My posts are not showing up in the reader, views have gone through the floor. Please Help!

  • Unknown's avatar
    thefieldbiologist · Member ·

    Hello,

    I have been having the same problem as the people in this old thread: https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/posts-not-showing-up-on-readerhttps://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/posts-not-showing-up-on-reader/

    Essentially my new posts are not showing up in the reader when I search the tags used. I have checked the guidelines at https://en.support.wordpress.com/topics/#missing-posts and I believe I have not violated any of the terms there, I have even deleted a few relevant tags to see if that would help by bring the total count of them down (from 14 to 10). Still nothing. Can anybody look into this for me. The post in question is https://thefieldbiologist.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/on-owlflies-and-intrigue/

    Thanks in advance.

    Jack

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    gemmacevans · Member ·

    Hi Jack,

    I’ve checked on this and your posts are being shown in the Reader. “On owlflies and intrigue”, is included at the top:

    https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/80655315

    I also see this post when clicking the field work and field biology tags. It is included in the research tag along with posts published around the same time (19 hours ago). Are you able to see the post in these categories now or does it still not appear?

  • Unknown's avatar
    thefieldbiologist · Member ·

    Hi Gemma.

    Thank you very much for your help. I have had a search through the tags and I still can’t find my post. The only one I could find it in was field biology, and even then it was only when I ordered it by relevancy.

    I have, however in the last couple of hours had traffic trickle in through the reader. It just seems very strange to me. Perhaps I am misunderstanding how the reader works.

    Thanks again

    Jack

  • staff-zinnia · Staff ·

    Hi jack –

    There are numerous factors that play in to where your post would be listed in a search result query for tags or topics. In addition to using broad tags, you could try adding 1 or 2 niche tags to the posts.

    Popular tags like science , nature , etc.. are going to have more posts to compete with yours in Reader. This is where my suggestion of using a few niche tags could help. A few examples for this post would be mesothorax , green macaw , endangered species… Does that make sense?

  • Unknown's avatar
    thefieldbiologist · Member ·

    Thanks for the help Liz. That does clear some things up for me and I can mark this as resolved.

    …. But, it actually raises one more question: I just searched for mesothorax to see just how niche this topic was and to see the frequency of such tags/posts, and lo and behold my post was right at the top. I have not used that as a tag, although the word is buried in the article somewhere. So this begs the question, (other than for internal site navigation and interest grouping) why do tags even matter and does the reader search base itself on the content of the whole article?

    Thanks for all the help everyone.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    The reader uses tags, so you’ll want to treat them with some importance.

    There’s an art to finding the tags that are specific enough to not get lost in the crowd (science, for example) while being general enough that people would likely be following that topic. You probably know your audience better than I do, and whether folks would be following mesothorax. Entamology and insects are good options, IMO.

    Then, just avoid adding too many tags and categories. I’d still keep a few general tags, too.

    You can also network with bloggers who share your interests. As long as you’re doing it in a genuine, non-spammy way, that can help bring in more views and enrich your blogging experience, too.

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