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Today’s online environment requires more care and feeding for your blog than you may realize. Here are 10 suggested blog pages to add and reasons for each to boost followers, revenue, and security.
- Start Here.
Let readers know, through a link and short description, which posts include basic explanations about your topic or industry. - Why Subscribe?
Explain to readers what they’ll miss if they don’t receive Email updates, which includes breaking news, money-making strategies, and problem-solving tips. This page also serves to increase RSS subscribers, a highly-relevant task if planning to offer sponsorship opportunities. - How to Advertise.
Marketers search for your unique audience to promote their products, so satisfy them with a page explaining your blog’s inception, its mission, update frequency, and rates. As an alternative, guard against competitive surveillance by providing an overview and detailing how to contact you. - Speaking Topics.
Extend an open invitation to readers who wish to contract you for keynote speeches, seminars, workshops, and other events. This page is different than the Contact page (explained below), as its purpose is to promote your expertise and let visitors know about presentation availability. - Newsletter.
Extend your readership to visitors who want to receive an online publication that complements the blog. If a newsletter is important but you don’t know what to write, start by sharing links from past posts highly rated by tweets and comments. - Interviews.
Your recorded radio show appearances and guest postings on other Web sites and blogs will be of interest to anyone who follows your topic, so create a page that links all of your recordings in one place. - Videos.
Got how-to ideas? Add a maximum of five YouTube-type visuals onto this page. Also, include a link to your video website or YouTube account if more videos are available elsewhere. - About.
Enlighten visitors on this page with your personality, telling them why you started the blog and sharing compelling reasons for reading and bookmarking it. - Contact.
How easily can readers connect with you for information they prefer not to ask online? Be sure this page includes your Email address and/or telephone number. - Disclaimer.
In this disclosure-conscious world, conditions that govern access are mandatory. Provide a brief explanation about the blog’s ownership, potential broken links due to natural aging, and your liability regarding visitors’ comments.
Which of these pages do you intend to include on your blog right now?
Shirley George Frazier is chief marketer at SoloBusinessMarketing.com and author of Marketing Strategies for the Home-Based Business: Solutions You Can Use Today. Read Shirley’s Solo Business Marketing blog, and follow her on Twitter @ShirleyFrazier or Email info@solobusinessmarketing.com.
I’ve seen a few blogs who have an “In the Press” page that combines some of these ideas.
As an additional thought, these pages don’t have to be integrated into the actual page navigation of the site, but can be found via sidebar buttons, header buttons, etc. Be creative when adding all of these. Too many individual pages in a navigation can make a user feel cluttered.
Great ideas, thanks for sharing.
Hi Chris,
I’m glad you mentioned the press page, another option to aggregate promotional information.
You’re definitely on point about including some of this content within buttons and columns. I considered mentioning that but didn’t in order to stay on topic.
Wow! Thanks for pointing out the must-haves for a blog. Fortunately I have most of these but not all.
I will have my blog up to speed soon.
Hi Flora,
I’m happy to share these options with you and other bloggers.
What usually works well to craft any of these pages is writing and refining the text in Notepad or similar computer accessory, then copying and pasting the text onto the page. This is followed by archiving the text in Word as a backup.
I have some of those, but others, well, wouldn’t it suddenly start cluttering up your pages area, especially if you have other special articles that you like to highlight?
Having said that, I need to think about that interview page for sure.
To those that are concerned about having too many pages – I think some of these could be subpages, and/or linked to from other areas (sidebar, footer, etc). Within WP you can hide any/all of your pages from the navigation – wherever it is called.
Hope that helps!
Hi Mitch,
I do agree that too many pages may be a distraction, and the links may even throw your top navigation out of line or possible not allow some pages to properly appear.
Nikki, in the comment directly after yours, makes a great point about creating subpages wherever possible or, as Chris mentions in the first comment, creating links in columns.
For example, a Speaking Topics page can include Interview and Video pages as subpages, so that when a visitor mouses over the words “Speaking Topics,” the other two are highlighted below.
I’m glad you asked, Mitch, as other bloggers surely have the same concerns.
I loved this post. I definitely added the Why Subscribe page because I think that’s brilliant. If I can’t get them with a free download I can explain why they’re missing out! Also need to work on the How To Advertise and Disclaimer pages. Brilliant!