Book by Book Summer: 7 Tips for Organizing Your Review Index

As a book blogger it's essential to have a review index. If you don't have a page dedicated to all your reviews, you should definitely look into getting one. Here are all the ways to organize them and some tips.

#1: Don't just link to your tagged reviews page.

Nobody likes this and nobody will actually seek out more reviews you posted when you do this. There is no way of finding what you're looking for if you have one of these so PLEASE just make a review index.

#2: There are five (and more) ways to organize your review index.

Alphabetically - By Author - By Genre - By Rating - By Publisher

At the end of the day it comes down to personal preference which one you pick, but I suggest making at least(!) two different ones. My most viewed one is the one by genre and I tend to go for that usually when I'm looking at a new blog so if you only want to do one, that's a safe bet.

#3: Link back to your other pages if you have any.

For example, if you have an index for reviews by genre and reviews by authors, it's nice if you have a backlink at the top of the page that links to the respective other one.

Your viewers will love you for having an index that's easy to navigate and nested page tabs at the top of your site sometimes don't work as well on all browsers (unless you've checked that!)

#4: Don't decorate.

Usually I always say you have to decorate your posts with something, whether it's pictures, graphics, or simply using italic, bold, and different font sizes. Your review index isn't the place for this. It has to be a very plain page that simply does the job when someone is looking for a specific review. I'd even say be careful with using bigger fonts.

Sometimes it's nice when you want to distinguish the individual letters, but please don't put every single review in a giant font so that your index will lose the classic list look that absolutely works best for your viewers.

#5: Periodically check if the links work.

Sometimes I go back to randomly click on some of my reviews in my index and see if they link correctly. It happens a lot that you'll end up changing the date of a scheduled review and forget changing the link on your index page.

#6: Don't sort by date!!!!

This is super unhelpful for anyone who's looking for something specific. You can't have a review index only listed by date published - this tells the average reader who's never been on your blog exactly zilch about where to find that specific review you did that they've been looking for. Nothing's more frustrating than having to click ctrl+f on a blog and manually search for a review because the blogger did a crappy job with their index.

#7: Link to your index.

I can't believe I have to say this, but why do all the work if you don't have it in a tab at the top of your page? This isn't negotiable, it HAS to be in a tab that every reader immediately sees. Putting in a sidebar makes it difficult to find and most people don't even look at sidebars in general. So please.

At the end of the day it's your own decision how you want to organize your index and as I always say - my suggestions are nothing more than tips and by no means a "do it my way or don't do it at all" guide.