Our blog happens to be the #1 most popular page on our site and it is chock full of rich, helpful content, but interestingly (and sort of to my frustration), people don’t comment. I wonder why. I will have to dig a little deeper within your files to see if I can resolve that issue.

And I also want to learn how to create the post-its at the top. That may go a bit beyond my web knowledge….

A few more links related to business blogging for your enjoyment while I move from Utah to Arizona:Eric Sinrod shares a few great corporate blog policy suggestions.Here are some reasons why you should (or perhaps shouldn’t) highlight popular posts at….

We were on the first page on Google a few days ago, but lower down, then we slipped. Now we’re way up.

There’s a new menu with top posts and categories, even searches, and I did something I’ve wanted to do from the beginning, and played with then: top images. The caps link to posts, not images. I’m trying to make sure all the images open within a more link in the post, but the bloggers have a lot they’re (STILL!) learning. I’m such a nag, too. I ask for above and beyond the normal blogging (like for SEO and these such things).

Anyway, I also am in the middle of changing another thing, to make the posts more visible and the header portion smaller, I’m removing the “Lipped Media” bar, and adding a box with what was more necessary to me.

Finally, because there are now images at the top, and soon I’m adding the Glam ad as a leaderboard, I took away the celeb photos from the logo. It’s clean and smaller, so I’m fine with it.

Anyway, thanks! I hope it works out.

One thing you don’t seem to do, Darren, is usually show us the plugins to do things. Many of us don’t have luck searching.

Any ideas, everyone, on such a plugin?

I am a big fan and I got “stuck” on you from this technique of yours. My first visit I spent much more than an hour reading your highlighted posts etc. And everytime I visit you I read more than one post. My only frustration is that I don’t have enough time to read everything you have written!

I am new to blogging – my site is three months old. I have been visiting you since I started.

My twin sister was a software developer and we have two online children’s speciatly stores. Our income comes from those stores, but we wanted to start a blog for our target market. As well, we plan on putting blogs on our stores and perhaps starting other blogs in the future.

Right now I am am in that beginning stage of visiting and commenting on other blogs in my target audience and establishing relationships etc. It is slow going, but is working.

Thanks for all your great help! (sorry I have been a lurker and not commented. Since my blog is such a baby, and in the “mom” category, I felt a little insecure commenting over here.)

This is likely one of the reasons his site stands out in a sea of half-assed how-to blogs.

-dm

In my experience, the deeper a person goes on their first visit or two, the likelihood of them coming back increases. I’m pretty good about not tracking individuals but trends, and I’m shocked at how many more page imprssions I’ve gotten since I changed my interface. More page impressions = more return chance it seems. Giving newbies the opportunity to go deeper is very, very important.

On one of my blogs I posted a summary of a press release for a new product that was related to my blog. Then I posted a follow up when the product was ACTUALLY released. In that post I linked to my earlier post. And in my earlier post I went back and added an addendum stating the product had been released and linked to that new article.

Later on the company offered an affiliate program for said product. So I created a new entry promoting the product and linked to both of my earlier posts – which gave me credibility that I wasn’t just “hawking” a product.

I also went into my old posts and turned the OLD links to those products into affiliate links and also linked to the newest post which promoted the product.

The result? I own the search engines (MSN, Yahoo, AND Google) for that product.

The bonus in this case was that the company was aware of my earlier promotions WITHOUT being an affiliate member and put a quote of my earlier review on their website and a link back to MY site.

So now I have RECIPROCAL LINKS from an affiliate program.

The downside is that it is a small priced product so the referral isn’t very large. But it makes me between $5-$10 per day and never goes below $5 daily. So if you figure on average $7/day I am making at least $200 month from this product.

…. man … I shoulda made this into my own blog post … heheh.

Regarding Thilak’s comment, I think that you would need to use a plugin that fits your definition of what the term “popular” means. Does it mean “number of comments”? Or does it mean “number of page views”? Or does it mean “number of outbound clicks” (to affiliate sales or Google Ads perhaps)?

For me I have found it easier to edit my most popular posts in the sidebar manually. This way I can sometimes tweak the title to make it more enticing on the homepage. Or I can remove some extra words to make it look “nice” in the sidebar … you know …. aesthetically pleasing.

-dm

Darren,
I tend to add links within my posts to earlier posts that relate to the current one. This gives my user more relevant information and gets them to stay and browse through my site for a few more pages.

I have found the same inner links in your blog to my liking.

Excellent Idea Ohad, I’ll start implementing it on my blog

Thanks

Can you please suggest a good plugin to display popular post in wordpress !

Regards

Thilak Raj Rao