How To Use WordPress Plugins To Increase Website Traffic
Increasing traffic to your website is every internet marketer’s goal. If it’s not, than this article is not for you. Luckily there are tons of WordPress plugins to help you achieve just that – more traffic, more leads, more sales. Sorry in advance to all those not using WordPress to manage their blog. This article is just for us WordPress marketers.
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This is one of my favorite plugins. There are many to choose from so finding one that fits your theme and blog style should be easy. What are the benefits? When a reader visits your blog, they typically scroll up and down real quick seeing what there is. Having a thumbnail image with a catchy blog title can motivate them to click on another post. Using related posts also creates a path for the reader to follow. As an internet marketer, you have to always be thinking lead funnel! Offer them some relevant content after the first post they read and you’ll make them a two page reader.
They’ll also find some additional related posts on the next page, continuing the process. Success!
HTML5 Video player
Video is a online marketing dream tool. Simply embedding a video on your website you can generate countless video views. If your videos are hosted on YouTube or Vimeo, you can use their customized embed code. However, if your hosting your own videos, you must use an HTML5 video player. This takes a bit more work but will allow your videos to be played on nearly every device out there! This makes your website promo videos that much more effective.
Mobile Friendly
Mobile devices have flooded the business world. At nearly every meeting I run or attend, there are at least 1 smartphone per person and an iPad or two. Bigger meetings – triple that! What does this mean? Your website is being viewed on a mobile device. People are reading your blog on the sofa at home, after work, on the airplane, in the car (not driving of course!), in the store, waiting at the doctors, before their son or daughter’s soccer game. People are reading your blog on a mobile device. Where are you reading this article? Using a mobile friendly WordPress plugin that converts your existing theme to a mobile optimized theme automatically, is especially important! How do you feel if you have to pinch’n’zoom to read a website article?
Social Media Plugins
If your blog doesn’t have social sharing button’s you’re really dropping the ball on your opportunity for generating more traffic. People want to share your content easily. Don’t make them cut and paste your link to share it with their friends. Add a social sharing plugin that will make it easy for your readers to Like on Facebook, Tweet on Twitter, and Pin on Pinterest.
Google Authorship
Google is incorporating this all over the place on searches. Next time you search for something, look for the small thumbnail photos on the page results. You’ll notice that this is the Google+ photo from the author’s Google+ account. Very cool! When you’re looking at the search results from your inquiry, you’ll also be surprised that you’re drawn to that article a lot more. So, next plugin for increasing your traffic is – Google Authorship.
Sitemap Creator
Sitemaps are files that reside on your server which list all of your pages with various information about each one. Google recommends that you create a sitemap and upload it to their Webmaster Tools site. Why do they want you to use sitemaps? This is the best way for a search engine robot to find and index your website pages! Using a sitemap generating plugin can make this process extremely efficient and automated. From creating the sitemap and uploading it directly to Webmaster Tools, this plugin is a must. The more pages you have indexed by Google, the greater the opportunity you have for more traffic to your website.
Google Analytics
You might be asking, how is it that by using Google Analytics, you can increase traffic to my website? The answer is simple. Google analytics does more than just tell you how many visitors you have any given Sunday. This plugin can tell you how people are viewing your content, where they are going, what pages they land on and where they drop off. This can help you develop your content strategy, create content or modify content based upon your reader’s behavior.
I hope you have enjoyed this article about using WordPress plugins for increasing traffic to your website. Sometimes marketers need help. You can always avail yourself to a free 20 minute marketing assessment with us! If you have any questions or would just like to voice your opinion, please leave a comment below!