Does your blog have a Top Posts page?

Blogs typically have posts of different quality - flagship content that requires hard work, good content that is better than the average post, and your run-of-the-mill posts (or news/linked posts).

When a reader comes to your blog for the first time, there are a few things that (s)he may look for:

• Information about the author in the form of About page or sidebar blurb
• Whether it is worth it to subscribe to your blog, by looking at the quality of your posts
• RSS or email subscription options
• A list of good posts to read

While most blogs take care of the first two points and many take care of the third point, the fourth point is mostly forgotten/ignored.

Note that Top Posts page may not (always) be the same as Popular Posts section. The difference is that the latter is usually automated according to page views, comments or similar parameters. Top posts page, on the other hand, can be a manually determined list of posts which you believe deserve maximum attention.

Importance of Top posts page

Blogs have traditionally been built in such a manner that the latest posts receive maximum eyeballs, while older posts tend to fade into the archives to be lost forever. The only exception to this would be if you receive large amounts of search traffic.

When a typical blog reader comes across your blog for the first time, (s)he might be hit with a wave of information - the posts themselves, advertisements and sidebar content (links, archives etc.). In such a scenario, they might become overawed.

In such a situation, the visitors may not focus on what you consider important (converting to regular readers). Also, since your blog will be judged from the first few articles that they lay their eyes on, they may leave with bad impressions if your latest posts are not to their tastes.

The solution to this jeopardy: A Top Posts page.

Top Posts page can be used to highlight your best content, and appeal to your visitors to return to your blog. It is like giving them a preview of what to expect if they subscribe to your blog.

Therefore, one thing that should be kept in mind is to put up a Top Posts page only after sufficient number of posts of high quality has been written. Since you would want to launch your blog and market it well in the first few days, it would be a good idea to write up a few flagship posts (and feature them proudly on your blog) before revealing the blog to the world.

Types of Top Posts sections

As with many things related to blogging, you can all choose the type of Top Posts section that you feature on your blog. Here are a few good methods to choose from, their benefits and their downside.

Daily Blog Tips, a popular blog on blogging, features a list of top posts in the sidebar (pictured right). The benefits of this is that visitors require only one click to reach one of your listed posts. The downside is that there is a limit to the number of posts that can be featured. This can be a headache if you have a blog with lots of high-quality posts.

Problogger, one of the most popular blogs on blogging, also features one of the best approaches to listing top posts (pictured below). His archives page features a search box, a list of categories and then lists of best posts from each category. The downside to this approach is that apart from a link on the navigation bar on top, there is no encouragement for readers to click through to the page.

At TechZilo (my blog about software and web tools), I have combined both of the above methods to (mostly) solve the downsides of those methods. There is a top posts list in the sidebar which lists 9 posts, and then a link to the Top Posts page with the anchor text “Read more top posts” (pictured below).

The top posts page contains a main navigation to jump to top posts lists of various categories (accomplished using anchor tags). Posts are divided into broad categories which describe their focus adequately.

How to determine which method is best for your blog

The method that is best-suited to your blog can be determined by profiling how the majority of your visitors behave. If you have a blog about blogging, ‘make-money-online’, internet marketing etc., readers will seek out your top posts list if you place a link to the page.

For blogs that have audience that is less technically-inclined and/or less familiar with blogs, the third method would be best.

Final thoughts

As with many other things, you should not go overboard with this. List only the very best of your posts, not those posts which you want to expose to your readers. The main reason is that if you list posts as the best and readers find out that they aren’t as good as promised, that can worsen their impression about your blog.

Having a minimalist design, placing the list above the fold (in sidebar) and/or minimal clutter in your sidebar can increase the effectiveness of top posts listing too.

Problogger has written previously on this topic (though I discovered it a bit late, when searching around for external resources). Also, Daily Blog Tips has some good points on improving internal linking, and this is one of them.