Getting traffic on a blog post may be easy, but it can be easier than before when you need to contribute it to your introductory blog post.
Sounds cool. Isn’t it?
Let’s see how you can do this.
Increasing CTR is always an on-demand task that everybody wants to increase.
Most time, CTR increased based on the catchy post title. But what about next?
Because it will only help you get more traffic on a particular blog post. You have written some critical informative or helpful posts for your visitors.
Have you thought about those vital posts?
How do you represent those necessary posts in front of your audience or increase their traffic to get a higher ranking position that your audiences seek?
In this blog post, we will discuss how you can do these with the help of featured posts, how to add featured posts on the sidebar, and how you edit or delete a featured post on WordPress and Blogger.
What are featured posts?
A featured post is a feature of showing a post on top of your list as it’s an introductory post for your audience.
It can be placed on your blog’s sidebar or your homepage.
You can show your most popular posts and, as I told you before, your essential posts for your particular visitors with the help of featured posts.
Basically, you are sticking some helpful information or offers on the sidebar.
So, when visitors come to your blog, they will see that. Your information is attractive; they will read or grab the offer. What feature are you using here?
You are using the featured posts feature.
You don’t have any rights to show any of your posts on Google’s first position when you want, but you can do it with your blog feed.
How do I add or edit a featured post?
The search engine gives you traffic value and uses that value properly by contributing to your popular posts.
Because those posts are more important than others.
As a blogger, it’s essential to share frequently valuable posts for readers. When your readers discover a new exciting post, they will love to read that.
Doing a showcase of your exciting posts makes this process easier. Here showcase means featured posts.
You can do this in two processes, using a plugin and without a plugin. As we know, On the Google Blogger platform, there is no plugin, and you can use it without a plugin process.
We will do both processes with and without a plugin. Let’s see how you can do this on your WordPress or Blogger website.
How to Add Featured Posts in WordPress
WordPress block editor and plugin are the best options to add featured posts on WordPress.
You can add it to your blog’s sidebar, in its posts, and on your homepage to showcase popular or influential posts.
Very first, we will add it to the sidebar. Why sidebar?
Someone is reading your post, and you are running an exclusive offer on your blog; your reader will see that offer from the sidebar, click on that, and grab it.
Not only offer, but you can also add your popular posts. Let’s do that.
Adding featured posts to WordPress using the block editor
To display a featured post in a blog post. First of all, open that blog post and click on the + button that you will see in the top-left corner of the editor screen.
According to the style of your posts, you can take blocks. A list block will be better for this purpose. Now you have added a block to your post.
Enter the name of the posts that you want to feature in your blog post, and then add links. That’s it.
How to make a reusable block
Making a reusable block will help you save time and energy. You will make a block once, and you can use that block as many times as you want. Isn’t it a good option?
After making any of your featured posts, you can mark them as reusable blocks.
To do this, click on the three dots and then click on add to reusable blocks, just like in the screenshot below.
After clicking on it, a new pop-up box will appear. Give a proper name that you can remember quickly, and then hit the save button.
Next time when you need to find out, take a block as you are regularly taking, click on the browse all option, and then search your reusable blocks using the reusable block name.
Method 1: Adding to the WordPress sidebar
Adding featured posts to the sidebar is the best option when you have an exciting offer or some excellent blog post for particular readers.
In this process, we are going to use a block editor. So, this process will be similar to that we have just before. You can do the same thing if you want to add your author box to the sidebar.
Follow the steps and make them without any errors.
Add a text widget
Head over to the appearance>widgets. After clicking widgets, you will land on your widgets area. From here, add a text widget to your sidebar.
Add Links or write about your sidebar
Edit or write about your sidebar widget and then save or hit the update button. In this way, you can add more than one sidebar, especially when you have multiple options to show.
Every WordPress doesn’t have a sidebar option and does the same thing to any other widget area on your pages.
Method 2: Adding to the WordPress sidebar Using Menus
This method is more manageable than method one. You will manage your posts more effectively by using this method.
You can try both ways. But keep only one as per your desire.
Without adding featured posts in the widget area, we will create a navigation menu and display it in the sidebar to make it appear.
You don’t need to edit your widgets every time. You can also use the same menu more than once, just like reusable blocks.
Creating a new menu for the featured post
Head over your cursor appearance, then menus. Click on the Create a new menu.
Now you have to enter your menu’s name, which will help you to identify what was your purpose if you use this somewhere else.
You have added a perfect name and now click on the Create menu to go ahead.
You have created a new menu for your sidebar, and you have to add posts you want to show on your sidebar.
To do this, click on the posts bar and then select posts. You can also search for any particular post. After selecting, click on Add to the menu.
You have added your post to the menu.
You can see it. You can also do drag and drop. Click on the save menu, and you are done here.
Now you have to add this menu to the sidebar through the navigation widget.
Adding the Menu to the Sidebar
Follow these steps appearance>widgets and add the navigation menu widget to your sidebar.
From your sidebar, select the navigation menu. If you don’t find it, you can use the search bar.
Select the menu you have created recently and give an eye-catching title to attract more readers.
Click on the save/update button to see the results. You have done another method about how to add featured posts on the WordPress sidebar.
How to Add in WordPress with a plugin
Without plugins always require technical knowledge. What if someone doesn’t have technical ABC, what will he/she do?
There is a problem, and there is a solution. For those people (non-technical people), a plugin is an excellent option to do this task.
Let’s see how you can do this if you don’t like technical settings.
Download a plugin
Go to the WordPress dashboard and follow the screenshot below.
After downloading the display posts plugin you have to add a text widget. Basically, to display featured posts you have to use shortcodes.
To do this you can follow these steps.
Add a text widget
Navigate to Appearance > Widgets, select the Text widget, and add it to the area where you want to display the list.
Insert the shortcode
To display your list you have to use the appropriate shortcode. To show your most recent post you can use [display-posts].
There are so many shortcodes that you can use. For more info, you can visit this WordPress support page.
How to add on Blogger
Adding featured posts on Blogger is easier than on WordPress.
You can use the author bio or the latest blog post as featured posts. Let’s see how you can do this, step-by-step.
- On your Blogger dashboard, click on the layout and then find the sidebar. For clear info, you can follow the image below.
- On the sidebar section, you will see add a gadget option. Click on it and a new pop-up will open on your screen.
- From Add a Gadget, select Featured post.
After adding the featured post, you have to add the details, and what you want to show as featured posts on the Blogger sidebar. Let’s see…
- Give a proper title that will be suitable for your featured posts.
- You can control your featured posts by doing on/off, as you can see on the screenshot (number: 2)
- You can also search for a specific post or you can click any on the post that is showing on the list.
- You have done 1, 2, 3 and now click on the save. You are done here.
- Your featured posts will look like this.
Isn’t it easy and cool?
How to add featured posts as author bios on Blogger?
In this case, if you have a question. How can I add my author bio instead of the latest post? This is as simple as you have done currently.
To make an author bio so that everyone can see who is the backend owner of this site. Then you have to follow the same steps that you have done recently. Here it is…
Layout> Find out the sidebar or add a gadget option> Click on that and select HTML/JavaScript>Give the title as Author bio or About me and write a text about you in the content area>save.
As you are watching in the screenshot, you have to do that like this image. Some blogger theme has some different features, you have to search.
In the title area, give it a good title. In the content area write a short bio about yourself, and save it.
Your author bio will look like this and you are done.
Conclusion
This blog post has covered featured posts related to the most asked questions or queries.
How you can use featured posts for WordPress and Blogger including the sidebar and inside the article.
Some features require technical knowledge and some are not. But if you follow all the steps carefully then there will be a .1% chance that you will make a mistake.
To get a clear view and understanding you can read this post repeatedly.
If you think we aren’t covered in some parts, don’t forget to comment on them.