WordPress Plugins to Encourage Deeper Reading Of Your Blog
Congratulations! You have finally managed to master SEO, social media marketing, article marketing and whatever other traffic generation methods you might be using. You are getting floods of new people coming to read your blog…
But Have You Ever heard about so-called “bounce rate” ?
And yes, I used that picture on purpose to show you just how happy your newly acquired visitors to click that “Back” button or simply close the window they are using to read your blog post or page….
UNLESS
You Give Them a Reason to Stay!
Luckily, as WordPress blogger you have quite an arsenal over your competitors who (out of sheer stubbornness, I assume) using different blogging platform.
By simply adding a few plugins you can deploy two of the most effective strategies to draw your new visitors into your blog content: Related Posts and Popular Posts.
So this entire blog post I want to dedicate to sharing information on plugins that will allow you do display content that will turn your visitors into readers! And because you have multiple options here – I will only present those that have the functionality and support you need. Just pick what fits your needs best!
WordPress Popular Posts Plugins
This plugin relies on stats provided by WordPress.com Stats plugin that you either have already installed or willing to install. You can simply add it as a widget into your sidebar or take advantage of quite extensive options to integrate it into your WordPress theme. Does require coding knowledge or at least basic understanding of WP Queries.
Similar to above but this one uses its own stats and doesn’t require any other plugins to use. I personally already have WordPress.com stats installed and for me the first one was a great option but for many bloggers this plugins might be a better choice.
This plugin is also VERY configurable and has more options for presenting your content that most others.
While I generally don’t like to recommend plugins that are below 1.0 version this one allows for some very interesting functionality, especially for busy blogs and I thought I would share it.
It allows you to show popular posts from specific time periods, for example last 7 days, last 15 days, etc. It opens possibilities to provide not only relevant popular content but also timely! Should be interesting to see it on blogs that use primary Social Networks as source of traffic!
Allows you to simply display posts with most comments. Draw people into conversation! We are all social creatures and seeing what others are talking about does draw our attention.
This plugin take approach of allowing visitors to rate the post and than display results in many ways. Comes with many configuration options and kind of like a Swiss army knife of a plugin. I do think that you need to have a blog with very active community that is constantly taking action and rates your posts in order to get the correct output.
I think for many blogs in process of being developed this one might be a bit of overkill.
WordPress Related Posts Plugins
While this plugin does heck of a lot more than displaying related posts – it is one of the functions provided by plugin and I use it on this blog quite nicely. It is stable, well supported and proven to work hence I want to recommend it.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
I have also used this plugin and quite impressed with what it provides while keeping small code footprint on your blog. Allows you to display contextually related posts based on Title, tags, or few other configuration options. Could be a great choice for you if this functionality is not implemented on your blog.
Another plugin used on this blog and based on stats – loved by people. Its functionality is quite simple – it tracks where people who read the post clicked next on your blog and then shows those posts in form of list.
Very effective way to show what other people are reading on your blog and entice them to move in deeper.
Conclusion
While there are multitude of plugins available for any functionality I have picked those I personally used and like what they do or those I found providing great functionality and appears to have support for latest version of the WordPress as well as ongoing development.
Enjoy and Share Your Own Favorites!
Related articles on WordPress Plugins
- WordPress plugins on davidairey.com (davidairey.com)
- 5 Stats Tracking Plugins For Your WordPress Blog (howtospoter.com)
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
18 Responses to “WordPress Plugins to Encourage Deeper Reading Of Your Blog”
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WordPress plugins that will encourage deeper reading of your blog @TheSpotter http://dld.bz/eyFQ *AG
Hi Alex, Another very interesting post. I have and still do use some of the plugins you talked about, but there are one or two I have seen, so I will check them out.
BTW, I really like your SexyBookmarks!
.-= Herschel´s last blog ..4 Must Have Tools for Affiliate Marketing Success =-.
Thanks Herschel!
Hey Alex,
Great post mate was wondering about bounce rates as I am new to google analytics but there is some great ways here to keep the viewers at my blog
Thanks mate
Glyn
.-= Glyn Lafferty´s last blog ..How I Have Been Driving Traffic and Optimizing My Blog =-.
The “where did they go from here” plug in is a new one for me. Looks rather tasty though. Thanks for the insight.
Hey Alex
I think we ‘CAN’ waste a lot of time looking for plugins to make an untended blog look more interesting. I for one am very guilty of this. But I find that when I post to my blog and stay interactive, many readers come visit and even subscribe. They know when a blog is on auto pilot; and there is nothing more uninteresting! We get the same results when we try to set up an autoresponder to run on auto pilot. There is no way around the fact. Auto pilot is not you and readers can see that; even if only subconsciously, they see it. However these are some of the best plugins, which I use. Kudos!
.-= Paul Germana´s last blog ..EnergyBlogs.com =-.
I concur. I have visitors reading/commenting posts MONTHS after the initial publishing because of such plugins…keeping it’s output above the fold of course.
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Aweber Affiliate Link Contest! – This Is It!! =-.
hi Alex,
Very useful post. Was wondering how i could get some more exposure to my blog post and to decrease my bounce rate. Will definitely have a look at installing some of these plugins into my own website.Thanks again for the post.
.-= jeevi´s last blog ..What are the Basic Blogging tips? =-.
Thanks for the great list! I have been googling “best plugins” etc… and there are so many lists out there that just list anything without thought for quality. I like that you explain what type of blogs they’d be best for. I was thinking of doing the sat rating, but after reading here, I don’t think my blog is ready for that one yet. But maybe down the road. There are several here that I’m going to check out.
It takes a while to get things working like a well oiled machine! Thanks for the good info!
.-= Rena´s last blog ..Does America have it’s own personality type? Where does yours fit in? =-.
Hi Alex, thanks for yet another informative post.
Out of all of the plugins you mention “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin” is my favourite but what would be better still is a plugin that takes the search term used ‘by your visitor’ (if they came from a search engine) and presented a selection of posts related to that term. Just in case the page they land on isn’t exactly what they need. (I’m assuming that user choice of terms may be different to the publishers choice of terms/tags)
If I remember there was something like that around sometime ago. Is this that plugin or is there another plugin out there with that functionality?
thx.
.-= Kevin Polley´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
Kevin,
Yes, there is one like this but I haven’t personally used it as I don’t like anything modifying my content. I might not be a professional writer but I do put work into creating my posts and modification without my knowledge could misrepresent the main idea.
Hi
Very interesting post and a good range of plugins – food for thought for use on my own blog.
As an extra navigational tool I like to have a page number plugin to replace the “previous/next” post navigation.
.-= Neil´s last blog ..My New Ebook – Escape the Debt Trap Now! =-.
The struggle to better my bounce rate continues as Related posts plug-in hasn’t really done much. I’ll probably give the most commented widget a try and see how well it works out
.-= Udegbunam Chukwudi´s last blog ..Make Your Blog 10x Faster With W3 Total Cache Plug-in =-.
I love and have used many of the WP plug-ins you’ve mentioned. I haven’t tried “where did they go from here”. I’ll have to go and take a look at that one
Cheryl from thatgirlisfunny recently posted..Why BP Oil Spill Should Scare You More Than Osama Bin Laden Does
Yeah, that one works like a charm and gets quite a bit of action.
Thanks for sharing the great WordPress plugin. Really very interesting and well-researched. One of the most difficult things of putting up a WordPress blog is finding the right theme and plugin. You sure have made things easy for us.
awesome plugins,
they did make wonders for me!
thanks!
shashank chinchli recently posted..‘The Flintstones’ turn 50 -The New Google Doodle
i have also read ur post good content and great research work i have also a list of good plugin
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