- 31 Weeks to a Better Genealogy Blog
- #31WBGB: Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog
- #31WBGB: My Elevator Pitch
- #31WBGB: Make List Posts Work for Your Genealogy Blog
- #31WBGB: Promote a Blog Post
- #31WBGB: Analyze a Top Genealogy Blog
- #31WBGB: Contact a Reader
- #31WBGB: 27 Must-Read Tips for Genealogy Bloggers
- #31WBGB: Write a Link Post
- #31WBGB: Interlink Your Old Blog Posts
- #31WBGB: Participate in an Online Genealogy Group
- #31WBGB: Set Up Monitoring Alerts
- #31WBGB: Come Up With 10 Post Ideas
- #31WBGB: Develop an Editorial Calendar
- #31WBGB: Update a Key Page
- #31WBGB: Find a Blog Buddy
- #31WBGB: Solve a Problem
Welcome to Week 8 of 31 Weeks to a Better Genealogy Blog! Our topic this week is interlinking old blog posts.
Why Should We Interlink Posts?
There are three main reasons to interlink posts within one’s own blog:
- To help your readers – if you’ve written other posts on a similar topic or that tie into a post in some way, then interlinking makes it easy for your readers to find those posts.
“A satisfied reader is what I’m aiming for.”
This leads to satisfied readers, who are more likely to return and also share your post with their friends.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – search engines look at links within your blog to find content to index and to rank your content for search results. They like external links, but internal links count, too, and can help push your blog higher in the search results.
- Increase page views – this is tied to item #1. Inserting links increases the chances that a blog visitor will view more than one page. If someone views more than one page on a your blog, they are more likely to remember it, subscribe to it, leave a comment, and ultimately become a regular reader.
Ways to Add Links to Old Posts
- In-post links – this is something that I do routinely when I’m writing new posts. All you do is add a link to a keyword in the post that links to another post you’ve written that is related to that topic.
- Updates – if you’ve written a post that needs to be updated, you can write a new post on the same topic, then leave a link in the older post to the new one. For example: if you’ve written up what you know about an ancestor or a research project, but have now found new information – write a post about that new data, then link the original post to the new one (and vice versa).
- Further reading: many blogs include a Further Reading or Related Posts section at the end of each post. These are often generated with a plug-in. I’ve recently started using LinkWithin which works with self-hosted WordPress blogs, Blogger, and Typepad. Before switching to LinkWithin, I used a WordPress plug-in called “Yet Another Related Posts Plug-In.” I think that YARPP produced more relevant results, but LinkWithin includes a post image, so they both have advantages. Darren suggests that adding manually-chosen links can be more relevant for the reader.
Make Interlinking Posts a Regular Task
Set aside 10-15 minutes a week to look for interlinking opportunities. As I said above, I routinely add back-links when I’m writing a new post, but I never go back and add forward-links in old posts. I’m going to add this to my weekly routine.
Action Items
- Spend 10-15 minutes interlinking previously written posts in your archives.
- Share your thoughts in the comments section: a) Have you interlinked posts in the past? b) How often do you find yourself providing internal links?
Extra Action Item
Later in the series, we will talk about monitoring blog statistics. Go ahead and make sure that you have some kind of statistics tracking package installed on your blog, so that you have some numbers to look at when we get to that point. Google Analytics is an excellent program that can be added to Blogger and self-hosted WordPress blogs. WordPress.com Stats is automatically included if you have a WordPress.com blog and it can be added via plug-in to self-hosted WordPress blogs. I use both (because I am just that much of a geek).
If you are just joining us, then “welcome.” You can read the kick-off post about 31 Weeks to a Better Genealogy Blog here. Feel free to start with this week’s reading and action items – you are not behind!
Giveaway
The giveaway this week is a 6-month subscription to World Vital Records for their World Collection. To enter, leave a comment below your answers to the questions in Action Item #2 (above). One winner will be selected randomly. Giveaway ends at 11:59 Eastern time on Saturday, August 27, 2011.
*This discount was a blogger gift at SCGS Jamboree. I have no affiliation with World Vital Records.