Being a prolific writer isn’t enough—you need engaged visitors to stay on your website.
Fortunately, you can improve user engagement by combining clear, effective writing with a handful of powerful WordPress plugins. Aside from keeping your visitors happier and more engaged, this also signals to Google that your site is authoritative and trustworthy—which helps improve your organic search ranking!
W3 Total Cache
Site speed is a critical factor, both for users and for Google, and a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache goes a long way towards improving it. Even the most technophobic can set up the basics, but don’t let all the configuration options scare you—there is professional support available at a reasonable price.
SEO Smart Links
Internal links (links that point to other content within your own website) can increase the number of pages that each visitor views and the amount of time they spend on your website. We use SEO Smart Links for this because it makes it simple to link any instance of a particular keyword phrase throughout your website to any page. It also has a positive effect on organic SEO, both because of the improved user experience, and increased internal links. Just remember not to go overboard.
KingSumo Headlines
Have you ever struggled with crafting the perfect headline, only to wonder if it really performed as well as it could? KingSumo eliminates that problem by making it easy to find the headline that performs best with your audience. Think of it like split testing, automated, and on steroids. You simply write as many headlines and you want, and it will automatically test them each time your post is shared on social media to find the best performing title.
Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box
Love them or hate them, pop ups are extremely effective. We’ve implemented them on many websites, both our own and for clients, and have learned a few tricks along the way. For example, it’s best to have a reasonable delay before they pop up, or even better, trigger them based on user activity, such as scrolling to a certain point on the page. One of the best plugins we’ve found for this is Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box, because it’s powerful, easily customized, and free.
Jetpack / Genesis Simple Share
You want people to share your posts so you reach more people, right? So make it really easy for them to share with just a click.
We use Genesis Simple Share since most of the websites we design are built on the Genesis Framework, but if you’re not using that, Jetpack is an excellent plugin that works in pretty much any WordPress theme.
Search Meter
If your website has a search box, Search Meter will track all of the searches your visitors enter, and even tells you when their searches didn’t turn up any results. This gives you valuable insight into what your visitors want and what’s missing from your content. Give them what they want and they’ll stay on your website longer and come back more often.