Techie: How to create a top 10 list of your blog posts

Do you know which of your blog posts got the most visitors last year?
Did you know that 84% of a website's value can come from its old content?
Find out how to identify the most popular posts on your blog using Google Analytics.

How to create a top 10 list of your blog posts is a new 'resources for artists' information site which helps you to identify your top 10 blog posts in terms of unique visitors or page views.

You may be surpised to find that, IF you provide useful information on your blog and have helped people to find your past blog posts (eg through the use of LinkWithin or Squidoo lenses on a topic or links from another website) then your top rated blog posts may NOT be ones you wrote this year.

I did a review of the 10 ten posts created in 2009 which were as follows. It's rather satisfying to know that the top ten provided an indication of the rather diverse nature of posts on this blog in the last year - everything from art history to art business plus exhibitions, competitions and authors. It also gives me a pretty good indication of what people like reading about.

On the basis of the most page views, these were the most popular

1. 'Life Class - Today's Nude' on Channel 4 (surprise surprise!)
   
2. A "Making A Mark" interview with Alyona Nickelsen CPSA
3. Major art competitions in the UK in 2009 - dates and deadlines
4. Earth Day - and how to draw a tree! - this included reference to Martin Stankewitz's new site about how to draw a tree
   
5. 18th October 2009 - Who's made a mark this week? (featuring James Gurney and Imaginative Realism)
   
6. Originals 09: The Contemporary Printmaking Show
7. Marketing Art - How to write an Artist's Statement
8. American Watercolor Society Gold Medal - the final verdict on Sheryl Luxenburg
9. Exhibition review: Wildlife Artist of the Year 2009
10. What do you want to know about selling art online?

The list below is a slightly different list of popular posts - in terms of number of unique visitors (which is the number I count in the right hand column in terms of visitors to the site). The exhibitions always tend to get lots of repeat views from the same visitors and consequently drop out of this list

1. 'Life Class - Today's Nude' on Channel 4
2. A "Making A Mark" interview with Alyona Nickelsen CPSA
3. Major art competitions in the UK in 2009 - dates and deadlines
4. Earth Day - and how to draw a tree!
5. 18th October 2009 - Who's made a mark this week? (featuring James Gurney and Imaginative Realism)
6. Marketing Art - How to write an Artist's Statement
7. American Watercolor Society Gold Medal - the final verdict on Sheryl Luxenburg
8. What do you want to know about selling art online?
9. Peter Monkman wins first prize in BP Portrait Award 2009 (and BP Portrait Award 2009 - the shortlist)
10. Hokusai, Van Gogh and the iris paintings

Incidentally this is not the same as the top ten posts in traffic terms. Those were all created prior to 2009! As Jakob Neilsen once said 84% of a site's value comes from old content. So if you create good content, keep it alive and accessible (ie reference it), it will keep on repaying you with visitors for years to come! I know mine does - and I extend very many thanks to all the new readers who followed those links to old blog posts to arrive at this blog and who have since stayed to become regular readers!

Keeping old content alive will more than double the value of a site and only cost a small investment in content gardening. Removed pages equal lost users.
Jakob Neilsen - Web pages must live forever

If you are interested in your blog traffic but have as yet not put Google Analytics on your blog, then you will find my Making A Mark Guide: Installing Google Analytics on your Blog
helpful.