A few questions to ask all the website owners and webmasters before we start today -
- How do you measure performance of your web contents being created and promoted through 3rd-party websites?
- What channels bring you maximum traffic based on the contents your team publishes?
- What are the social media repercussions you see after a blog or a new product page is published?
- How many media downloads have you been able to track so far in your site?
- How do you know what contents your target audience would prefer most?
- How do you monitor if there is a change made in posts and pages by one of your team members or a customer?
- Is it possible to automate content moderation steps based on certain triggering words and save ample time?
- Do you get any security alerts for malicious activities on your site?
- Are you using any tool to gain all these benefits, but not sure how to optimize your content marketing effort?
There is a dozen of similar questions that you or your web development team may not have quick answers to. Even if you spend a considerable amount of time and resources to extract those information manually, the success is rare. There are paid tools that can help you generate such content insights, but subscribing to even five most important ones at a time will cost you a hefty amount. The bottom line is that you cannot brainstorm much or cut your pocket to get actionable insights.
So, who other than you and your team can monitor your website better for content improvement? What tools have you purchased or used so far for free? How far you can analyze your web content and what are the limitations you face to dig more?
If your website uses WordPress as a CMS, there are free-to-use plug-ins that can make your life simpler. Basically, the idea is that website owners should be able to view user generated statistics within their WordPress dashboard and take quick disciplinary actions without accessing multiple third-party website tracking tools or signing into Google Analytics separately. It saves time, effort, and money, of course.
The same applies to website owners looking to integrate ecommerce extensions to their WordPress site or blog. For example, if you have added Prestashop ecommerce plug-in to your WordPress blog and want to analyze online customer behavior and sensitive business data, there are Analytics and Stats modules such as DMU Real Time Statistics, Google Analytics module and Prestashop Stat module that can come in handy.
These plug-ins primarily help website administrator to -
- Understand website's traffic behavior and other regular metrics of Google analytics
- Monitor pages, posts across the website network and thus remain alert if there is any change in the content made by others for certain pre-specified words (good for large websites).
- View PDF/ Resource download statistics from within the website and measure their popularity
- Define goals, call-to-actions, and other content marketing insights by viewing Reads and CTR%
- Understand what is being copied from a website and how it helps measuring traffic behavior on website pages
- Gain social analytics report within the dashboard and create tailored content as per the insights
There are more to come as you keep exploring the WordPress plug-ins below.
Yoast is already a popular plug-in for its SEO use. With its Google analytics extension, you can decide on what content worked best for your site and what got bounced. The useful website statistics like audience demographics, media downloads, traffic acquisition, post publishing time, and similarinsights can help you develop a customized content marketing program. With 4.3 star rating and over 7.5 million downloads, rest assured that you will spend quality time using its features and functionalities. You may download this plug-in for free. All that you need to do is to install this plug-in in a few simple steps and then authenticate with your Google account in order to give Yoast the access to your Google analytics profile.
If you are not able to use Yoast for Google Analytics in full swing for some reasons, Google Analyticator can get the job done. Once installed this plug-in can automatically connect Google analytics with your WordPress powered site. You can customize its widget placement to display your website visit statistics on the front end. It has also got a plenty of features for you to know and apply. The latest version 6.4.8 is now available for free download.
This is a ROI and conversion measurement tool that comes with a plug-in service for WordPress users. If you invest in creating and marketing your web content and want to identify traffic sources, and effective conversion channels as well as make changes to existing customer engagement model, installing this plug-in makes sense. Once installed, the plug-in dashboard displays Reads, Clicks and CTR of your website pages for any particular time period. The report also includes media content (videos, Images) being shared and corresponding CTR%. The plug-in allows you to add custom content and scan results against tested ones so that you know what works and what does not in your site.
Monitoring goals and boosting conversion rate are also possible with Trendemon plug-in. You can set new conversion goals for key business pages and then analyze which contents drive more traffic, user attention, and better return. You may even add Call-to-action banners or forms to determine and improve effectiveness of a page. All these tracking services for auto-populated contents in your site are free. However, you may amplify content reach to potential audiences through Trendemon publishing partners and ensure more sales, newsletter sign-ups, social signals and community connections. These come as paid service. The plug-in is available for free download here.
MyBlogU is a content creation platform that helps you crowd source your Epic content ideas through community-based collaboration. This plug-in allows you to integrate MyBlogU with your WordPress blog, thus giving you an easy access to MyBlogU interface from WordPress Dashboard. Once added, you can send brainstorm requests to MyBlogU users as well as review and approve all great ideas sent to you right from your WP dashboard. You will also get notified when someone invites you to take part in their projects. To learn more about what all you can do with MyBlogU read the FAQs. You can download the plug-in here.
This plug-in acts as a watch dog for any of your contents published on your entire network. Whether there is a questionable article published without your knowledge, or you want to monitor pages and posts with reference to some key words, Content Monitor gets the job done without you following after your team. You get email notification if someone uses abusive language, spam words for your site, or refers your site for a good cause. This way you can automate your content monitoring tasks and avoid being flagged by spammers and competitors.
The simple configuration and intuitive features of this plug-in make it a popular choice among educational and high-profile site owners who have thousands of pages and need to focus on online reputation management. Content Monitor plug-in is also available for free download.
If enterprise grade website security is what you demand, Incapsula plug-in ensures that you know all your websitevisitors by their real IP addresses. Once installed, this plug-in acts as reverse proxy, and therefore channelize all incoming connections through one of the Incapsula’s server first before they come to your website. This means byscanningincoming traffic by correct User IP you canblock malicious bots, spammers, intruders and enable total security for your website content. Theplug-in version 1.4 can be downloaded for free here.
This plug-in can do wonders if you want to set up a file download and tracking system in your website. It provides you an interface to add, edit and remove files; create downloadable links; monitor download counts; categorize, tag or add other meta data to the downloads as well as display download links with shortcodes. To learn more about this plug-in and download it, click here.
This is not just an alternative to “Yet Another Related Posts” type of plug-in, but much more than that. The package comes with Share buttons (for syndicating contents with your friendsin Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), Related Content (for highlighting relevant old contents and increasing page views, engagement time), Follow buttons (to get more followers from social networks), Social Analytics (for insights into mostly visited pages, social referrals) and additional features that help in marketing as well as monitoring your web page popularity in social media channels. You can download the plug-in here.
This plug-in by WordPress adds internal links to relevant pages or posts from within post editor, thus making internal linking easy and intelligent while writing a new piece of content. You do not need to search related posts, Google, News, Blogs or Wikipedia to add links manually. Just highlight a word that you want to use as an anchor text and you will find a host of references to link with. You can install this plug-in for free.
This plug-in creates an all-in-one customized business ‘mashboard’ for you that integrates all your business information such as web analytics, email, AdWords ads, social media, and other data seamlessly. This means you have a centralized dashboard to monitor performance in Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube as well as get an easy access to Mailchimp, PayPal and such popular business applications. You may further extend its functionalities to define user roles and configure dashboard appearance. You may download Skystats plug-in here and start using it today.
Here it ends. I request you all to read reviews of these plug-ins in WordPress plug-in directory before you install them for your site or blog. I would appreciate if you can share some more plug-ins here that you know worth considering for useful content insights. Just leave your comments below and I am sure readers will enjoy using them.