip #8, which says to include only summaries in your RSS feeds. I likes me my Google Reader, and get a bit annoyed by sites that only have the summaries instead of full posts. I think it’s better to include other ways to get your feed-reading readers to come to your site, perhaps with the aforementioned intra-blog links, or (ProBlogger tip #10) encouraging community in your comments.
Disclaimer: Pageview tips not effective during Blog*Spot outages.
[via Freshblog]
