Anticipating the needs and habits of your blog’s audience is crucial to its success. Merely writing what you think is appropriate doesn’t take into account the changing attention, attitudes and desires within your respective domain.

Reviewing your most popular (i.e. most viewed, read, commented, linked to, bookmarked, etc.) posts will give you a better understanding of what your audience wants. And if you desire a popular blog, then you should give your audience more of what they want.

Listing your most popular posts is a treasure trove of content for your readers. It will immediately draw new visitors’ attention to the best examples your blog has to offer, painting an attractive and accessible picture of your blogging abilities.

Here are some more benefits of listing your most popular posts, in a nutshell:

1. A popular posts list will quickly draw new visitors into the commenting community surrounding your blog.
2. It’s an invaluable indicator, for both you and your visitors, of what type of content drives attention.
3. Indicating the popularity of a post will help encourage others to share it and/or bookmark it.
4. It gives new visitors an immediate idea of what they can expect from your blog without them having to scroll through entire posts.
5. Such a list, if regularly updated, quickly indicates to new visitors that your blog is up to-date, topical and consistently relevant to current events and discussions.
6. A most popular list will always be a helpful reminder of what the writer should anticipate or strive for when creating new posts.
7. Having your most popular posts in a sidebar also makes it easier for search engine spiders to hit your links, making them come up in searches faster.

Well there you have it, 7 straight forward reasons why you should have a ‘Most Popular’ list on your blog. Keep coming to Apollo’s Blog for more strategies and tips for successful blogging and effective blog writing. Good Luck!