Are you looking for an easy way of getting crazy post engagement? Lower bounce rates with higher page-views from your new and existing blog content? Ever heard of popular posts lists?
Alright, so now with all it’s complexity, what if we told you that you can achieve it without touching any bit of code? Well, get excited because you can do just that!
In this article, we will show you how to increase engagement on your existing quality contents using Popular Posts lists.
How to Boost Engagement Using Popular Posts Lists
To achieve our desired goal without touching code. We are going to use MonsterInsights, a powerful WordPress Google Analytics plugin.
MonsterInsights allows you to easily install the Google Analytics code. And enables you to display your best site content and products anywhere on your site. It also gives you actionable insights about your site.
To add popular posts on your website;
- You’ll need the MonsterInsights Pro plugin.
- You’ll need to install and activate the Dimensions Addon (available to Pro level customers and above).
Show Users Your Top Content with Popular Posts
The Popular Posts feature by MonsterInsights, helps you keep visitors on the site longer by showing them your best posts. There by generating more engagement from popular posts and products.
It offers you 3 display options for your Popular Posts, and these are:
- Inline Popular Posts – Display posts within the text of your content
- Popular Posts Widget – Shows up to 10 articles anywhere on your site. Such as your sidebar or at the end of the post
- Popular Products – Makes popular products more visible for eCommerce store
The first thing you have to do, is set up the Post Type Custom Dimension in MonsterInsights. And connect it to Google Analytics this is to ensure that popular posts work as desired.
If you have just set up your custom dimensions for the first time, then you have to wait about 24-48 Hours for Data to take effect in Google Analytics.
How to Manually Choose Your Popular Posts
To manually specify or curate your popular posts and how they are sorted, navigate to Insights » Popular Posts » Inline Popular Posts » Sort By.
And click on the Curated radio button. As in the image below.
You can now select your posts from the drop-down list that appears when you click inside the text area below the Curated radio button.
Automatically Add Your Top Posts from Google Analytics
To automatically curate your top posts with Google Analytics, head over to Insights » Popular Posts » Inline Popular Posts » Automated + Curated.
And click on the Add Top 5 Posts from Google Analytics button to slide to the on position. Then a Check configuration button will appear.
Click on the Check configuration button. And if something goes wrong or you misconfigured a setting, you’ll be presented with a concise guide on where to go to fix the problem. Don’t forget to save your changes.
From here, you can now decide on how to display your posts, either inline or using a Popular Posts lists widget by MonsterInsights.
Also, if you own an online store. Popular Products enables you to easily promote your best selling products across your store.
And that’s it, we hope by now you have an idea of how to keep your audience engaged on your site by showing them your best content which might interest them. You can try the new Popular Posts Lists by feature MonsterInsights here.
