Paul Petch

Generating happy wordpress traffic with plugins

I’ve been asked recently how I’ve managed to attract a fair amount of new and returning visitors to the blog in just a few years. By fair, we are talking about 18,000+ page views per month. So I’m going to share my limited experiences and knowledge with you all. First things first, a blog needs some robust and secure software and I use WordPress. Aside from the simple installation and user interface, it has a huge fan base and so many fantastic plugins which have played an important to my blogs success.

You cannot expect to just add these plugins and overnight traffic starts to arrive by the way ;) I see plugins as tools to help visitors arrive, navigate and subscribe to the content of the blog. With content of course being KING and the MOST important part of any blog or website. Without good content there will not be any traffic…..it is as simple as that.

My top 10 plugins

1. All in One SEO Pack by Robert Torbert. This plugin generates (SEO) Search Engine Friendly elements throughout your blog that is liked by key search engines such as Google, MSN and Ask. I can honestly say that this plugin alone saw an increase in traffic nearly instantly. With meta information, page titles and lots more under the hood- this is a MUST have plugin.

2. Google XML Site Map Generator. Both search engines and visitors just love site maps so why not give them a place to go? This plugin does all the hard work for you and lists content, posts and pages ready for the hungry search engine bots and eager visitors. Nomnomnom.

3. FeedBurner FeedSmith. Adds the RSS stream into a convenient location at Feedburner instead of the default one as standard with your WordPress install. Feedburner (Google owned) has some other nifty features such as stats, subscribe by email and best of all a great user experience when they visit. Never under estimate your RSS feed as lots of people are to busy to wade through your site- they just want to see the posts as they happen.

4. Get recent comments by Krischan Jodies. Does exactly what it says, it takes the freshest comments by your visitors (or you if you choose) and puts them up for all to see. Why is this needed I hear you cry :) You want to invite visitors to stay and explore your site right? Well this type of plugin does exactly that- as it moves your traffic around to content and increases “stay time” on your blog and they come back or subscribe to your rants if they like what they see ;)

4. Global Translator by Davide Pozza. This plugin offers translations of your valuable content- and easily at that. It also registers the multiple translantions with the big players when it comes to searching/ indexing. Yep- that’s right…more traffic :D Just be wary with this plugin though as it will increase the file size of your blog due to pages being cached and stored on your server. If you have lots of web space then this is not an issue. www.paulpetch.com for example has close to 500mb of cached-translated files. Eeek.

5. Post to Twitter by Nauro Rezende Jr. Go setup a Twitter account and get tweeting – then add an icon to the blog to inform visitors that you “Tweet” such as Follow me. Each time you part with wisdom your subscribers will get updated. It’s another way to connect with your visitors and other online tweeters…..so get Tweeting. By tempting visitors to add your feeds and updates to their own accounts it not only gives them an alternative to the standard RSS feed on your site but it also encourages others who read their posts to visit the blog. Of course, if you keep posting tweets that lack so we way….um…..content on a regular basis, you will loose these subscribers quicker than you got them, so Tweet wisely. Here is the my ramblings by the way… so add me.

6. Create a Flickr account and add the FlickrRss plugin by Dave Kellam and Stefano Verna. Every time you upload photos to your Flickr account they will be updated on your blog. Cool eh. What you can also do is add a link and suitable tags to the description of your photos when uploading to Flickr…..and then you start generating MORE traffic to your blog. Its amazing how many people you will meet through Flickr with similar interests to your blog content and Flickr has shed loads of traffic. You wll be surprised at how many people will visit your blog via your images. This is my Flickr stream by the way :)

7. WP Greet Box by Thaya Kareeson is a fantastic plugin that adds a friendly reminder to subscribe to the post, re-tweet, and more. These options are based on the route the visitor has chosen to visit the blog beit via a random Google search or even a Twitter link. Simple and effective.

8. Related Posts by Denis. At the bottom of each post this plugin adds a number of others that may be similar based on the tags you have assigned to the posts. This plugin is gold! If someone surfs into a specific post it is very likely that they will want to find out more about that subject right? And we want to make finding stuff in the blog easy…..so this plugin does exactly that. Click-click-click :)

9. jQuery Lightbox by Viper007Bond helps to keep your pages short and sweet to avoid lots of scrolling by your visitors. It also does a fantastic job of keeping the design tidy too :) This plugin is more about encouraging returning traffic because we all like less clutter and minimal page scrolling right? Just remember to optimise your images too- as no one likes to wait 2 minutes for that imageof your cat direct off your digital camera that is 3MB in size. If images take to long to load- the visitor leaves.

10. Last, but not least is a nifty plugin called Page Links to by Mark Jaquith. This simply allows pages that you add to the navigation to link directly to other websites such as my Flickr. So why is this important for visitors? Well it is all about reducing the number of clicks that we have to endure when visiting websites, and this plugin allows one click to content vs two or more. Less clicking equates to less annoyance for visitors that encourages them to stay and return. I’m sure that the next release of WordPress will have this ability as standard, but until then it is a plugin that I cant live without.

Some general plugin tips

First of all, don’t go crazy and install all of the plugins listed above as that can make your blog look unnecessarily cluttered. Pick a few that you think could work with with your style of blog and test them for a little while and then evaluate. Sometimes plugins donot play nicely together so be prepared for a bit of testing.

Once you’ve started to see more traffic you will hopefully start to see more comments being made. With an increase in traffic you will inevitably see more spam comments too. Without a good spam filter in place you will go a little mad with every second email informing you of reduced Viagra and bored housewifes (I mean who needs more Viagra and bored housewifes :)).

Luckily, there are a number of plugins that can automatically filter a large number of these for you. I use Akismet which comes with WordPress by default and is amazing, but others also swear by Spam Karma and Bad Behavior.

Once you’re getting all these great comments from your readers don’t forget to reply to them! Also, it can be nice to reward your commenters now and then with a mention in a blog post or a backlink and share da’ love.

I’m always keen to try new WordPress plugins so what are your favorites?

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Misc Ramblings and tagged with Geekery, plugins, wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.