Creating An Archive And Why Your Blog Should Have One

Since changing the focus of my blog to marketing and SEO for bloggers and creatives, I decided that I needed a good archive page to make sure my older posts don't get lost forever.

You'll notice on the navigation bar a page called 'Archive' this houses links to all of the labels I've used on my blog over the last few years and also categorises the posts into month and year. It's very similar to the blogger widget that used to grace my sidebar, but a lot nicer to look at. 

Having a blog archive never seemed too important to me until now, but there are a few reasons why you should think about creating your own unique archive page. 

It conveniently groups your posts by their label, allowing for an easy to navigate experience for your readers. Someone may stumble upon your blog and want to read more posts on that particular subject, if you make it easy for them to find it, they'll spend longer on your site, which will improve your sites bounce rate (the average time readers stay on your site). 

An archive can increase views on older posts. Sometimes a post you are really proud of can get lost or not receive the views it deserves. If it is archived correctly and is easy to find, its views could be greatly improved over time. Someone may have read the post when it first went live and wish to find it again to link to it or mention it on their social media, how terrible would it be if it was impossible to find?!

Increases your blogs credibility by showcasing its history. In the world of the internet today, there are blogs and websites popping up all over the place, so which one should you trust? By human nature, people will gravitate to sources with a firm history, if you can show that your blog or website has a long established history, you can gain a degree of credibility. 

Try and make your archives as visually engaging as possible, if your readers are looking for something in particular, their eyeballs want to to see a simple, easy to read archive. That is one of the main reasons why I designed my archive like I did, it's pleasing to the eye but simple to understand and navigate.

Have you given any thought to your blog or website archive? Do you find yourself looking in other sites archives to find relevant content?