Learn how to enhance your blog’s performance and engage your readers with featured posts. Discover the benefits of using static and dynamic featured posts, and get tips on choosing the right type, placement, and content to maximize your impact. Written by expert blogger Lori Ballen, this comprehensive guide offers practical advice and creative insights to help you take your blog to the next level.
Blogging has become an immensely popular way to express one’s thoughts, passions, and talents. In order to maximize the potential of your own blog, utilizing featured posts that effectively communicate your content and draw in readers is essential. With featured posts, you can position the most important information where viewers will find it first, ensuring that they are enticed by what they see.
Prioritizing topics and organizing them into categories will make it easy for readers to access the information they want while still allowing them to discover new things.
Furthermore, these featured posts highlight the personality and purpose of your blog. If done right, features should leave a lasting impression on viewers and motivate engagement with your work. To truly engage readers and make sure your blog is performing at its absolute best, taking advantage of the possibilities provided by featuring posts is key.
What are Featured Posts?
Featured posts are special articles, images, and videos on blog sites that are highlighted to draw their readers’ attention. They often appear at the top or side of the main page and may include more visuals or contain more popular content than regular blog posts.
Featured posts differ from regular posts in that they are primarily used to showcase content that is especially important or engaging for audiences. Community managers and content curators can ensure readers have easy access to their best work by featuring posts.
The benefits of featured posts are plentiful for many blog site owners and visitors alike. For example, featured posts can provide higher visibility by increasing clicks and engagement.
If your post is trending, it can also help drive more people to your blog and boost search engine rankings with greater exposure to your brand. Furthermore, they can highlight specific topics you’d like your audience to pay attention to, such as new information about a product or recent marketing campaigns.
More traffic typically brings more revenue opportunities too!
When effectively incorporated into blogs, featured posts deliver immense value by bringing more attention and clicks to a particular topic – helping increase exposure for brands and products while inviting conversation around their core ideas which spurs even further growth – an incredibly powerful tool for bloggers of all stripes!
| Ways to Use Featured Posts on a Blog | Examples |
|---|---|
| Showcase popular or recent blog posts | “Top 5 Most Popular Posts of the Month” |
| Highlight related or recommended blog posts | “Related Articles You Might Like” |
| Feature guest blog posts or interviews | “Interview with Industry Leader on Blogging Tips” |
| Create a “Best of” or “Top 10” list | “10 Best Blogging Tips of the Year” |
| Display featured categories or tags | “Featured Category: Health & Fitness Blog Posts” |
Featured Posts: Why They Matter and How to Utilize Them
One day, I decided to experiment with the trending and sticky post features available on my WordPress website. I marked a recent blog post as trending and watched as it quickly gained traction among my readers and was shared across social media.
The small fire icon next to the post’s title caught the attention of my readers and made it stand out among my other content.
But I didn’t stop there. I also used the sticky post feature to keep my most important content at the top of my archive pages, ensuring that my readers would see it first when browsing my website. This made it easier for them to find the content they were looking for and increased engagement on my website.
Using these features, I could showcase my best content and engage my readers in a new and exciting way.
It’s always fun to experiment with new features and see how they can enhance my website and improve the user experience for my readers.
Have you ever wondered why some posts are featured more prominently than others? Two featured post types can be used on a website—static and dynamic. Let’s explore how these types of featured posts work, the benefits they bring, and how to use them effectively.
Here’s an example of using featured posts on your WordPress blog.
- You could feature a slider or grid of static featured posts on the homepage. These could be your most popular or recent posts or posts related to a specific topic or promotion.
- In the sidebar or footer, you could feature dynamic featured posts that automatically update based on specific criteria, such as the latest posts or posts related to a specific category or tag.
- Within individual posts, you could feature related posts or popular posts that are relevant to the current topic. This could be done manually or with a plugin automatically pulling in related content.
- You could also create a dedicated “Featured Posts” page on your blog, where you showcase your best content, most popular posts, or posts related to a specific theme or topic. This page could be linked to your homepage or navigation menu.
Static Featured Posts
Static featured posts are typically found on the home page of a website. They remain at the top of the page for as long as you want them to stay there. This is useful for highlighting your chosen content, such as news articles or blog posts related to your business.
Benefits include increased visibility, customer engagement, and an improved user experience. Examples of static featured posts include call-to-action buttons or banners promoting events or products.
Dynamic Featured Posts
Dynamic featured posts are those that appear in response to user behavior. This post type appears based on certain criteria the website owner sets — such as location or time spent on the site — which helps boost customer engagement.
The benefit is that it lets users immediately see content relevant to them and their interests. Examples of dynamic featured posts include personalized product recommendations or educational videos related to past searches.
Featured posts can make it easier for users to find content quickly while helping businesses increase their online visibility and build customer relationships. Whether static or dynamic, utilizing these featured posts can give you a competitive edge in today’s digital world – so don’t wait another day! Start optimizing your website today with both types of featured posts for maximum impact and ROI!
Harness the Power of Featured Posts to Improve Your Blog
Blogging has become a popular way to express yourself, share your thoughts and experiences, and generate income. It’s a six-figure income for me. However, it can be difficult to stand out in the crowded blogosphere.
One way to increase your blog’s visibility and engagement is through the use of featured posts. By using featured posts on your blog, you can benefit from increased engagement, improved organization, higher conversion rates, and better SEO.
Let’s explore each of these benefits further.
Increased Engagement & Reach
According to Oberlo, Businesses that publish 16 or more monthly posts receive 3.5 times more traffic than those that publish fewer than four posts. The more posts you have, the more you can feature.
Featured posts are typically displayed prominently on a blog’s homepage or on its sidebar as a “recommended post” or “most popular post.” This makes them more visible than regular posts, which are buried among other content.
The increased visibility of featured posts leads to higher engagement from readers—more people will click on them and read them than would otherwise have done so if they were not featured.
This means you can reach more people with your content and get more comments, likes, and shares for it too!
Improved Organization
Using featured posts also helps keep your blog organized by making it easier for readers to find the most important content quickly and easily.
You can use tags or categories to organize your content, but sometimes this isn’t enough; featuring certain posts can really drive home what topics are most important on your blog and make it easier for readers to locate them without having to search through multiple pages of content.
This improved organization makes it much simpler for new readers who stumble upon your blog to find exactly what they are looking for quickly and easily—increasing the likelihood that they will stick around for longer periods of time!
Higher Conversion Rates
Featured posts also help boost conversions because they draw more attention from readers who may be interested in buying something from you or signing up for something like an email list or newsletter subscription list.
By featuring certain posts that include calls-to-action (CTAs), you can encourage readers who wouldn’t have taken action otherwise to take action now because they are already engaged with the post due to its prominent placement on the page.
Better SEO
Finally, featuring certain posts can also help improve SEO rankings because Google takes note when there is increased engagement with a particular post or page due to its prominent placement on a site.
Google may rank those pages higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). These higher rankings directly lead to increased traffic as more people come across those pages when searching online—which leads to even more beneficial outcomes like increased conversions! So don’t underestimate the power of using featured posts to improve overall SEO performance!
How to Add a Featured Post to WordPress
Highlighting your best content is an excellent way to show visitors the most relevant and valuable posts on your site. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced WordPress user, adding a featured post isn’t difficult; it just takes a few steps. Here’s how you can add a featured post to your WordPress site.
Adding featured posts to WordPress is a great way to showcase your best content and draw attention to the topics that are most important to you. Here are ten ways to add featured posts to your WordPress site:
- Use a plugin like Featured Posts Creative, which allows you to easily mark posts as “featured” and display them on your website via shortcode.
- Add a list widget in the WordPress sidebar using drag-and-drop, then add the titles of each blog post you want to feature as an item on the list.
- Utilize Gutenberg blocks and select the blog post you want to feature in the sidebar.
- Create a menu with featured posts, which can be added directly to your website’s sidebar or footer area.
- Embed a slider or carousel featuring your featured posts on any page or post of your website using shortcodes or widgets.
- Use a plugin like WP Show Posts that allows you to create custom lists of posts with various display options such as grids, sliders, and more.
- Add a featured posts section in the sidebar by creating menus from Appearance > Menus in the WordPress dashboard.
- Create custom widgets for displaying featured posts in any widgetized area of your site, such as sidebars, footers, etc.
- Use a plugin like Advanced Post Slider that enables you to create beautiful sliders with unlimited slides and transition effects for displaying featured posts on any page or post of your website using shortcodes or widgets.
- Utilize Elementor Page Builder’s Posts widget for displaying featured posts on any page or post of your website using drag-and-drop functionality.
Sources:
- https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-add-featured-posts-in-wordpress-sidebar/
- https://rankmath.com/blog/add-featured-posts-in-wordpress/
- https://wpengine.com/resources/add-featured
Featured posts provide many benefits, including increased engagement, improved organization, higher conversion rates, and better SEO performance—all of which contribute towards making your blog successful over time! Consider adding some featured posts into rotation every now and then so that all of these benefits can be harnessed by you today!
