Here’s the tip. Do not delete your most popular entry.
Several weeks ago, I posted a long article called “Art, Painting and Why I Blog.” Two things about this post – One, It was very long, so I put it up as 6 separate posts: “Art, Painting and Why I Blog Part 1”, “Art, Painting and Why I Blog Part 2,” etc. Two, It was also the most popular post I’d ever put up. The day I posted it, my viewership tripled and I haven’t gotten back to that number again yet.
The day after I posted “Art, Painting and Why I Blog”, a friend reported to me that he enjoyed the post, but it was a little clumsy to read the 6 parts, because of the nature of blogging/blog posts – when he got to the bottom of part one, he’d have to scroll back through it and then to find the beginning of part 2, etc., as opposed to a book where you just start and keep going.
The next day I revisited my post and thought “He’s right!”, so I went back to my 6 separate entries and turned it into one big one, deleting parts 2 through 6.
Hey? Where’d all the readers go?
Just yesterday I learned about a feature called “incoming links” that tells you where people link to your blog from and I looked into mine. Lo and behold! I discovered other sites were linking to blog entries that I had deleted (restructured). I also learned of incoming links to some of my other posts that I had changed the title of, and now those incoming links just pointed to nowhere.
You live you learn.
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