Many website owners spend a great deal of time planning an effective content marketing strategy. And with good reason. In this article, I will share seven great content marketing plugins for WordPress that will help enhance your site’s functionality and improve conversion.
Edit Flow
Edit Flow is the best WordPress plugin to manage editorial workflow. If you are planning your content marketing strategy, then having an organized editorial calendar is crucial.
Edit Flow allows you to assign custom post status, leave editorial notes on posts in progress, manage your editorial calendar, and more.
Even if you are the only author on your WordPress site, you can still use Edit Flow to improve your own workflow.
WordPress SEO
Google Search is the largest traffic source for most bloggers. WordPress SEO helps you optimize your content to perform better in search results.
Apart from the usual SEO features, it comes with a page analysis tool which is a great way to optimize content not just for search engines but for actual users as well.
As a site optimization tool, WordPress SEO is packed with great features like XML sitemaps, Twitter Cards, Open Graph meta data integration, Google authorship, webmaster tools integration, etc.
OptinMonster
Often the goal of content marketing is to get leads and improve conversion. OptinMonster is the most effective way to grow your email subscribers.
OptinMonster allows you to create highly effective opt in forms such as exit-intent lightbox popups, floating bars, slide-ins, and more. The page-level targeting allows you to build highly segmented email list of customers.
Sites like Search Engine Journal and others are using it to increase their subscriber growth by 200% – 800%.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
When a user is finished reading your article, showing related articles can help reduce bounce rate and improve conversion.
YARPP is one of the many free related posts plugins for WordPress. Outbrain is also another good related posts plugins which is used by many popular sites.
Floating Social Bar
Speed is an important metric search engines use to rank your website. Many social media plugins load too many scripts which can significantly slow down your site. Floating Social Bar solves this problem by showing a fake button with real count until a user takes the mouse to the social bar for sharing.
It also sticks to the top of the screen as a user scrolls down to maximize your social shares.
Other alternatives to Floating Social Bar are Flare and DigDigg.
LinkPatrol
LinkPatrol is a signature plugin by the team at Search Engine Journal. It helps you find, fix, and get control of the links on your site.
When writing, it’s helpful to link to useful resources to back up your arguments and improve user experience. However, overtime some of those sites might not be of the same quality.
LinkPatrol allows you to monitor your links, so you don’t ruin your site’s SEO by linking to spammy sites.
W3 Total Cache
As I said earlier, speed is a big factor in search rankings. Using caching plugins you can significantly improve your site’s page load times. W3 Total Cache is the best caching plugin for WordPress.
Just install the plugin and enable page cache.
If you want to further boost site speed, then you can use a CDN service like MaxCDN which works really well with W3 Total Cache plugin.
What are some plugins that you use on your site? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Featured Image Credit: 360b / Shutterstock.com, Screenshots taken July 2014
