Comments on: Spread Traffic Within Blog: Fake Popular Posts List

By: Wayne Liew

Wayne Liew — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:53:27 +0000

This is why I label this way as an evil way. However, I don’t think readers will question much as they don’t know about the stats of the posts.

Continues to be evil..

By: luz

luz — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:21:04 +0000

In writing credibility is really important. And readers should be taken care by not deceiving them with wrong facts.

By: Wayne Liew

Wayne Liew — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:35:23 +0000

@ Flimjo
Yes, apart from that, it also convince a new reader whether to come back or not.

By: Flimjo

Flimjo — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:43:15 +0000

I love the popular posts list. I always look for it when I’m on any blog. It certainly spreads traffic throughout your blog.

By: Architecture Talk

Architecture Talk — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:09:53 +0000

Good idea! I might try it out and see how’s the result!

By: Wayne Liew

Wayne Liew — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:43:54 +0000

@ David Leonhardt
Well, a popular post list will help improves the stickiness of your blog, meaning there will be a lot more activities from users (clicking) and they will stay on your blog for a longer time.

I don’t see faking popular post list as desperate though since it can be a way to really spread out the traffic that a homepage gets to some obsolete posts.

@ David Bradley
Hmm, it makes sense. Maybe you are right on that one. Readers will just click but more will not question how did you come up with the list. The reason why it should be be labeled as “random” is because the word “popular” is much more attractive.

@ Jocelyn
Well, that is a personal journal blog. If you enter my world of blogging, it means getting traffic, keep the traffic and makes a blog grow.

@ The Masked Millionaire
Does this means that you will be trying it out?

@ Louis
Good point there. I guess no one will question the genuineness of the list unless the items inside are really terrible.

By: Louis Liem

Louis Liem — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 06:39:30 +0000

Popular posts list can also contain posts you think can be useful, regardless of your writing style, bad intro, etc.

When it happens (a good post but not presented in an interesting way), you can tweak or modify it before listing them on your popular list. You may also want to strip all the post statistics like comments and trackbacks.

By: The Masked Millionaire

The Masked Millionaire — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:46:10 +0000

Fake list…hummmm….never thought of that!!

Live From Las Vegas
The Masked Millionaire

By: jocelyn wu

jocelyn wu — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:00:37 +0000

the other side of the mirror:
to me, a blog is my personal online diary… i write for self satisfaction, not others…. so,i dont care if no one reads my blog, haha!
but it’s interesting to hear how other ppl well, ‘market’ their blog, =)

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:27:20 +0000

To be sure Wayne. If you’re really just faking a list of popular posts then why not just do a random list and label it as such. It’s not something I’d do, but readers aren’t going to know you did it unless they specifically ask. My approach at least allows you to justify why certain posts are in a list of popular posts.