By Shannon | Leave A Comment
Photo by Kelly Hafermann
The Archives page is pretty much an institution in the world of blogging. But have we ever taken a moment to think about why?
Blogging platforms offer you the option to provide links to your posts via categories, tags, and date-based archives. In many cases, your blogging software (Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, etc.) is duplicating your content to provide links in these various ways. This could potentially hurt you when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and page rank.
Let’s also consider if people actually use the archives on your site. When you are looking for something on a blog, how often do you click on the archive links? My answer is never. I use the search most often, then tags and, less often, categories.
I also find the term “archives” to be stuffy and boring. It brings to mind an old pile of musty books in the basement of a library. Isn’t it much more exciting to highlight your tag cloud? Or better yet, list your blog’s most popular posts with a nifty plugin like Popularity Contest (for WordPress).
With all the widgets and other fun stuff we can add to our sidebars, why fill it up with useless links to your monthly archives? Save space and reduce links to duplicate content by deleting your archives function. That’s right, just get rid of it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the value of date-based archives. Do you click on archives when you read blogs? If you track your stats, are people using the archives on your site?
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Shannon is a homeschooling mother, blogger, web designer, and lover of all things internet. You can find her writing at PHAT Mommy.
ABOUT Shannon
Shannon Entin, a blogger, web designer, and social media junkie, loves widgets, add-ons, and plug-in{read more}
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I actually have a lot of readers use my archives. And when I recently did an on site survey for my redesign to ask which part of my site was actually used, the top two features listed was the About page and the Archives.
The top two things people said they didn’t use – a “links” page and “popular posts” page.
Interesting . . . I don’t often click on Archived posts either. And you’re right, that list can take up a lot of space. I think I’ll be removing mine!
Really interesting point…I had not thought of that! But yes, we don’t want to be hurt in SEO by duplicate information. Hmmm, I’m going to have to think about this one some more so thanks for the heads up!
I actually just removed my archived and calendar yesterday. I decided that because most people use the categories to find other blogs that it was fruitless to take up space.
right now my archives are in a drop down plugin, so it doesn’t take up much room. how do the archives hurt your PR?
Shannon, I’m not much on archives either, nor tags or categories. However, I do like it when titles are listed. Actually, this is a help to me today because I was just trying to decide whether or not to get rid of the tags. Now I’ll probably ditch the archives as well. Thanks!
Wow, what timing. I just deleted my archives a couple of days ago! They were duplication of my regular site navigation, and they were taking up space. I just couldn’t see why anyone would read them since all the same content was available via the regular categories. I had a moment of panic when I did it because “everyone knows” you’re “supposed” to have archives…but my site isn’t chronological so it didn’t make sense to me. Glad to know I’m not the only one!
~Angela
I LOVE archives! I use them all the time. When I discover a new blog, I use the monthly archives to get a sense of how they started and progressed to when I found them. I sometimes revisit favorite blogs and go back in their archives to refresh my memory.
You make a good point about sidebar space, though — It can get awfully crowded over there and it’s never a bad idea to streamline. But still, I love having a chronological record of what I’ve done available for my readers.
My writing has changed significantly since I started blogging, as have many others… And I like seeing how it’s progressed and changed over time. Not to mention, I like to make it as obvious as possible that my old material is OLD — want to make it easy for any readers to see that I’ve come a long way!
I could definitely be an exception to the rule. Everybody searches for older material by their own means. But for now, at least, my archives stay!!