How many times do you post a new article, to have it spike some traffic the next day, and then never land any more significant traffic after that? Does your site seem to depend on you constantly writing new articles without your older articles getting you any attention at all? This is a simple problem lots of blogs have that has a HUGE effect on how your blog will continue to grow in the future.

Here’s the one phrase that will define every single one of your users.

“People Are Lazy and Quick-Thinking”

Maybe that sounds a bit harsh to call your valuable users that, but it’s completely true. If I’m done reading an article I’ve found interesting and there’s nothing left on the page, of course I’m going to leave and go do whatever else interests me. Users aren’t going to specifically browse through your other articles in your archives or through the search button. The days that those fetched any significant amount of users are long over.

To keep the attention of your users you have to slam your other articles right up in their face. It is not the readers job to find your other articles, YOU the blogger need to make ways for them to easily find other articles. Make it so everywhere they look they see the titles of your other articles. Milk their curiosity for all it’s worth. Your goal should be to expose your visitors to at least 5 other article titles per page. Even if they doesn’t click through to your other articles, as long as they have seen them, it’s a success! By interlinking your articles in each other you create a “web” of sorts that spawns across your entire site.

A few of you might be asking how you should go about “Cross-Pollinating” your articles, so here are a few quickies off the top of my head.

1. Related Posts

Either hardcode in a certain set of articles you want to show up at the bottom of the post or use a widget to specifically show related articles according to the categories they are in and the keywords used. One such plugin that I highly recommend is the Related Posts plugin (quite catchy I know).

2. Mention Your Other Articles

When talking about a topic there’s a lot of times that your post are going to overlap over something you’ve already written about. This is a perfect opportunity to slip in a quick mention about going to your previous article to further understand that idea or to get a refresher if its been a while.

For example, if I were to write a post on increasing your traffic, I might include a link to one of my previous articles Generate Massive Traffic Through Lists. An easy way to introduce something like this and make it more generic would be: “I’ve talked before about getting lots of visitors through lists, but today I want to talk to you about a completely new way I’ve discovered works just as well.”

3. A Top 10 Most Recent/Popular

Include a sidebar that has a list of a top 10 of your most recent or popular articles. Some people believe that showing 10 titles is way too many and that you should instead focus on 5 that you want to promote. I believe this is completely wrong for two reasons. First, you want to show your guest as many articles as possible so as to have a greater chance of them finding something that interests them. Second, by limiting your list of articles to 5, your not really cross-promoting your entire site, your just driving traffic to those 5 articles. In order to keep a constant and reliable source of traffic you need to diversify and promote your entire site.

4. Browse and Comment on Other Blogs

I cannot stress how important this is. As a blogger you should continually try to interact with other people in similar niches as yours to drive traffic to your site. If you read an article and find you have a similar one or you address a problem some of the commentators might have, don’t hesitate to post a link along with a short description. Some of my most popular articles are those that have been posted on other sites by either me or happy readers. By browsing such immensely popular blogs such as problogger and contributing merely a comment with a link once a week, you can find a steady source of at least 50 hits a day! Now bear with me for some of you that’s nothing, but for others 50 is what they’ve worked months to achieve. How 50 you ask? Well problogger is one blog that has taken the concept of cross-promoting its articles very seriously. Even though the author’s front page posts land the most hits, his older posts continually get 100’s of views a day. When you comment on that post, your not just ensuring the 30 hits you get today, but the continuous 5 your going to get everyday for the rest of your life!

So next time you start writing a post, start thinking about cross-linking to your other articles before you start writing instead of after, as it will make it seem a lot more genuine and less of a last-minute scratch-in work.