5 WordPress Plugins that Increase Traffic to Your Blog

By Susan GuneliusTraffic, WordPress

If you want to grow your blog’s audience and you use WordPress.org as your blogging application, then you need to try the five WordPress plugins listed below.  They’re easy to use, free, and can have a significant impact on the number of visitors to your blog.

1. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

The more great content people are exposed to on your blog, the higher the chances are that they’ll find something they like causing them to return to your blog again, share your content with their own online connections, and ultimately, drive additional traffic to your blog.  YAARP is a great plugin for automatically including a list of related posts at the end of each of your blog posts.  The Link Within widget is another alternative.

2. Tweetmeme Retweet Button

The Retweet button is a must-have for all bloggers who want to increase traffic by making it easy for readers to share your blog posts with their own followers on Twitter.  You can add the Retweet button to your blog as a widget or as a WordPress plugin.  The TwitThis plugin offers similar functionality.

3. Share This

There are a number of WordPress plugins that make it easy for people to share links to your blog posts through their social web profiles like Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and more.  Share This is a popular choice.  Others include Sociable and Add to Any.

4. All-in-One SEO Pack

You can use the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin to give your blog posts an SEO boost and drive more traffic from keyword searches on popular search engines like Google.

5. Subscribe to Comments

When you allow people to subscribe to the comments published on a blog post, they receive an email when new comments are added.  This drives them back to your blog again to keep up with the conversation and continue participating.  The Subscribe to Comments plugin makes it easy for WordPress.org users to allow readers to stay involved in ongoing conversations on their blogs.

What are your favorite WordPress plugins for boosting traffic to your blog?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

Image: stock.xchng

14 thoughts on “5 WordPress Plugins that Increase Traffic to Your Blog”

  5. I use a few but All-In-One SEO Pack, CommentLuv, Tweetmeme and Sexy Bookmarks are the ones I wouldn’t want to be without. Many of my readers have a Twitter account but from my stats use Sexy Bookmarks more often to share on Facebook.

    Has anyone noticed that because they have the plugins, they are getting fewer comments? It’s weird for my blog but I have more women sharing on the social networks now than commenting.

  6. I have Share This, All-In-One SEO Pack and Subscribe to Comments. I haven’t tried the first two you’ve mentioned but I will try it later on. I remember when I first don’t have these plugins, my blog is not that popular but when I installed it, my visitors just increase in just a matter of days. Thanks for the additional plugin, I will surely install it one of these days.

  7. This is really true. You should compare a blog that doesn’t have these 5 WordPress plugins than a blog that has this 5wordpress plugins. You can really see that the blog that has these plugins has more visitors and readers. I tested these already and it is really great!

  8. I have all of those plugins on my blog and looking at my blog’s traffic, it is fine but can do without those plugins. Mostly, readers want to read your content and will re tweet or share your post if you ave an interesting content.

  9. The only one that I do not use is the YARPP plugin (I use another plugin to do that). I’ve also been told that CommentLuv is a sure fire winner.

  10. I like CommentLuv.

    I also use LinkWithin and I think by the readers seeing a thumb nail they are more likely to click on that post. Lesley mentioned Nrelate, so I’ll check that out and see how it compares with Linkwithin.

    Thanks for sharing!

  11. I was using YARPP but recently I’ve switched to Nrelate because it includes a thumbnail and looks good at the bottom of my posts. I’ll go and check out commentluv today.

    Thanks for a useful post and useful comments.

  14. I have the above (or similar) installed. I also like the following:

    Commentluv – it allows you to add a link back to one of your psots – if the blog owner also has commetnluv installed.

    Facebook Share – adds a Facebook share button for visitors to simply share the blog post on Facebook.

    Where did they go from here – Show “Readers who viewed this page, also viewed” links on your page. Much like Amazon.com’s product pages.

    Andrew

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