{"id":64214,"date":"2011-11-21T08:45:58","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T13:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wpmu.org\/?p=64214"},"modified":"2011-11-18T11:24:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T16:24:00","slug":"why-your-blog-frustrates-your-visitors-and-what-you-can-do-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/why-your-blog-frustrates-your-visitors-and-what-you-can-do-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Your Blog Frustrates Your Visitors, and What You Can Do About It"},"content":{"rendered":"

I always know when I\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0like a blog. I won\u2019t just sign up to their RSS feed and move on with my day. I\u2019ll start nosing around to see what their old content has to offer.<\/p>\n

I want to uncover the hidden gems, the diamonds in the rough, the neglected evergreen content.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Why
Look – your blog has left this guy absolutely devastated. Don’t you want to do something about it?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But bloggers and blog readers are very forward-thinking. Blog posts are presented by default in a reverse chronological order because of an implicit understanding between author and reader \u2013 \u201cyou want the new stuff\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Binoculars\"
Your visitors shouldn’t have to use metaphorical binoculars to find your best content.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More often than not, if you\u00a0didn’t\u00a0know any better, you would assume that bloggers are trying to make it difficult for you<\/strong>. If you have been reading my articles for the last few weeks, I may be starting to sound like a stuck record, but I just can\u2019t help repeating myself \u2013 for the love of all things good in the world, please make it easy for your visitors to find your content!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have recently been covering a lot of ways in which you can improve the engagement factor on your blog. I revealed 1 Simple Step to Keeping Visitors on Your Blog<\/a>. \u00a0I asked if you were losing visitors by omitting a key page<\/a>. I asked if you were neglecting the most important page on your blog<\/a>. I argued how a clean design can increase visitor engagement<\/a>. And just last week, I published The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Post Tags<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now I want to talk about cleaning house – making your blog just so darned easy to navigate that visitors can’t help but stumble upon your best posts<\/strong>, regardless of how old they are.<\/p>\n

Categories<\/h2>\n
\"Categories\"
Is your categories list about as easy to make sense of as this?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Your list of categories should ideally be short and sweet.<\/strong> This will of course depend upon your blog, but the list should be as concise as possible.<\/p>\n

Think of it this way. Ultimately, categories are for the benefit of your visitor. They should look down the list, pick out what they want, and be presented with a list of relevant posts. If your category list is a mile long, or poorly-worded, you\u2019re making it difficult for your visitors to get to where they want to be. And what happens then? They leave, frustrated.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So it\u2019s probably time you took a look at your categories list and consolidated them down into a more user-friendly number. Ideally, each category should tackle a broad topic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But even with a finely-honed list of categories, the visitor can be left wanting. The problem with typical archival category pages is that they do not judge<\/em> your content.<\/strong> The visitor sees a reverse-chronological list of your posts, just as they do on your homepage.<\/p>\n

Wouldn’t it be better if you could pick the best posts you have published in each category, and present them to the visitor, front and center?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Resource Pages<\/h2>\n
\"Resource
Resource pages can be the key to unlocking your best archived content.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you think you can do without categories, I have a better solution<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, your blog shouldn\u2019t cover too many broad topics. If it does, you\u2019re probably trying to do too much<\/strong>. There are of course exceptions to this \u2013 news and reviews blogs, for instance. But for the most part, you can distill the vast majority of your content down into a few key resource pages<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A resource page does not have to be anything fancy. There should be some introductory blurb, followed by a list of your most popular posts relating to the topic. If your internal linking strategy<\/a> is doing its job, these resource pages alone will do a great job of keeping your visitors engaged<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Dog
I’m pretty sure that this is a subtle form of torture…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let\u2019s consider an example. Say you ran a dog training blog. You have a pretty good idea of what visitors come to find. So you can take that knowledge and use it to create three resource pages, linked to in your sidebar:<\/p>\n