This is a guest post by David Kendall.
Not every post you write on your blog will be a winner, but that doesn’t mean you should stop writing blog posts that aren’t perfect. After all, you won’t find out what’s popular until you post it, and you need to keep your blog updated at all times. So, what’s a blogger to do when your most valuable articles get buried under newer posts?
Highlighting the best content on your blog is one great way to show off your most valuable content and entice readers to click from your “traffic-attracting” posts to the ones that provide value and make them a loyal reader. Here are five strategies for highlighting your best posts.
1. Use a popular post widget.
WordPress offers a number of plugins to automatically display your best posts based on view count. You can display this widget in your sidebar or a widget box in your theme. Simply search the WordPress plugins database for “popular posts” and you’ll find many different options, so you can choose your favorite.
One favorite of many bloggers is “WordPress Popular Posts” with over 300,000 downloads. You can use this plugin widget more than once if you want to configure it differently for each instance. For example, you could have a widget for your most popular posts in each category, or have separate widgets for the most popular posts in the last month and most popular posts of all time. Experiment with different settings and see what your readers tend to prefer: popular posts sorted by view count, comment count, or average daily views.
2. Use a content slider.
A widget like SlideDeck 2 will allow you to pull posts and highlight your favorite ones in a slider, which you can then display on your homepage or in any other chosen location. Simply install and configure according to the plugin instructions, and you can tweak many settings in an easily navigable admin interface. For example, you can choose to show excerpts, loop playback, manually set the animation between slides, and more. Just be sure you’re choosing the right posts to highlight!
You can use a widget like the one above to easily find out your most popular posts, or simply choose the ones you’re most proud of. Refresh it every so often by adding new popular posts and deleting some of the older ones, particularly if they are outdated.
3. Publish a regular “best posts” summary.
Even if you only do it once a year, an ordinary post that highlights other posts can be a hit with your readers. New site visitors might stumble upon it, because this type of post is very likely to be linked to and shared by your readers. Repeat visitors will appreciate the recap. It will draw attention and comments to outdated posts, and you might be able to highlight something that is particularly relevant now, such as a trend you predicted last year.
4. Use a “related posts” plugin to draw people in.
Once your readers have finished a post, why not highlight some of your best posts that directly relate to the topic of that article? One plugin that can do this is Related Posts via Taxonomies, a plugin that makes it easy to choose which posts you want to display in your Related Posts widget. There are enough options that you can easily work with your posts to generate a best posts tag if you want to do more work, or just let it list related posts on its own. The one used on this site is Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Try tagging all your best posts with a specific tag so you can instruct the plugin to display posts from that particular tag. Exclude any behind-the-scenes personal posts, and sort them by their score of “relatedness” to your article or by your date published or modified.
5. Use Sticky Posts to stick it to your homepage.
If you have one blog post that simply shines above all others, put it at the top of your homepage so all your new readers notice it. WordPress 2.7 and above lets you sticky a post by simply clicking the “stick this post to the front page” option on the publish post page, a checkbox that should appear in the “Visibility” section. If you need to have several posts stickied in a particular order, the Q2W3 Post Order plugin will let you sort not just sticky posts but all your posts on your site, in a category, or in a tag.
It’s important to make sure your blog readers can find your most valuable, popular, and shareable content so they can benefit from your site and spread the word via social media. Don’t let your well-written posts languish in favor of newer posts. People want to read your best stuff, so make it easy by choosing one or more of these methods!
About David Kendall
Kikolani covers blog marketing and blogging tips for personal, professional, and business bloggers to succeed in search and social media marketing. Kristi Hines is a 
Very good post on how to highlight some of your best posts to the world. Often when you post articles, the good ones get buried away so in order to keep them out in the open and just for search engines, I also think that it should be presented to the visitor more often.
Shalu Sharma recently posted Try the delicious motichoor ladoo
Many bloggers neglect the popular posts and the home page of the site (as well as the sidebar that is visible on all pages) contains newest post details that keep changing if one writes regularly. It is necessary to highlight popular posts. One can get idea also from Google Analytics as to which posts are more popular than others.
Ashok recently posted Read tweets in reverse chronological order on Twitter in Firefox
Great ideas here. Hadn’t thought about #3–so simple though. Thanks for the idea!
Amy Lynn Andrews recently posted Q&A: Is it true that not all my Facebook fans see my posts?
Amy, I do like the tip. However, if you notice for a regular reader of your blog, its would not add value. At times people might start reading simply those posts to see what updates you have made. As a blogger I believe that value adds in content are essential and a must.
Eddie Gear recently posted How to Generate 1000 New Visitors Every Month To Your Blog
These are totally effective tips. I wish I could say that a couple had not slipped my mind, but alas. Thank you for all the great ideas, I certainly will be using them.
Robert Koenig recently posted Lawsuit For Wrongful Death Of Fetus
I use a popular widget for Internet Dreams!
I believe every blog should have a section where it shows their best content.
It basically shows everyone your best.
Samuel recently posted 7 Cool WordPress Plugins!
Using a popular posts plugin and setting the time limit to be something like 30 days (most popular in the last 30) works great for me; coz this way the posts are not the same always and they change!
Jane recently posted 8 Ways To Increase Reader Engagement Of A Blog
I am not a very big fan on the slider. They are mostly heavy and slow down the blog alot, unless you have a CDN or a dedicated server to power your blog. Love the tips on featured post and related post. I have them implemented on my blog, which increases the Pageviews. Thanks David, good work on the post.
Eddie Gear recently posted 5 Proven Ways To Make Money Blogging In The Next 30 Days
Hello,
Well I think using sticky note as you have suggested is definitely the best option to highlight your post in the blog. Even publishing the best post summary is also a great idea indeed. This would help the visitors to get an idea of the best post. Thanks for the share!!
I am using the sticky post, and create a dedicated banner for the exclusive post.
But there are also many ways that can help us in creating a natural hype for the specific post. Just like having a social hype few hours before the publishing of an exclusive post, and to make it live for next few days. We should use the automatic posting of spinned titles with link of our post on social channels!
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Hi David,
I have personally found related posts very useful on my blog, they helps you pulling down the bounce rate ultimately.
Joe Clark recently posted Google plus: heaven of SEO for webmasters in 2013
Hi David,
Thanks for sharing the information, I think almost all tips you included in this article.
We can also put anchor text of the article that most related to the open post.
Like-
Also Read: [Anchor text to closest related article article.]
I use genesis theme its amazing in highlighting the articles as you will see in my blog articles are highlighted in such a nice way that chance are great that viewer will visit other posts also by just changing some simple settings.
Thank You
Shorya Bist
From Youthofest
Shorya Bist recently posted Google Doodle for creative people!Try your Doodle for Google
Hi David,
I think it works best to have a multi tabbed widget with recent and popular posts. And for the main page you can add a box that tells people what they should read first on your blog. You know? Something like “Start here if this is your first time on …”. This works great to point people to some of your popular posts.
Great post David, thank you for sharing these tips, enjoy your weekend.
~Philip
Philip A. recently posted How to drive traffic to your blog without Google?
Content Sliders can be a really cool way to give readers easy access to your best content. Most site visitors will only look at the first page they are brought to, and are generally unwilling to search around and explore sites on their own. By giving them an obvious, single click link to more content, you have a much higher chance to get more eyes on the things you want people to see. I would definitely try something like that on your sites.
Great idea David about a best post summary. This idea had never occurred to me and it’s really a good way to divert interest back to popular posts that may be buried over time.
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I’m not a big fan of sliders; some of them are read with difficulty by smartphones, especially if browsers don’t have certain add-ons installed.
Cristian Stan recently posted Best Juice Extractor Reviews – Breville 800JEXL Review
Woohoo I do three if the methods listed already!
When I installed a popular post widget I made sure that it checked my Google nalytic account to help produce a list of popular posts.
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Awesome David,
Really useful post for new Blogger like me, I like most your one of the post ‘Use a popular post widget’ it is really good pint to notice.
Thanks for sharing..
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