Ok the long story is a few weeks ago, I blindly upgraded Kikay Ex to WP version 2.1.1 without really thinking, and before I knew it, my Previous Entries and Next Entries links at the bottom of the index (front) page disappeared, to my great horror and frustration. Apparently I wasn’t the only one, and it was a big issue with most other folks who did the same. Fortunately I had only upgraded Kikay at the time, but unfortunately, Kikay is the biggest draw of all the sites, so the fact that people couldn’t go through each and every page and post was a big issue.
To those who understand WordPress (and here’s the techie part), 2.1.1 deprecates (a fancy word for retires), the next_post_link and previous_posts_link, essentially keeping you, the viewer, from moving away from the first batch of post on the index page. I have been pulling my hair out trying to find a decent fix, but no go.
Enter Lester Chan’s WP-PageNavi 2.11 Plugin, and my prayers were answered. The truth is, I didn’t wanna use a plugin as I wanted to exhaust all efforts trying to find the ‘legal’ way first. But after two or so weeks searching (ok well maybe a total of 3 – 4 hours, which is already a lot still), I considered myself exhausted, and the fact that IT LOOKS GREAT, I decided to go for it.
So here’s how it looks like at the start:
and after tweaking it’s CSS, here’s how it looks like now:
doesn’t it look GREAAAAAT?!?!?! I added it on both the top and bottom areas.
Ok, now here’s the SEO explanation. (I have decided to include my SEO opinions to help people out who wanna learn these things):
- Each page in one’s blog, especially to one like Kikay, a fashion publication, represents an article that is valuable even months or years after it is published. Unlike, say, a news publication, Kikay publishes things like makeup advice or store features and interviews. News, on the other hand, is almost useless once it gets old (except for historical reasons, who likes to read old news?). Therefore, it has content that doesn’t get old, can always be rehashed, and can still garner hits and pageviews way long after it’s initially published. The more content we make (and we produce 6 posts a week), the more interesting and important the site gets exponentially.
- I’m sure Kikay has a lot of visitors that remember seeing something on the site and want to get back to it, but may not be sure what to enter in the ‘Search’ field (I am often doing that myself). Allowing you to go through each page one at a time can help improve that search.
- Allowing easier navigation makes the site more interesting because, even if the primary posts do not interest the viewer too much, allowing easy access to the older ones lets people find something that is.
- Most importantly, Kikay’s biggest issue is that it has a low 2.45 pages per visit statistic, wholly in part I’m sure, to the fact that they can’t view the pages. This plugin is actually better than just ‘next page’ and ‘previous page’, as you can jump through several pages if you like. I’m hoping to at least quadruple that number after this. Yes you read right: Quadruple. I always aim high when it comes to Kikay Exchange.
- Finally, Kikay’s main viewership, young females, are voracious browsers. Kikay’s Google Analytics indicate an average viewing of almost 10 minutes, meaning each visitor checks it out way longer than just reading the most recent posts. Allowing better navigation lets them check it out even longer, and I expect that 10 minute viewership to increase at least by double in the next few weeks.
I’m probably gonna place this plugin on all the other sites as well, especially Momex, which has articles in topics like child rearing and schooling that are always hit and will always be important year after year. That’s not the case I think with Ballex, which is mostly opinions and news – but then again who knows? I didn’t think the Sim league would do so well and now a mere 4 weeks later it’s getting 100+ hits a day.