I’m working on creating a Sneeze Page as part of SITS Girls 31 Days to a Better Blog Challenge.
With as many posts as this blog has it will be a pretty massive job to put them into topical index/ subpages. It’s something I could easily let myself put off indefinitely. But, I’m going to give it a try. First, some research.
ProBlogger: Create a Sneeze Page for your Blog [Day 18 – 31DBBB]
Benefits of Sneeze Pages:
3. It can help create a ‘Sticky’ Blog – I’ve not seen stats on this but it is my suspicion that a person arriving on your blog for the first time increases the chances of coming back to it the more great posts that they view on it. Get someone to read 10 great posts that you’ve written previously instead of 1 and you’ll exponentially increase the likelihood that they’ll subscribe and become a regular reader.
Types of Sneeze Pages
- Themed Sneeze Pages – these are posts or pages on your blog or site that revolve around a single theme.
- Time Related Sneeze Pages – these pages are based around a defined period of time. They are usually a ‘best of’ post that highlight your key posts from that period.
- Retro Sneeze Pages – shows off a number of posts from your blog from a particular point in its history. The most common way to do this is to do a post highlighting posts from the blog from a year ago.
- Series Sneeze Pages – many bloggers use the technique of writing a series of blog posts that allow them to explore a topic over a period of time with lots of interlinked posts.
Small Business Trends: Convert New Readers with a Sneeze Page
As you put the page together, don’t just make it a series of links. Instead, you’ll want to create some new content to describe what each link is about and the benefit for the reader should they click through. Writing a few lines of content for each link will increase the page’s usefulness because you’re giving people a sneak peak at what they can find. Once you combine your links with your descriptions, that’s your Sneeze Page.
Steven Sanders: Create Blog Stickiness with Sneeze Pages
Using Sneeze Pages Creatively
Sneeze pages don’t have to be pages. A landing page may be a better method. These are called Social Media Landing Pages.
Don’t re-link old posts one right after the other though. This could cause others to get suspicious or even stop clicking the links, which is utterly ineffective. Take your time. Span a couple of old posts over a 2-3 day time period. I like to call this “sporadic sneezing“.
Next, my own conclusions and plans:
Interlink the posts you use on your Sneeze page, make sure readers can easily travel from one post in the series to the next and then the next. It will be extra work, but they should not have to return to your index page to find the next post in the series (unless that’s how they want to read them).
The most popular Sneeze page I have noticed are the week end round up posts. The blogger looks at other blogs and sites and links back to the posts they most enjoyed, noticed, or found useful. Doing this type of Sneeze post gives your readers an idea of what you read, who you are and the type and quality of resources you can find. It also gives some link love to other bloggers. So pick the blogs you link to with care.
You can have a month end or year end round up of your own posts but this seems a bit time absorbing when we already use tags and categories. Readers should be able to find your topical posts through tags and categories or by using the search feature on your site.
From what I have read and my own discoveries and explorations online I think the best use of a Sneeze page is to promote your niche itself. Think of a question readers are most likely to need answered. You can research how people come to your blog, what were they looking for when they arrived? You can post a reader survey, ask them directly. What were they looking for? What would they like to see more of? Use this information to write new content geared to your readers and set up the information/ posts with their own index page which will become your Sneeze page.
Give it an eye catching graphic with a text description and place it in your blog sidebar. Don’t stop there, spread the link around, as well as the graphic. Grow your own link love using Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, other bloggers, ad networks, link exchanges and web forums. How about adding the link to your business card, make sure it’s a short link (easy to type without mistakes).
A Sneeze page can be a useful index of specific content on your blog, it’s also a way to direct readers to content they might not think to look for as they read your current selection of posts. So give them more to read, show off your best stuff and create yourself as a resource worth coming back for.
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