I have seen many blogs that have a little section on top or by the sidebar listing the popular articles. This is probably the result of the popularity plugin which judges whether an article is popular by the number of comments it has received. Now before you get the wrong idea, what I am talking about here is totally different from the popular plugin.

For example, an old post of mine “Pei Profit Dot Com Christmas Giveaway” received the highest number of comments hitting past the 200 mark, as most of you should have heard of. But is it still a must read now? Nope! But if you use the popularity plugin, it is going to stay on top of the list. Very misleading for your readers indeed!

A “Must Read” section is a showcase of articles which you feel are the best blog posts you had or perhaps some articles that you don’t want your readers to miss out when they have gone deep into the archives. This is one that is generated manually by linking to those “show-casing” posts and listing them out accordingly. I pretty sure you have some authority articles that you have written and your readers loved them, now what about the new comers? Do they lose out?

Note: Authority articles means articles that you have spent at least 8 hours drafting the points and writing them out. They appear most in form of “How-To”, “X number of Tips to…” or a good resource list.

So why is it important to have this?

1) Generate High Number Of Page Views
Simple as that. Human are human afterall, they get attracted by headlines like this. They know they are gonna lost something out if they do not read your “Must Read” section! I have a must read articles section myself as you can see on the top right of the blog and these posts have generated me a big number of page views. What does that mean? Articles that I think are really useful are reaching out to my readers, whether they are returning or unique.

2) Showcase Your Best Works
When people see a bunch of authority works or very well written articles, they know you have what it takes, they know you deserve their reading time. Do you see any jewellery stores with closed doors and cabinets? No! They show their best and latest designs and they make sure you know its good stuff.

3) Get More Affiliate Earnings
If you happen to write a review or recommendation for an affiliate product that you are selling, make sure it is a good one and place it in the must read section! By doing this alone, your review/recommendation gets across more people and it means higher conversion rate. What more, if people like your review, they may just purchase a sponsored review from you!

4) Extra Earnings For Yourself And Extra Advertising For Your Advertisers
This may be whacky, but I don’t see why it won’t work out. If you just sold a sponsored review, you may ask your advertiser if he/she is interested to place it in your must read section by topping up some extra money because it is going to give them more page views! How about that?

5) Organise Your Content Well
I don’t have much to say about this because it is rather straightforward. Keep your articles or blog posts organised is very important if you want your readers to return or if you want them to understand what you are really offering. Having a must read section helps your readers find what they want quickly and so they know you mean business.

If you have a better suggestion, feel free to list them down and out in the comment section below and I may add it in on this post if I think it is good! What say you?

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