I was reading a post by Nick Wilson over at Performancing titled Monetizing Your Blog Archives, which - ironically - was written last year, in November 2005. He suggested a script that you could use on the Drupal system to manipulate the display of Adsense depending on how old the pages were and whether the reader was logged in or not.
I'm not sure if there is something like this for WordPress or not, or whether I would even use it. But it did get me thinking about Blog Archives - and specifically, how to make the most of all of those content pages on your domain.
All too often, great posts just get buried and dont yield the return that they should...
Do you have great posts that are buried? Try these 5 tips to put your Archives to work for you:
- Put a link to the "Most Popular Posts" in your sidebar.
You can add this manually, linking to some of your better (buried) blog posts. Make sure that you monetize these posts with either Adsense, links to your related products, or affiliate links.
 - Interlink Current Posts with Archived Posts
When you are blogging about topics you have covered before, be sure to link to those related posts that are in your Archives. If you have a particularly good post that is buried deep in your Archives, make it a point to cover the topic again and link back to the original post.
 - Create Articles from your Archives.
Take some of your greatest posts and use them for Article Marketing. Slight editing might be necessary but it shouldnt take but a few minutes to turn a blog post into an article. You can put any link you like in the byline of these articles, so you might choose to deep link to specific posts, or to a certain category on your blog, instead of just linking to the main page (or root domain) of your blog.
 - Optimize Archived Post Pages
Go back and look at some of your better posts - especially those that seemed to convert well for you. Make sure they are optimized for the major search engines. Specifically that you are using a relevant keyword phrase in the Title. Next, work on getting quality inbound links to those individual pages. This will help you to get free traffic to those archived pages, so they can continue to 'work' for you.
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Obscure (specific) keyword phrases, like those found in individual blog posts, bring in ultra-targeted visitors. These tend to 'convert' best - whether you are encouraging newsletter signups, product sales or Adsense clicks. 😉
 - Turn Archived Posts into Downloads
Do you have posts that could also be considered tutorials or guides? Turn them into PDF downloads and make them available with giveaway rights. Of course, within that file you can link to other great posts, or give them a link to your blog where they can get more great information on your topic. This is a great tool to start a viral marketing campaign for your blog!
Rosalind Gardner also has a great article posted this week, titled Get Your Blog Archives Under Control! She has some great suggestions there, so check that out as well.
Do you have some tips for monetizing - or making better use of - Blog Archives that you can add to this list? I'd love to hear them! Post them in the comments section below 😉
Technorati Tags: make money, blog archives, blogging, wordpress
About Lynn Terry
