#31 WBGB ~ Week 8 ~ Interlink Your Old Blog Posts



I am following Tonia's Roots with #31 Weeks to a Better Genealogy Blog! Come on along and join us! It is never to late to start!

Welcome to Week 8 of 31 Weeks to a Better Genealogy Blog!  Our topic this week is interlinking old blog posts.

Why Should We Interlink Posts?

There are three main reasons to interlink posts within one’s own blog:

  1. To help your readers – if you’ve written other posts on a similar topic or that tie into a post in someway, then interlinking makes it easy for your readers to find those posts.
  2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – search engines look at links within your blog to find content to index and to rank your content for search results.  They like external links, but internal links count, too, and can help push your blog higher in the search results. 
  3. Increase page views – this is tied to item #1.  Inserting links increases the chances that a blog visitor will view more than one page.  If someone views more than one page on a your blog, they are more likely to remember it, subscribe to it, leave a comment, and ultimately become a regular reader.
Ways to Add Links to Old Posts
  1. In-post links – All you do is add a link to a keyword in the post that links to another post you’ve written that is related to that topic.
  2. Updates – if you’ve written a post that needs to be updated, you can write a new post on the same topic, then leave a link in the older post to the new one.  For example: if you’ve written up what you know about an ancestor or a research project, but have now found new information – write a post about that new data, then link the original post to the new one (and vice versa).
  3. Further reading: many blogs include a Further Reading or Related Posts section at the end of each post. These are often generated with a plug-in. I’ve recently started using LinkWithin (Tonia originally wrote this, but I too, have now added this to my blog) which works with self-hosted WordPress blogs, Blogger, and Typepad. Darren suggests that adding manually-chosen links can be more relevant for the reader.
I should now integrate some links from older posts. I thought about doing this as a separate post, and I am not at all sure this is exactly what was meant by adding links within a post but I feel it is an opportune time to do this!


My aunt, who lives in Texas, recently came to spend a week or so with my dad for her birthday. I spent the birthday with them also. We all had a great, special and fun time. I feel very fortunate to have been able to get many stories from my dad and aunt as they sat and reminisced. I wish I knew shorthand though, when I went through those notes with a fine tooth comb, I found I didn't really understand or remember some of the details regarding what I had written. How I wish I used had a tape recorder for this! (HEADS UP EVERYONE, KEEP A RECORDER HANDY!) I will have to get some updates and added information to complete some of those thoughts and stories.

While spending time with my aunt, she asked about my blogs. It became apparent she was unaware of my Swedish Adventures and wanted to read those posts. Here, I can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I want to make it a bit easier for my aunt to find those particular posts, so I am listing the full series here for her and anyone else who may be interested that hasn't read my adventure. This way, I can now email her one link where she can find each of these posts and catch the whole story.





Thanks for stopping by! 

Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts! 




 Copyright © 2011 By Cheryl Palmer All Rights Reserved

Comments

  1. Cheryl, nice job! I never knew about LinkWithin. I may have to try that. I wanted to mention something about links to old posts (you may or may not already know this): this is where your tags come in handy. I notice that all of your individual links have the "Great Swedish Adventure" tag. You can make a link to that particular tag, and it will send the reader to all of those posts, in date order.

    I always say: If you want to know the easiest way to do something, ask a lazy person :)

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  2. Thanks for sharing. I often use links, but your post gave me several new ideas.

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  3. Cheryl, I think this is a good way to pull a whole series together. Good job!

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