In your opinion, what is the best amount of posts to have on your first page of your blog. At the moment, I have 3 posts. Is this too small? Should I have loads of posts?
I have just done a quick survey of my favourite blogs and the majority of them had 10 posts (It may be the wordpress default setting though). There were couple below 5 posts and a couple above 20.
I think it depends on the average length of your posts. If you write huge articles for each post, then 3-5 would be good. If you write short 2-3 paragraph posts, then 10+ would be better. My blogs are different depending on this factor.
Mine is only 2 at the moment, due to technical difficulties. They are generally about 500 words each though, so it's not bad. I like shorter pages, don't know why..
I think 2's way too few, 10 may be right... depending on the length of the average entry. you could also always give them the option to view as many posts as they like on one page. depends on your niche as well. a tech blog may get away with more than a site about knitting simply because one's more likely to have broadband than the other.
I had asked an SEO expert that question one time and he thinks that 3 was a good number of moderate size posts because of something google does in its indexing. He is very well known and very good at it - I have seen huge results from his work and so I tend to trust him alot. As far as why its that way I dont remember the reasoning he gave but I just know that if he says it I believe him and have had every reason to trust his expertise.
you'd probably be doing your "link clients" more of a service by keeping your visitors happy, which would lead to more traffic to you, which would lead to more traffic for them.
If you have adsense on your blog, is it an advantage or a disadvantage to have a little or a lot of posts on your first page?
with fewer posts there's a chance things may be more targeted, which would lead to a higher CTR. not to mention that it means that posts are pushed off the first page earlier, which means google will likely index their permalink, which ONLY has that content. that again means more relevant ads. but deliver what your visitors want, not what's ideal for adsense... if possible, anyway.
It depends i guess, some blogs post little snippets of info than they'll use the 'read more' function which will lead readers to another page..so technically if you first page is filled with 5 post of super short snippets it really makes it look empty. I personally follow the 5 post rule on all my blogs especially my flickrville.com which loads pics from flickr which also makes my site load a little slower.