How many posts per page?

I have been wondering as to what would be the optimum number of posts per page on a blog. You might ask - what's my objective? Well (a) if I display only one post on my blog front page, would it lead to more targetted Adsense ads? (b) I normally post 2-3 articles per day on my blog. If I am displaying only one post, then what happens to my other posts of that day ie. will my readers bother to check them out?

How do you decide for your blog? Do you have pointers to discussions on this issue?

 

That depends on how topic specific your blog is. If your blog is about one specific topic and it doesn't change much from article to article then your ads will likely be targeted well. If you write about a variety of topics and they all appear on the home page then your ads will not be targeted as well.

How do most visitors arrive to your blog? If the majority of your readers are coming to your site through an RSS feed then they will have seen the individual posts and just click on the ones they want to read more about. (Unless you are providing full articles in the feed.)

If most people come to your site via search engines and/or links from other websites then it is more likely they will not explore further into your website with just one post on the home page.

I do it both ways depending on the blog. I have a couple of blogs where most people just check the home page daily or come via search engines. In that case I provide multiple posts on the home page.

Another blog I run is syndicated on several other websites, and many people subscribe to the RSS feed. In that case people are visiting individual pages and rarely the home page. So it almost doesn't matter what I put on the home page since the home page isn't visited all that often.

Another factor is how often do you have people visit your home page? Are they repeat visitors? Sometimes people don't want to fee like they've missed anything and as such if there is one post on your home page it would be more difficult to tell if there was anything you posted between the post on the home page and the last post they read. Whereas if you had several posts on your home page they would know where they left off before and know they didn't miss anything since their last visit.

In short it depends on how people use your site, use your feed, and get to your site in the first place. In general though, I've found it better to offer the most recent 5-7 posts on the home page.

 

Very informative Tim, thanks. Can you throw more light on your statement "Another blog I run is syndicated on several other websites, and many people subscribe to the RSS feed"?

 

I personally limit my blog to seven days worth of posts for the home page.

 

Matt, true that's another way to look at the issue...

 

Sure, here is one blog, General Aviation News. That is it's primary site. However other websites automatically display the headlines from that primary site on their own sites. Two examples are the Beech Aero Club (look down the left hand column for the "GA News" section) and the International Aeronauts League (look on the right column). Both of those sites automatically update whenever new headlines are posted to the primary blog.

Therefore since people syndicate my site they are likely to click on one of the links to a particular story and go directly to the story than visit the homepage of the site. So I get very few hits to the home page on the primary site.

The other part of the question is RSS news readers. There are programs (sometimes called News Aggregators) that will allow you to subscribe to the headlines of many websites. In this respect too, the news aggregator just compiles a list of the post titles, a short intro to the article, and a link to the article. They can click on the link to bring up their browser directly to that page. This too reduces the amount of people who see the home page on that site.

 

Wow, that's great. Just a thought, let's say I want to display the headlines (just the latest post) of 5 of my most read blogs directly on my blog, can this be done? If yes, obviously how? Possibilities are interesting.
Tim, I suggest you write a book, very informative and to the point!

 

Certainly! Some blogging software has this functionality built in. Otherwise, search Google for 'rss2html'. The software will allow you to specify a feed, what html formating you want before and after posts, if you want to display the post date/time, etc. It could be a little tricky to setup depending with your comfort level with scripts, templates, etc but once you do it once it will seem easy the next time.

Well, thanks for the compliment. I don't have any book deals planned, but I often write about website development tips on my blog.

 

I did find rss2html. However, it's a PHP script. I can't use the same on my Blogger/Blogspot.com blog. Shucks.
Update: I found RSS Digest which might solve my problem. Any opinions on this?

 

I have not used that before but it looks like it would work okay so long as your blogging software allows you to insert javascript code or an iframe.

 

All depends on how long your posts are .....I tend to think if you have some really interesting posts you can keep to a minimum so people will click around on links on your site.

 

I don't post a lot on my blogs so I aim for 1 month on the front page. I found that on a good month I post 5 entries on my active blog so set the threshold there to 5. I post 2-3 on my gardening blog but the entries there are more seasonal so I set the threshold to ten to get a growing season.

All in all, Tim hit the big ticket items. You don't want your home page to look stale, nor do you want it to look crowded. You have to find a threshold that works for you..

 

You mentioned to me that you have put a link to RSS Digest. Where?

 

I'm not 100% sure I understand you question. But if you look at the Beech Aero Club website you will see down the left side where headlines are syndicated from the General Aviation News blog.

 

Agreed.
I have three posts on the first page and readers tend to click around.

 

click on 'pcdoctorsgroup' in my sig.

 

My personal suggestion is no more than 3 post per page. This also allows faster download time when you are saving these post to your directory for your site, if it is hosted on your server.

 

I now publish the 3 most recent posts on my homepage.

 

I post 10-15 news per day on my blog..

 

Mine varies across each of my blogs. On one blog, I show 7 posts / page, but, in the side bar of every page I show all the older than 7 posts posts.