十四个方法提高博客的页面访问量

如何增加Blog的访问量已经是老生长谈了，其实对于blogger来说另一个统计数也至关重要：页面浏览量。

　　很多的网站流量统计服务会同时提供这两项数据- “访问量”计数的是访问者的数目，而页面浏览量算的则是这些访问者所浏览的你blog上的网页的数目。

　　对不同blog来说，每个访问者的页面浏览量会有所不同，但希望这个数字可以大一总不是件坏事：

• 回头率： 读者浏览的页面越多，那么他再次造访的可能性也就更大。 
• 收入： 放在blog上的广告多是印象型的，也就是说被浏览的次数多了，被点击的可能性才越大。

　　写blog的目的不同，所以想不想把增加页面浏览量放在第一位悉听尊便。对于那些希望这项统计值上升的人，这里有14条建议：

1、内链到自己的文章

　　这可能是最简单的增加页面流量的办法，那就是在自己文章里加入链接，指向自己的其它文章。自卖自夸可能有点好笑，不过如果是链接到一些之前写过的相关或相同主题的文章的话，相信还是读者们所喜闻乐见的。很多的blogger在自己的blog上会多次写到同一主题，把这些文章都链到一起无疑会显出你对这个主题的探讨深度。

2、高亮显示相关的文章

　　不想在文章内部加入指向之前文章的链接的话，专门独立出一个“相关文章”(Related post)的部分就不失为一个好的替代方法了(你可以在侧栏里看到我的相关文章(related entries)，而原文作者，ProbBlogger的主人的相关文章则放在了每篇文章之后，并以黄色为背景以突出显示)。Wordpress有专门的插件可以自动实现这一功能(名为related posts)。当然你要是想手动实现也是可以的，只要在文章结尾处加进一些和本文相关的可供读者参考的文章链接就可以了。1

3、加入一个邮件订阅或文章更新提提示服务

　　原文作者就尝到了通过邮件订阅来提高页面浏览量的甜头，凡是通过邮件订阅的读者在收到ProBlogger的最新消息的同时都会留意到一个叫作“hot posts”的部分，在这个部分中整理收入了一周当中的最受欢迎的5篇文章。因为不同读者所关注的文章不同，所以很可能一些人只看过其中的某几篇文章，加入“hot posts”之后，这部分读者就会对没看过的那些文章产生兴趣。这样一来就在增加“访问量”的同时也增加了“页面浏览量”。其它的一些通过邮件提示更新的订阅服务应该也很有效(比如Zookoda和Feedburner就都有这个功能)。

4、在醒目位置高亮显示重要文章

　　ProBlogger在页面的上部有三个高亮显示的菜单栏，里面放置了一些介绍或提示性质的文章，比如什么是blog，blog设计的窍门之类。而通过作者的观察很多读者都会认真地把这里的文章看过一遍。这样一来无疑就提高了页面量。

5、“几大……”

　　这种“最…”或是“几几大…”的链接到多个页面的文章似乎总是会勾起读者的兴趣。比如“二十大最受欢迎文章”往往就成为初次造访的读者必看的文章，而这又指引着他们挨着个地去看，不失为一个好办法。

6、写一个系列  

　　写一系列的文章来提高页面量有着两层意义。首先在写这个系列的这段时间里，读者会不时地被吸引回来，因为他们想看看你下一篇文章写了些什么； 其次，在你完成了这个系列之后，如果能很好的把这些文章都链在一起(参考1和2)，这样一来读者就会从头到尾读完整个系列(当然是由多个页面组成的)。原文作者就写过一个初学者blog指南的系列，而每个从头到尾看完这个系列的读者都要看上30到40篇文章(汗)。

7、在首页上输出摘要

　　在首页上只输出摘要或是只输出文章的一部分，然后通过一个“阅读完整文章”的链接链到单独的页面，这样一来想看完整文章的就得再去单独的页面。不得不说这样一来会很烦人，所以很多人都不这么做。不过对于篇幅长的文章来说，这么做不仅使首页看起来更严谨，也在无形中增加了页面量。

8、企划或专题

　　和之前的系列文章相类似，比如很多主题(theme)设计者的blog就是通过建立某个主题的企划，从而吸引关注这个主题的人不时地来看看工作的进展情况。类似的比如开展讨论或者竞赛也可以达到相同的效果。不过这些牛人做这个的首要目的并不是区区页面量，页面量不过是副产品罢了。

9、在聚合中只输出摘要

　　这是为我所不耻的。就连原文作者也不这么做。尽管这样一来你的页面访问可能会有所上升，但我觉得无论是对于读者还是作者来说都是得不偿失。在这样一个“你有压力，我有压力”的社会，每个人的时间都很宝贵，用聚合的目的就是节省时间和资源。所以我看到只输出摘要的blog就一个反应，把它从我的bloglines里删除。强烈建议所有的blogger都在聚合里都输出完整的文章!

10、诱使聚合读者访问页面

　　相比起输出摘要的做法，我觉得这个更可取。不是通过强迫，而是通过一些技巧，比如投票，吸引读者参与评论，或是内部链接的方式来把读者带到你的页面上来。

11、互动

　　读者参与的越多，回访的机率也就越大，同时页面量也就越多。参与了评论或是投票的读者很多都会回访，来看看其他人的回应。而回应本身就带来了两次页面访问量。就留言评论来说，看一遍文章就是一次页面访问，而留个言就是又一次。同样的，最好不要把这个当成吸引留言的首要目的，交流才是根本啊。互动主要发生在留言部分，当然投票以及其它的工具也应该有效果。

12、吸引读者的评论

　　有几个方法可以有效地达到这个目的：比如通过插件实现在侧栏里显示最新的评论，为评论提供一个专门的聚合，或是提供邮件订阅评论的选项。

13、搜索

　　通过加入搜索功能从而方便读者检索你之前写的文章也可以提高页面量。有很多方法可以实现这一功能。大多数的主题都内建了一个搜索引擎，Google的AdSense也提供了这样的一个服务，读者可以选择搜索本站或是整个网络，而且如果他们在搜索结果页面点击了广告，那么还可以给你带来一点小小的外块。

14、给你的读者留作业

　　原文作者举了他的一个提供摄影技巧的blog为例，因为是为读者提供一些摄影的窍门，所以在文章的结尾布置一些“作业”以便让读者可以亲自去尝试就显得十分自然了。这样一来读者就会经常回访，一方面这种窍门或是教学多是一步步的，所以他们会经常打开你的页面，反复按照你的指导一步步地去做；另一方面，很多人都会想要向你展示一下他们的作业成果。

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How to Increase a Blog’s Page Views

There is often a lot of talk in ‘how to blog’ type articles on increasing visitors numbers to a blog there is another statistic that is important to some bloggers also – page views.

Most statistics packages measure both for you – ‘visitors’ (or unique visitors) measures the number of people, but ‘page views’ measures the number of pages on your blog that those visitors look at.

The number of page views per visitor varies quite significantly from blog to blog (based on many factors) but there are a number of reasons why bloggers might wish to increase this statistic including:

• Stickiness – the more pages a reader views the increased chance of them coming back are.
• Revenue – more and more of the ads that we are running on your blogs are impression based ads (ie the more times the ads are seen the more that is earned).

Whether you want to increase page views or not is something that different bloggers will place as a different priority, depending upon the goals of their blog, but if it is something you’d like to work on here are 14 tips on how to increase page views:

1. Interlink your Posts

Perhaps one of the simplest ways to increase the page views on your blog is to send yourself traffic by links between posts from within posts. While for some of us it might feel a little funny promoting your own writing in this way I find that my readers appreciate it if it’s done in a way that adds value to their experience of your blog by linking to other relevant things that you’ve written on the topics that you’re writing about. Most bloggers touch on the same topics numerous times in the life of a blog and to link to previous times you’ve mentioned something adds depth to what you write.

2. Highlight Related Posts

One way to interlink your posts that doesn’t happen from within a post is to have a ‘related posts’ section at the end of your entries. You’ll see an example of this if you scroll down this page to the yellow section just above my comments section. On ProBlogger this is run by a WordPress plugin (called related posts) which automatically finds other posts I’ve written on similar topics (if it’s doing it’s job you’ll find that I’ve written on this very same topic before – hopefully my ideas have developed a little). Of course you can also manually run a ‘related posts’ section also by simply ending your article with other relevant things you’ve written that readers might like to check out.

3. Add a Newsletter or Post Notification Services

One thing that I’ve noticed on some of my blogs is the power of having an email newsletter to increase page views. Those of you that have signed up to my newsletter here at ProBlogger will know that I generally have a section called ‘hot posts’ in which I recap the 5 most popular posts of the week on this blog. While regular readers of the blog who will have seen those posts already probably don’t visit those links quite a few people do. In doing so they often seem to visit more than one of them, thus increasing not only ‘visitor’ numbers but ‘page view’ numbers also. Other services automatically notify readers via email of new posts to your blog which you might also find useful (for example Zookoda and Feedburner both have ways of doing this).

4. Highlight Key Posts in Prominent Positions

I watched a friend surf through ProBlogger recently on their first visit to the blog. One of the things I noticed that they did was surf through the posts that I have highlighted in my three menu boxes at the top of this site. I’ve written previously about why I have those boxes up there and how they are key posts from ProBlogger that help with creating stickiness on the blog. My friend surfed through all of the links in the top left menu and some of those in the other boxes also – racking up page views along the way.

5. ‘Best of’ Pages

The other thing about the posts that my friend viewed from my top menus is that many of them are what I call ‘best of’ or ‘compilation’ pages that link to multiple other pages on this blog. For example the ‘Top 20 Posts at ProBlogger‘ is a prime example and is a post that I know that many  first time readers of ProBlogger surf through from start to finish (I can tell because I can see them leaving comments along the way).

6. Write a Series of Posts

Writing a series of posts on a blog is an effective way of building page views on two fronts. For starters as you write the series you will find it draws people back to your blog over a number of days because they want to find out what you’ve got to say next. Secondly it’s also great once you’ve finished the series because if you’re smart about interlinking them you’ll find that people will read your series (with each post on a different page) from start to finish. Probably the best example that I can give you of this is my Blogging for Beginners series which I highlight in the prominent position on this blog and which I know new readers surf through from start to finish (and in doing so they end up reading 30-40 posts).

7. Use Extended Entires on your Front Page

If you’re writing long posts use the ‘more’ (or extended entry) feature to link people into your individual pages. I wouldn’t do it on all posts as it can be annoying, but for long posts it helps keep your main page more manageable but also has the side benefit of increases page views. I think some bloggers use this feature too much – but in moderation in longer posts it can be useful.

8. Run a Blog Project or Meme

One of the side benefits of my recent group writing projects (like the recent ‘goals‘ one) is that I found they not only brought new links and readers to ProBlogger but they also drew people back multiple times in a week (and day) to see what updates there had been to it. While memes, contests or projects like these won’t appeal to all of  your readers you’ll find that some really really get off on them and will keep coming back to participate. Again – it’s not my primary goal for doing them but is a nice side benefit.

9. Excerpts in RSS feeds

Longer term ProBlogger readers will be aware that I switched from partial to full feeds in my RSS feeds a month or two back. While I did this for a number of reasons I knew in doing so that I would probably see a drop in actual visitor numbers and page views to the blog. This has been the case (although keep in my that RSS readership has increased significantly). Obviously if you do not give RSS readers your full posts in feeds you force them to either only read the first part of your articles or to actually come and visit your blog. This is obviously something I’ve had a change of heart on but is something worth knowing if you’re considering moving to full feeds.

10. Entice RSS Readers to Visit

Don’t tease or suck your RSS subscribers into visiting your blog but be smart about using techniques that might get them to visit. Using Polls, writing posts in a way that invites comments, interlinking posts etc will all draw your RSS readers (who don’t create any page views) to come and visit your actual blog (I wrote a little more on this here).

11. Build Interactivity into your Blog

The more your readers participate in your blog the more they’ll come back to it and they more pages they’ll view when they do. For starters people will come back to a blog if they’ve left their mark on it (via a comment, a vote in a poll etc) to see how others interact there but secondly the act of interacting often means a second page view. For example the very act of leaving a comment means two pages are viewed (once in viewing the post and a second time once the comment has been made). Of course this is not the primary reason you want people to comment but it’s a byproduct of it. Interactivity on blogs generally happens around the comments section (find out how to get more comments here) but is also increasingly common around polls and other blog tools.

12. Draw People Back to Comments

To build on this idea of interactivity, especially around comments, a couple of techniques that people use effectively is to highlight recent comments (there are a variety of plugins that will help you do this in a section on your sidebar –here’s one such plugin) but also to give people the opportunity to follow your comments either by having a RSS feed for comments on your blog or by allowing them to subscribe to comments via email (here’s aWP comment that does this).

13. Add a Search Feature

Allowing your readers to look for previous topics that you’ve written about by adding a search feature to your blog can also add further page views. There are a number of these available – most blog platforms have them built in and AdSense also offers one that lets your readers search either your site or the web as a whole (and where you can make a little money on the side if they search and then click on an ad – see the search bar in my sidebar for an example of the AdSense one).

14. Give Your Readers a Homework Assignment

Over the last week or so I’ve started giving readers on my digital photography school blog homework assignments. Because the blog is a ‘tips’ one it is a natural progression for me to suggest something that they could go away and do having learnt the tip. I find that in doing so readers keep coming back to a page for a number of reasons. Firtly they come back to refer to the tip you’ve written – especially if it is a step by step tip that they’ll use over and over a again. Secondly they come back to the page to tell you about or show you their assignment (if you allow them to submit their work). At present I get users to submit their homework to a Flickr group I’ve set up for that blog so in effect I’m not really increasing my own blog’s page views – but it does add to the page views of that Flickr group which has become quite active in just a week.

Homework Assignment

You didn’t think I’d end this post without carrying out my own advice did you?

• Which of the above techniques do you implement on your blog already?
• Which will you go away an implement today?
• Go and give one (or more than one) a go and let us know how it goes in the days ahead.