Did you know that in 2019, WordPress users create more than 70 million new posts each month?
Every blogger wants to drive traffic to their website, but some continually fall short of their goals. There are many reasons for this, including a lack of knowledge in regards to which search engine, social media, and SEO plugin tools they should and should not be using.
Whether you are a small business owner, marketing professional, or somebody who simply blogs for fun, you can increase traffic by implementing the right WordPress plugin tools and creating a strategy that has been proven to yield results.
It’s never easy to double your blog’s traffic, especially if you continue to rely on the same tired strategy and traffic sources.
Fortunately, there are opportunities waiting to be taken advantage of. There are so many tools that can help double your blog’s traffic. From a course to a premium WordPress theme to plugins, it’s time to change your approach.
I’ve written about the best free WordPress plugins for marketers. While these are essential to your success, there are other tools, those that cost money, that are every bit as powerful (if not more so) for your WordPress website.
So, what types of tools am I talking about here? Here is a rundown of 13 paid WordPress tools that will double your blog’s traffic.
1. Yoast SEO Premium – As a free plugin, Yoast SEO is a must-use. But, if you want more out of this tool, it’s time to consider an upgrade.
The Yoast SEO Premium plugin provides the same standard features of the free version. However, there is some additional functionality that can increase traffic and ease some of the stress of managing a blog for search engine and social media success.
The extra functionality includes:
- Redirect Manager. Easily create and manage redirects from your dashboard.
- Multiple focus keywords. If you want to optimize a post for multiple keywords, it’s this feature that allows you to do so with ease.
While you can likely get away with using the free version of this plugin, it never hurts to upgrade. The added functionality is worth the money.
Price: $69 for a single site premium license.
2. Thrive Leads – Is email marketing dead? Hardly. In fact, email marketing is used by 82 percent of B2C and B2B companies.
With the ability to drive qualified traffic via email marketing, you need all of the best tools working in your favor. One of these is Thrive Leads.
But, doesn’t it take years to build a large email list? Not necessarily. While it won’t happen overnight, you can accelerate your growth with the right approach to building site visitor conversion.
The Thrive Leads plugin for WordPress helps you to build your mailing list in a fast and efficient manner, thanks to a super-easy-to-use backend for adding opt-in forms to any location on your blog. Furthermore, you can split test forms and monitor the results.
Thrive Leads gives you the tools that you need to speed up the growth of your email list. It is easy to implement, no tech skills are required and there are many designs and options to choose from.
Price: $67 for a single site license.
3. Social Warfare – If you understand the power of social media, including how it can drive traffic to your website, the Social Warfare plugin is right for you.
Through the addition of attractive, fast share buttons to your blog, you make it easy for readers to share your content on social media with the hope of driving more traffic through social network engagement.
There are too many features to discuss in this blog post, but let’s take a look at five of the best:
- Customizable. Allows you to match the buttons to your blog’s design. There are unlimited style combinations.
- Custom tweets. Gives you the opportunity to create “standard content” for your readers who want to share on Twitter.
- Social proof. Display share counts to encourage more shares among readers.
- Responsive. Desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The device doesn’t matter, as Social Warfare is compatible across the board.
- Fast moving. Built with speed in mind, the plugin will never bog down your site (also good for SEO).
This isn’t the only social sharing plugin to choose from (more of these below). And, even though there are many free tools to consider, with Social Warfare you truly get what you pay for.
Price: $29/year for a single site license.
4. Genesis Framework – Content is king. There is no denying that. But, remember this: every word on any WordPress site needs somewhere to live. That is why the Genesis Framework is such a big hit.
With Gen Framework, you can quickly and efficiently build an attractive, optimized WordPress blog. It doesn’t matter if you are new to blogging or an experienced developer, Genesis provides a jumping-off point, with a search engine optimized blog that will attract and retain eyeballs.
The last thing you want is to implement a poorly optimized theme. Even if you create high quality, unique content, this can work against you.
Genesis is a clean theme that ensures that you are doing everything right, from an SEO perspective. Everything about the code is the way it should be, while still allowing you to customize the appearance to suit your style and audience. It is even mobile responsive, particularly helpful in social networks campaigns.
You are climbing an uphill battle by relying on an old, outdated WordPress blog design. Genesis Framework can help you make an immediate change that could have a profound impact on traffic.
Price: $59.95 one-time purchase fee.
5. Visual Composer – If a lack of programming knowledge is keeping you from designing a well optimized, attractive blog, Visual Composer can help. Its tagline reads:
“Visual Composer is the Best Website Builder for WordPress. All You Need to Create a Beautiful Website.”
Used by more than one million people, you can build a responsive, SEO friendly website without any design or programming knowledge. And, as you know, this can have a direct impact on site visitor traffic.
And, Visual Composer works with any and every WordPress theme. It’s a powerful WordPress plugin.
With a drag and drop interface, you don’t have to concern yourself with code. Move things around, test them out and find what works best for your readers.
Price: $59 one-time purchase fee.
6. Ninja Popups – Many people associate popups with the spam of the past. Don’t let this scare you away.
There are many ways to benefit from popups on your WordPress blog, including the ability to boost traffic.
Maybe you want to add an email subscribe form in a popup? This plugin has you covered. Or maybe you want to promote an ebook? You can do this as well.
Some of the key features of Ninja Popups include:
- A/B testing to see what works best.
- Time display settings.
- Newsletter locker.
- Responsive themes.
- Analytics.
- A variety of designs, varying in color and layout.
- Easy to configure, with no need for coding experience.
- Statistical data, including hits and conversion rates.
There are free popup plugins for WordPress, but you don’t typically get all of the functionality that you require. This is what makes Ninja Popups a top seller. You will pay a few dollars for the plugin, but access to the above features, among others, increases your chance of a positive return.
Price: $26 one-time purchase fee.
7. BrowserStack – There is no other way of saying it: your WordPress website or blog must be compatible with every browser, not just the one you are using.
If you fail to test your blog across the more than 2,000 available browsers, you could be missing out on an opportunity to boost traffic and social media engagement.
BrowserStack “give your users a seamless experience by testing on 2000+ real devices and browsers. Don’t compromise with emulators and simulators.” You will never again have to guess if your blog is compatible with a particular browser. This tool does all of the work for you.
Don’t let the technical features of BrowserStack scare you away. It’s easy to use, once you get your feet wet. You can also sign up for free before moving onto the paid version.
BrowserStack is one of those tools that can easily double your blog’s traffic, but for some reason, it is overlooked by many bloggers. Don’t be one of these people.
Price: $29/month for one parallel test, one user.
8. Flow-Flow Social Stream – You want to show off your social media prowess, right? The Flow-Flow WordPress Social Stream plugin allows you to do just that.
This premium tool is designed to display social feeds on your blog. It is fully customizable, allowing you to share whatever you want with your audience. For example, you could add five Twitter hashtags and five Facebook pages to a single stream.
The powerful backend is controlled via your dashboard, making it simple to customize the plugin and test different variations.
Social media marketing remains one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site. Using a plugin like this will accelerate your growth, while also giving you the opportunity to better establish your brand on a variety of social platforms.
Price: $34 one-time purchase fee.
9. LinkPatrol – If you have concerns about your outgoing link profile, there is no time to wait. The wrong strategy could kill your blog’s traffic. It can also drive away readers and harm your search engine rankings.
Enter LinkPatrol. This WordPress plugin is built to clean up your link profile, ensuring that you avoid costly errors.
If Google has any reason to believe that you are manipulating its system, your WordPress website could be penalized. Unfortunately, some people violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines without knowing that they are doing so. This is often related to outgoing links.
Every post is likely to have outgoing links. And, if you go back in time a few years, you may have made some mistakes in regards to how you linked to others.
Just as Google has evolved, so has your policy for linking to other websites, I hope. What worked five years ago could kill your blog today.
Manually fixing outbound links can be a long and stressful process. Rather than review each post, you can use the LinkPatrol plugin for WordPress.
There is a simple three-step process for using LinkPatrol:
- Scan all of your content for links.
- Review the report created by LinkPatrol.
- Take action by adding a nofollow or removing the links altogether.
Your first LinkPatrol report may be an eye-opener. It sorts links by domain, anchor text, and author. From there, you can decide which links to keep in place and which ones to eliminate.
Cleaning up your blog’s link profile could result in a jump in search engine rankings. LinkPatrol provides you with the tools and the control that you need to take on this task.
Price: $50 one-time fee for one site.
10. WPtouch Pro – With mobile device usage continuing to grow, it’s essential that your WordPress blog is responsive on any search engine.
A blog that does not display properly on smartphones and tablets is one that is missing out on a lot of traffic. When I visit a blog on my smartphone, I expect the layout and content to be displayed accordingly. If it doesn’t, my first impression is a bad one and I typically leave the page.
With WPtouch Pro, you can transform the way that your blog appears and works on mobile devices.
Since it is a plugin, you don’t have to make any major changes to your blog. Once you install the plugin, it takes over and does the work for you.
Even better is the fact that it provides a Google-preferred mobile-friendly solution. This can give your blog a boost in mobile search rankings. This alone could be your key to a big increase in traffic. Again, it’s worth noting that mobile browsing continues to soar.
With a set-up wizard and easy to use settings panel, no programming experience is required. Follow the step-by-step instructions and watch your blog transform itself into a mobile powerhouse.
Price: $79 per year for one site activation.
11. Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress – Joining other social plugins on the list, the Easy Social Share Buttons plugin is a best seller and top performer. And, here is why:
- All-in-one tool for all your social sharing requirements.
- Share on more than 40 social networks.
- Mobile sharing options.
- Seven shortcodes.
- 19 automated display button methods.
- Built-in modules for Google Analytics tracking, click log analytics, and social media metrics.
- 27 ready to use templates that can be fully customized.
In 2019, Twitter has more than 320 million monthly active users. Facebook has more than 1.5 billion daily active users. And, those are just a couple of the biggest social media platforms. There are others that you can use to drive traffic to your WordPress site from other social network platforms.
There are times when social traffic will come on its own, but there is nothing wrong with reminding your audience to share via social media. This plugin makes it easy for visitors to share your content via their social networks.
Price: $20.
13. SmartCrawl – Are you wondering what this SEO plugin can do for your blog? Let the tagline be your guide:
“Boost your PageRank and drive more traffic to your site with little effort and simple configuration tools. ”
PageRank may not be important to you, but every blogger wants to drive more traffic. That’s what this blog plugin is all about.
This WordPress plugin, SmartCrawl is designed to increase traffic without making you jump through hoops or make major site changes.
By including the most effective methods of optimization and working on autopilot, SmartCrawl gives you more time for other areas of your blog. As you work and grow, you know that SmartCrawl has your back.
You never again have to concern yourself with manual changes. You never again have to spend hours trying to figure out how to optimize your WordPress website. SmartCrawl provides many top of the line features, including:
- Moz integration.
- Sitemap creation.
- Title and meta data customization.
- Automatic links.
Some of these features are self-explanatory and offered by competing plugins. Others are not. For instance, automatic links is a cool feature that allows you to auto link keywords to any page on your blog (or another website). This can improve your internal linking structure, thus keeping readers on your blog for a longer period of time.
Pro tip: take advantage of the setup wizard, as it will have you on the right track within a matter of minutes.
Price: $49.50/month for access to SmartCrawl and other premium plugins from WPMU DEV.
Conclusion
You will never know which paid WordPress tools will increase your blog’s traffic until you review the finer details of each one.
Even though these tools aren’t absolutely necessary to boost traffic, they have helped many to take their blog to the next level.
You can continue to rely on free tools, hoping that these are enough to double your traffic, or you can invest a few dollars into your blog and watch your traffic grow.
The choice is yours and the direction you take is based largely on your strategy and budget. Just remember that these tools are not an expense. Instead, they are an investment in the future of your blog.
Do you have experience with one or more of these tools? Which ones have had the most impact on your blog’s traffic? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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