Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Another Blog - another view

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Monday, June 16, 2008

How many posts per page does your blog have?

Internet is flooded with blogs, so much so that one estimate puts total count of blogs existing is way ahead of total domain names registered (which is in billions) .
Recently I was trying to figure out what is the best number in terms of posts that your blog should have to attract visitors; ensure retaining interest while they are on your blog, and then, what should you have in your blog to get them coming back to your blog regularly. Is content the only thing that readers look for? Does presentation or look and feel of your blog have any impact on your readership?

If you own a blog what is the number of posts per page that you feel is right? Is it 10 blog posts per page or should you have only one per page? To figure out this question LifeHacker which typically used to have 20 posts per page opened up a poll to get views from readers on what they felt should be the right combination. The results from public voting are

1. 26.3% want 5 to 10 posts / page
2. 16.2% want 10 to 15 posts /page
3. 24.8% want 15 to 20 posts / page
4. 12.6% voted to have 20 - 30 posts / page
5. Remaining really didn't have a clue and wanted more than 30 posts / page

Do you think that the number of posts per page you display on your blog is important?
In my opinion, you should limit the display of post per page on your blog to 5 to 6 posts only. Typical RSS feeds have a default of 5, and it would be good to ensure that your latest 5 posts are available through RSS feeds and thus match posts per page with RSS feed. That doesn't work in your favour though since limiting the number of posts on one's main page can reduce the number of posts indexed by blog search engines.
However you write the blogs for human readers not spiders -- AND all your blog posts do get indexed, if not same day, at least over a period of time so I feel you can ignore the factor of blog search indexing for a while and focus on "What does an average reader expect from you on your blog?"

If you have too many posts per page, you tend to lose readership as the page may seem to be full of text and words and just by landing on such a page, reader may actually be afraid to start reading. Whereas if you have a page with few posts, it will look a lot cleaner and more focused on the topic that you cover. Use of attractive titles, at least 5 posts per page, and teasers to link to other pages and lengthy posts.

Topic that you cover in your blog is also a reason why it should go to a new page. Consider talking about global warming in one post and wonders of new SUV that you recommend to buy in the same page may dilute the message you wish to deliver about global warming. It would be much better for you to club posts with similar or related topics on a page, instead of going after numbers. This would automatically reduce posts per page (unless you write only on one or few topics)

Do you like scrolling? Well, I don't and I know for sure there is a silent majority on the internet which really doesn't enjoy scrolling up and down. The lesser the posts, lesser requirements for scrolling and winning the readers approval for your blog.

Does your page take forever to load? Lesser posts per page indicates less work on your web server to churn out pages and lesser time for data to travel on the network. All this translates to faster display of your blog post. Isn't that one of the biggest factors to decide which website is better compared to others. Do you close browser window when the hour glass rotates for an hour before it starts with images and posts? Few posts per page would mean less time for page to get displayed and that is always a plus on the internet.

In all, I read multiple blogs everyday but I hardly spend time on blogs that have long loading time, have just too many things on one page, are full of posts that should typically be categorized and placed in suitable pages instead of dumping posts in one page. So if you are a seasoned blogger or a new one looking for the magic number I hope you would consider the points mentioned in this post and limit your posts per page to a reasonable number that does justice to your writing and gets you sustained readership.

KISS - Keep It Short n Sweet !!

Got Views - Do comment and share your inputs and views, i would love to hear from you!!!!

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