It’s a balancing act, isn’t it? How do you make sure your content generates plenty of new traffic for your site, but also keeps your regular readers engaged?
After all, if you run a blog about car care, for example, you may realize that it’s to your advantage to post a lot of information on specific makes, models and so forth.
But do your regular readers need to see all that specific content?
Nah, they want to see the big picture stuff and then possibly dig deeper for information on the specific car that they own. If they have a 2003 Nissan Altima, certainly they don’t need to come to your blog and see information for every type of Honda on the main page. It just doesn’t make sense.
Regular blog readers want to see information that is relevant to them and to access it quickly. They also probably read your blog because they like your personal style and connect with your opinions. Keyword-based content doesn’t often have that extra personal style and connection to your readers. Of course, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but you can make your central hub a go-to place for your target market.
You could accomplish this by creating a separate website for your keyword-based content. This is the simplest and straightforward way to do this…but if you want your regular readers to have access to your keyword-based content, you may not want to divide the lines so strongly.
Let’s look at how you might set this up with WordPress for example.
Things to consider are:
* Keeping the main page of your blog focused on what you want all your readers to see
* Making sure your keyword-based articles are accessible to search engines and visitors who are looking for it
* Ensuring that your RSS feed is usable to your readers and isn’t cluttered with the keyword-based content
Ways you can accomplish this:
There are probably numerous customizations and plugins you can use to accomplish your goal, but here are a couple of easy ways to keep your content separate, but searchable.
* WP Hide Post Plugin: Have a post you don’t want to appear on your main page, category page, RSS feed or just about anywhere else? The WP Hide Post plugin might just do it. Once you have it installed, you have these options on your edit post page:
Check any or all of the options above and publish as usual. The plugin takes care of the rest.
* Category Specific RSS Feed Plugin: Allow your users to sign up for a feed for your whole site or subscribe to specific categories. In the car site example, if someone owns that Nissan Altima we talked about, they could sign up for the Nissan Altima category plus anything else that interested them.
Once you install the plugin, it will create a widget for you that will allow you to add your category RSS feeds (you can customize it in your settings, if you prefer):
You can drag and drop the widget to where you want it to appear and it will look something like this on your blog:
You can also enter the code into any page/post or add it to your templates.
(Note: The widget itself links to the creator of the widget, so if you prefer to omit that, you can create your own widget.)
Think Like a Regular
Always put yourself into the mindset of a regular reader and think about how they would navigate and find what they want from your site. While it’s always good to draw in new prospects with keyword-based content, your regular readers are an invaluable asset…so give ‘em what they want.
