13 Best WordPress Multisite Plugins You Should Use (Expert Pick)

Are you looking for the best WordPress multisite plugins?

WordPress multisite plugins can help extend your multisite network’s features and make it much easier to manage your network of websites.

In this article, we will share some of the best WordPress multisite plugins for your WordPress multisite network.

WordPress multisite network allows you to run and manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs from a single WordPress installation.

There are many benefits to using a multisite network, such as you can install plugins and themes for multiple sites from a centralized dashboard.

If you haven’t created your WordPress multisite network yet, then we have a step-by-step guide on installing and setting up a WordPress multisite network.

It walks you through choosing the right WordPress hosting, setting up your network, launching your network of sites, and more.

Let’s take a look at the best WordPress multisite plugins that you should use.

Note: Most WordPress plugins work seamlessly with WordPress multisite environments. However, there are always a few that aren’t compatible. Below is our list of the most useful plugins for all multisite networks.

1. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics solution for WordPress, used by over 3 million websites. It lets you easily add Google Analytics to WordPress and view your traffic data directly from your WordPress admin dashboard.

With easy access to this data, you can grow your traffic, email list, and revenue.

On a WordPress multisite network, all your subsite analytics is available in one place. This lets you see which sites are performing well at a glance.

When you set up MonsterInsights, you can choose which sites you want to enable or disable the analytics feature.

We have several guides that’ll show you how to set up Google Analytics in WordPress and how to track user engagement.

There is a free version of MonsterInsights available. However, the premium version unlocks the true power of this tool.

2. WP Mail SMTP

WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress SMTP plugin in the market, used by over 2 million WordPress sites. An SMTP plugin will ensure that any emails sent from your WordPress site will reach your users.

Most WordPress hosting companies don’t have the function to send emails through WordPress properly. Some even block this functionality entirely.

WP Mail SMTP fixes this problem by letting you send emails through an SMTP service provider like Amazon SES, Gmail, Mailgun, etc. This ensures your emails will get delivered and not end up in spam.

With WP Mail SMTP multisite, you can specify different email accounts for each WordPress blog or site on your network.

The free version of WP Mail SMTP will work for most multisite networks.

However, the paid WP Mail SMTP Pro offers white glove setup and support to configure the plugin to work for you.

3. AIOSEO

All in One SEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress in the market, used by over 3 million WordPress sites.

It’s a comprehensive plugin that offers all the features you need to improve your onsite SEO across your network of websites.

The plugin can help you optimize your meta title and meta descriptions, create sitemaps, optimize for social media, connect your sites to Google Search Console, and more.

For more details, see our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

There is a free version of All in One SEO available. However, the pro version has additional features like local SEO, WooCommerce SEO, image SEO, and much more.

If you have various types of sites on your multisite network, this can help you optimize them perfectly.

4. WP Multi Network

WP Multi Network is a powerful WordPress multisite plugin. It helps you add and manage new multisite networks within your multisite installation.

You can manage several multisite networks from the network admin post type in your WordPress admin area. It lets you assign available subsites to your global multisite network users.

The plugin will display information about the sites on your network, including available sites, assigned sites, active plugins, themes, child themes, and more.

5. User Switching

User Switching is a plugin that lets you switch between different user roles with a couple of clicks.

For example, maybe you need to switch between different user roles to troubleshoot or test a site. This plugin lets you instantly switch from one account to another with a single click.

The plugin maintains high-security levels, and it’ll never reveal account passwords. Users are only allowed to switch between accounts that have already been authorized.

If you’re running an online store using WooCommerce, then this plugin integrates and allows you to manage these users as well.

6. InfiniteWP

InfiniteWP is one of the best tools for managing multiple WordPress sites. It lets you simply manage WordPress plugins, themes, and core updates from a single dashboard.

It’s a great solution for freelancers and agencies who manage websites for clients.

The free version gives you control over site updates. However, the premium plugin unlocks features like on-demand backups, migrations, staging sites, post and page publishing, malware scanning, and more.

This plugin gives you ultimate control over all the sites on your multisite network.

7. Members

Members is a user role editor plugin that lets you simply create, manage, and change user roles across your entire network of WordPress sites.

If you’re running a network of sites with a large number of WordPress users, then this plugin makes it super easy to oversee and manage access & permissions.

Often administrators use this plugin to create custom user roles with specific permissions to enhance security.

This plugin is maintained by the team behind MemberPress, which is the best WordPress membership plugin that lets you create and sell online courses, premium content, and more.

8. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is one of the best lead generation tools in the market. It’s trusted by over 1.2 million sites, including ClickBank, Pinterest, Patreon, and more.

This tool lets you create high-converting popup modals and lead generation forms across your entire network of WordPress sites. A network activation feature lets you create different campaigns for every site on your network.

OptinMonster has a large template library and an extensive drag and drop builder to create custom popups, slide-ins, content upgrades, and more.

The Exit-Intent® technology helps convert visitors who leave your sites into subscribers and customers.

With a multisite installation, all your campaign data is available in one place. This lets you see the results of your lead generation efforts and improve your conversions across multiple websites.

9. Duplicator

Duplicator is the best WordPress migration plugin. It allows you to easily migrate your WordPress blog between different servers and WordPress hosting accounts.

The plugin is very easy to use. It lets you simply download all of your website files and upload them to your new server.

There is a free version of the plugin, but to migrate a network of sites, you’ll need the plugin’s premium version. Migrating an entire WordPress multisite network might seem stressful, but this plugin simplifies most of the process.

You can copy your entire multisite network on all plans, but to easily reinstall new sites, you’ll need a premium plan.

10. WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin in the market. Over 4 million WordPress sites use it.

It’s very easy to create simple contact forms, user registration forms, multi-page forms, and more.

Running a multisite network means you’ll have various form needs. This plugin can help you meet all of them.

Even though it’s packed with features, it’s very easy to use. They have a drag and drop form builder to help you quickly build advanced contact forms and customize them to match your website.

There’s a large template library to help you add a variety of forms to your sites quickly.

The free version WPForms Lite can be used if you only need to add simple contact forms to your sites.

11. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is one of the best WordPress caching plugins in the market.

A caching plugin can help boost your WordPress website speed and performance without technical skills.

Once the plugin is installed and activated on your site, it’ll automatically improve your loading speeds. There are all kinds of advanced features you can customize depending on the type of website you run.

It’s one of the few caching plugins equipped with lazy loading, minification, page caching, cache preloading, static file compression, font loading, and more.

WP Rocket lets you improve your site speed without impacting your pages and posts on any site.

12. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is the best backup plugin for WordPress. You can simply back up your WordPress sites with a couple of clicks.

Your WordPress multisite network could have dozens or even hundreds of subsites, so you must use a backup plugin to keep every site on the network safe.

This plugin helps you create automated backups for every site on your network.

You can save your backups to your computer or integrate them with other cloud storage services. There’s a great feature to restore a site with a single click.

For more details, see our guide on how to back up and restore your WordPress site with UpdraftPlus.

There’s a free version of the plugin available, but the paid plans offer you priority support and even more features.

13. Multisite Language Switcher

Multisite Language Switcher adds multilanguage capabilities to your WordPress multisite network.

There are various plugins you can use to create a multilingual WordPress site. But, this plugin is dedicated to WordPress multisite.

It allows you to manage translations across multiple sites. You can oversee translations for pages, posts, taxonomies, and tags across all your properties.

With this plugin, managing translations for entire websites or translating individual pieces of content across your entire network is easy.

Final Thoughts + More WordPress Multisite Plugins

There are over 60,000+ WordPress plugins available, most of which will work on a multisite network.

Depending on your needs, you may want to see our following expert picks:

24 Must have WordPress Plugins for all Business WebsitesBest WordPress donation and fundraising pluginsBest WordPress page builder pluginsBest WordPress eCommerce pluginsBest email marketing services for WordPressBest live chat plugins for WordPressBest push notification plugins for WordPress

We hope this article has helped you find the best WordPress multisite plugins for you. You may also want to see our ultimate guide on how to create a business email address and how to get a virtual business phone number for your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 13 Best WordPress Multisite Plugins You Should Use (Expert Pick) first appeared on WPBeginner.

11 Ways to Get More Comments on Your WordPress Blog Posts

Do you want to get more comments on your WordPress blog posts?

Comments are an easy way to build user engagement, get more pageviews, and build a community around your website.

In this article, we’ll share proven and tested tips to easily get more comments on your WordPress blog posts.

Ways to Get More Comments on Your WordPress Blog Posts

1. Allow Users to Subscribe to Comments

By default when a user leaves a comment on your website, they will have to bookmark the link to come back and see if there is a new comment on the article.

If they forget to bookmark or can’t remember the name of your blog, then they will probably never come back again.

You can provide users a chance to subscribe to comments on your WordPress posts. This way they can get immediate notifications when there is a new comment.

This will significantly increase your pageviews and the number of comments on your website. Your users will find discussions on your site to be more engaging.

Subscribe to comments

Take a look at our guide on how to allow users to subscribe to comments in WordPress.

2. Notify Users on Replies to Their Own Comments

When a user leaves a comment on your site, there is no way for them to find out if anyone has replied to their comment. They will have to bookmark the page and visit it later. Most users will not do that.

You can easily allow users to subscribe to their own comments. This way they will ONLY receive a notification email when someone replies to their comment.

Subscribe to replies

If you make it a habit to reply to most user comments on your site, then this could develop a highly engaging community around your blog.

For detailed instructions check out our tutorial on how to notify users on replies to their own comments in WordPress.

3. Keep Discussing Quality High with Comment Moderation

The best way to ensure there’s high quality conversations happening in comment is to enable comment moderation in WordPress.

You can turn this on by going to Settings » Discussion in your admin area.

Require all comments to be manually approved

Comment moderation will not only allow you to block spam, but it will also provide you a chance to interact with your users more often.

When you reply and engage with your readers, they’re more likely to comment more often.

See our beginner’s guide on how to moderate comments in WordPress for detailed instructions.

Note: Some website owners use CAPTCHA to block comment spam, but this is not user friendly and it often discourages regular users from commenting.

This is why we recommend enabling comment moderation on your site and manually approve each and every comment (if you have to).

4. Show Newest Comments First

By default WordPress shows the newest comment at the bottom of the comments list. Now if you have lots of comments on a post, then users will be seeing the oldest comments on top.

This can be easily changed in WordPress.

Simply go to Settings » Discussion and scroll down to other comments settings section. You need to select newer from the drop down menu.

Newer comments first

For more details, take a look at our tutorial on how to rearrange comments in WordPress – Display the most recent one on top.

5. Turn on Comments for Old Posts

Most bloggers turn off comments on older posts to reduce comment spam. However, there will be lots of users who might want to comment on these posts.

Since you are already using comment moderation, you can safely turn on comments on old posts.

Simply go to Settings » Discussion and scroll down to other comments settings section. Uncheck the box next to ‘Automatically close comments on articles older than X days’.

Open comments for older post

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

6. Showcase Your Top Commenters

A good way to encourage and appreciate your most loyal users is by highlighting your top commenters. This shows users that they are part of your blog’s community, and you appreciate their effort to bring life into your comments.

Top commenters widget

Simply install and activate the Top Commenters Widget plugin. Upon activation, go to Appearance » Widgets page and add Top Commenters Widget to a sidebar.

For more detailed instructions, please see our guide on how to display your top commenters in WordPress sidebar.

7. Display Recent Comments

When users are looking at your homepage, they have no idea what’s happening in your blog’s comments section. For example, there may be a heated debate going on a new post where a user may want to chime in.

You can provide users a chance to look at current discussions by showing recent comments on your site.

Simply go to Appearance » Widgets and add Recent Comments widget to a sidebar.

Recent comments

8. Allow Users to Rate and Share Comments

The default WordPress commenting system is plain and simple. It does not have the social, gamification, and user engagement elements of a modern discussion platform. However, you can easily add these features in WordPress using plugins.

Simply install and activate the wpDiscuz plugin. Upon activation the plugin will beautifully transform your WordPress commenting system into a highly engaging discussion platform.

Rate and share comments

wpDiscuz comes with features like voting, social sharing, comment bubble, and many more. For details, see our article on how to improve WordPress comments with wpDiscuz.

9. Notify Users When Their Comment is Approved

When a user submits a comment on your blog, WordPress shows them that their comment is awaiting moderation. The users have no idea when you approve their comment or delete it.

You can increase your pageviews as well as user engagement by simply notifying users when their comment is approved.

Simply install and activate the Comment Approved plugin. Upon activation, go to Settings » Comment Approved page to configure the plugin.

Comment Approved Settings

For detailed instructions see our tutorial on how to notify users when their comment is approved in WordPress.

10. Allow Users to Edit Comments in WordPress

By default, users cannot edit their comments once they have submitted them. This can be frustrating for users as they may want to correct a typo or grammar mistake.

Simply install and activate Simple Comment Editing plugin, which allows users to easily edit their own comments on your site. You can set a time limit to editing permission.

Simple comment editing

For details, see our article on how to allow users to edit comments in WordPress.

11. Get Better WordPress Hosting

Comments consume resources on your web hosting server which may affect overall WordPress speed and performance.

Each time a user submits a comment on your WordPress site, your server runs a PHP script. If multiple users are submitting comments at the same time, this could slow down your site or even crash your site.

So to get more comments on your site, you first need to make sure your website can handle more comments.

The easy way to deal with this is by using a WordPress caching plugin. This should work for most websites on shared WordPress hosting provider.

However, for busier websites, this may not be enough. If you have a larger site, then try a managed WordPress hosting provider like WP Engine or SiteGround for better speed.

We hope this article helped you learn some new ways to get more comments on your WordPress blog posts. You may also want to see our guide on how to style WordPress comments and improve WordPress SEO on your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

10 Important Metrics to Measure on Your WordPress Site

Are you wondering how is your WordPress website performing?

Measuring important website metrics can help you find out what’s working and not working in your business. You can then tweak your content strategy, try new ways to increase website traffic, and optimize your site for higher conversions.

In this article, we’ll show you important metrics to measure on your WordPress site.

Important Metrics to Measure on Your WordPress Site

How to Measure Important Metrics in WordPress

When running a successful business, it’s essential to know your WordPress website’s performance. However, many business owners use their ‘best guesses’ to make decisions instead of working with data.

This is where tracking important web metrics can help you make informed decisions and grow your website with confidence.

You can see which strategies are working, which content your visitors like, where they are from, and how you can improve your traffic and WordPress conversions.

The easiest way to measure important metrics in WordPress is using MonsterInsights. It’s the best WordPress analytics plugin and is used by over 3 million websites.

MonsterInsights makes it super easy to properly setup Google Analytics in WordPress, bring important stats inside your WordPress dashboard, display popular posts, and offers advanced tracking features.

MonsterInsights

To start, you’ll first need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Editor’s Note: if you want to unlock advanced tracking features like eCommerce tracking and more dashboard reports, then you’ll need the MonsterInsights Pro version. There is also a free version of MonsterInsights that you can use to get started.

Upon activation, you’ll be taken to MonsterInsights welcome screen in WordPress. Go ahead and click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button.

You can now follow the steps to configure the plugin and connect Google Analytics to your WordPress site.

Set up MonsterInsights

After that, simply head over to Insights » Reports from your WordPress admin panel to view metrics and get insights to grow your business.

MonsterInsights dashboard reports

That being said, let’s look at some of the most important website metrics to measure on your website.

1. Sessions

The first thing you should measure is your website traffic. To do that, you can look at the number of sessions. A session represents a single visit to your site, and it can include many pageviews.

In MonsterInsights, you can easily view the number of sessions by navigating to Insights » Reports and see the ‘Overview’ report.

See the number of sessions

The graph shows a trend from the last 30 days. Simply hover over the graph to see the Unique Sessions on a particular day. You can use this website metric to see how many people visit your site and if your traffic is increasing or decreasing.

For example, if you have a WordPress blog, then looking at sessions can show whether the number of readers is rising. If it’s not, then you need to find more ways to increase your blog traffic.

Besides that, you can also look at the average session duration and bounce rate to get more insights into user engagement.

Having a high session duration means people enjoy reading your content and spend more time on your website. Whereas a high bounce rate means users didn’t find what they were looking for and left your site.

2. Top Referrals

The next metric you should be measuring is Referrals. These are websites that link to your content and send traffic to your site, also known as referral traffic.

Top referrals

Since these websites are linking to your articles, it means they’re providing a backlink. Backlinks are an important Google ranking factor, and they give a vote of confidence for your content.

Having backlinks from high authority sites means your content is excellent, and you can see a positive impact on your keyword rankings.

Using the top referrals metric, you get to see which websites are sending visitors to your website. This helps in finding similar sites to get more backlinks and boost your WordPress SEO.

Similarly, you can also uncover which guest post is driving a lot of referral traffic. It helps in choosing the type of content and topic to cover for future guest posts.

3. Top Countries

Ever wonder which country your visitors are from? In MonsterInsights, you get to see which region drives the most traffic to your site by looking at the Top Countries metric.

Top countries

Using the data from the top countries report, you can uncover new content ideas.

Let’s say one region that’s sending the most traffic is India. You can write about the best web hosting services in India if you have tech website or 5 places to visit in India if you have a travel blog.

Besides that, you can also create personalized marketing campaigns and provide a custom user experience for people from different regions. For instance, you can offer free shipping or discount offers to people for a particular location.

You can also check out our ultimate guide to geolocation targeting in WordPress.

4. Top Posts and Pages

Do you know which landing pages and blog posts drive a lot of traffic, engagement, and conversions on your site? A simple way to find out is by measuring the top posts and pages metric.

In MonsterInsights, you can uncover your most viewed pages and posts in the Overview report.

Most viewed pages and posts

If you’re using the MonsterInsights Pro version, then you can unlock the Publishers report and get more insights about how people interact with your most important pages.

Simply head over to Insights » Reports and click on the ‘Publishers’ tab. Next, you can see the Top Landing Pages report and how many visits your pages get along with visit duration and bounce rate.

Top landing pages

Once you know which articles are performing the best, you can create more content on similar topics and grow your traffic. You should also check keyword rankings for these top pages and see if you can improve their rankings to reach the #1 spot in Google.

On these top pages, you can also place your newsletter subscription form and convert visitors into email subscribers to build an email list. If you’re selling products or services, then you can optimize your high-traffic pages to boost sales and conversions.

5. Outbound Links

The next site metrics you should measure is the outbound link clicks. These are links in your content that are from other websites. When a user clicks on an outbound or external link, they’re taken to another site.

In MonsterInsights Publisher’s report, you can see the Top Outbound Links. Do note that Google Analytics doesn’t track external link clicks by default. However, with MonsterInsights, you get link tracking out of the box.

Outbound links report

Measuring which outbound link is getting the most clicks can help you create new partnership opportunities.

For instance, you can reach out to the sites that you’re sending traffic to and ask for a backlink for your blog as well. You can also build partnerships and join their affiliate marketing program to earn more money.

Aside from that, tracking outbound links can also help you better understand your user’s behavior and come up with new content ideas. Since people are clicking a link to view content on another site, you can create a better version of that article on your own website.

6. Demographics

Another important web metric to measure is user demographics. It helps you better understand your audience. You could then offer products that they’d prefer or write content based on their interests.

With MonsterInsights, it’s straightforward to track and measure demographic information. You get to see the age, gender, and interests of your visitors in WordPress.

Demographic reports

Demographics help you find hidden WordPress user data that you can use to make business decisions.

For example, let’s say you have an eCommerce store that sells shoes. If your audience is primarily females, then you can add more women’s shoes to your store compared to men.

Similarly, if you’re writing blogs about the latest tech and one of the top audience interests is smartphones, then you can create more content on smartphones compared to other categories.

7. Top Google Search Terms

Do you want to know which keywords your users use to find your website? You can quickly uncover this insight by measuring the top Google search terms for your website.

MonsterInsights brings your Search Console report inside your WordPress admin area and allows you to see the top 50 keywords people use to look up your site on Google.

You can see our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

Search console report

By measuring the Google Search Terms metric, you can see which keywords drive traffic to your site. The report shows clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position for each search term.

From the report, you can select keywords that are close to reaching the #1 position in Google and optimize them.

The report also helps identify low-hanging fruits, which are keywords that can easily reach the first page on Google with a little tweak in meta title, internal linking, and keyword optimization.

Besides that, you can also find new keyword ideas to target on your website. For instance, look for similar search terms that are already performing well and optimize them in your content. As a result, you’ll grab keyword rankings for different search terms and grow your organic traffic.

8. Form Conversions

Forms play an important role in running a successful business, whether you’re running a WooCommerce store, a blog, a membership website, or a company website.

Forms help you keep in touch with your visitors. You can easily get feedback from your customers and resolve their queries through contact forms.

However, simply adding a form to your WordPress site isn’t enough. You should track their performance and see how well they’re converting. This is where measuring the form conversion metrics comes in handy.

With MonsterInsights Forms addon, you can easily track form conversions in Google Analytics. It works smoothly with WPForms, Formidable Forms, and any WordPress form plugin.

The best part is that you get to see the report inside your WordPress dashboard. Simply head over to Insights » Reports » Forms to view the report.

Forms report

The report will show the total number of impressions, conversions, and conversion rate for each form.

Using the information from the report, you get to see which forms get the most conversions and which don’t. You can change the low-performing forms’ design, layout, questions, and other elements to improve their conversions.

On the other hand, placing your highly converting forms on the most important pages or in the sidebar can further boost their conversions.

9. Site Speed

Site Speed is another metric you should be tracking in your WordPress website. That’s because Google now considers your site’s loading speed as a ranking factor.

If your website is slow to load and doesn’t provide a great user experience, then Google will not rank your content higher and instead prefer other sites that are faster.

A simple way to measure load time is by using the MonsterInsights Site Speed report.

Site speed report

The report shows an overall site speed score for desktop and mobile along with other web metrics to measure page speed. You also get recommendations on how to improve your site’s load time.

You can go through our detailed guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.

10. Custom Dimensions

Custom dimensions are additional pieces of information that you can use to understand how people use your website. They help uncover things like content types, SEO performance, user engagement, and more.

Using MonsterInsights Dimensions addon, it’s very easy to set up custom dimensions in WordPress. You can track popular authors, post type, top categories and tags, and more.

Popular authors dimension

For example, if you’re running a multi-author website, then you can track your most popular authors using custom dimensions. You can also uncover which post category gets the most traffic, so you can optimize it for conversions and find new content ideas to cover.

There are more custom dimensions you can set up with MonsterInsights. The plugin lets you track logged-in users and see which post type your audience likes. For instance, if your readers prefer guides and tutorials, then you can create similar content to get more traffic.

Logged in user and post type

If you’re using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin, then you can track the TruSEO score of your posts and pages using custom dimensions. Similarly, it also lets you track Focus Keyphrases that you’ve set for each post and find out which keyword gets the most traffic.

Focus keyphrase and TruSEO score

We hope this article helped you find important metrics to measure on your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress site and the best email marketing services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

11 Ways to Get More Comments on Your WordPress Blog Posts

Do you want to get more comments on your WordPress blog posts?

Comments are an easy way to build user engagement, get more pageviews, and build a community around your website.

In this article, we’ll share proven and tested tips to easily get more comments on your WordPress blog posts.

Ways to Get More Comments on Your WordPress Blog Posts

1. Allow Users to Subscribe to Comments

By default when a user leaves a comment on your website, they will have to bookmark the link to come back and see if there is a new comment on the article.

If they forget to bookmark or can’t remember the name of your blog, then they will probably never come back again.

You can provide users a chance to subscribe to comments on your WordPress posts. This way they can get immediate notifications when there is a new comment.

This will significantly increase your pageviews and the number of comments on your website. Your users will find discussions on your site to be more engaging.

Subscribe to comments

Take a look at our guide on how to allow users to subscribe to comments in WordPress.

2. Notify Users on Replies to Their Own Comments

When a user leaves a comment on your site, there is no way for them to find out if anyone has replied to their comment. They will have to bookmark the page and visit it later. Most users will not do that.

You can easily allow users to subscribe to their own comments. This way they will ONLY receive a notification email when someone replies to their comment.

Subscribe to replies

If you make it a habit to reply to most user comments on your site, then this could develop a highly engaging community around your blog.

For detailed instructions check out our tutorial on how to notify users on replies to their own comments in WordPress.

3. Keep Discussing Quality High with Comment Moderation

The best way to ensure there’s high quality conversations happening in comment is to enable comment moderation in WordPress.

You can turn this on by going to Settings » Discussion in your admin area.

Require all comments to be manually approved

Comment moderation will not only allow you to block spam, but it will also provide you a chance to interact with your users more often.

When you reply and engage with your readers, they’re more likely to comment more often.

See our beginner’s guide on how to moderate comments in WordPress for detailed instructions.

Note: Some website owners use CAPTCHA to block comment spam, but this is not user friendly and it often discourages regular users from commenting.

This is why we recommend enabling comment moderation on your site and manually approve each and every comment (if you have to).

4. Show Newest Comments First

By default WordPress shows the newest comment at the bottom of the comments list. Now if you have lots of comments on a post, then users will be seeing the oldest comments on top.

This can be easily changed in WordPress.

Simply go to Settings » Discussion and scroll down to other comments settings section. You need to select newer from the drop down menu.

Newer comments first

For more details, take a look at our tutorial on how to rearrange comments in WordPress – Display the most recent one on top.

5. Turn on Comments for Old Posts

Most bloggers turn off comments on older posts to reduce comment spam. However, there will be lots of users who might want to comment on these posts.

Since you are already using comment moderation, you can safely turn on comments on old posts.

Simply go to Settings » Discussion and scroll down to other comments settings section. Uncheck the box next to ‘Automatically close comments on articles older than X days’.

Open comments for older post

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

6. Showcase Your Top Commenters

A good way to encourage and appreciate your most loyal users is by highlighting your top commenters. This shows users that they are part of your blog’s community, and you appreciate their effort to bring life into your comments.

Top commenters widget

Simply install and activate the Top Commenters Widget plugin. Upon activation, go to Appearance » Widgets page and add Top Commenters Widget to a sidebar.

For more detailed instructions, please see our guide on how to display your top commenters in WordPress sidebar.

7. Display Recent Comments

When users are looking at your homepage, they have no idea what’s happening in your blog’s comments section. For example, there may be a heated debate going on a new post where a user may want to chime in.

You can provide users a chance to look at current discussions by showing recent comments on your site.

Simply go to Appearance » Widgets and add Recent Comments widget to a sidebar.

Recent comments

8. Allow Users to Rate and Share Comments

The default WordPress commenting system is plain and simple. It does not have the social, gamification, and user engagement elements of a modern discussion platform. However, you can easily add these features in WordPress using plugins.

Simply install and activate the wpDiscuz plugin. Upon activation the plugin will beautifully transform your WordPress commenting system into a highly engaging discussion platform.

Rate and share comments

wpDiscuz comes with features like voting, social sharing, comment bubble, and many more. For details, see our article on how to improve WordPress comments with wpDiscuz.

9. Notify Users When Their Comment is Approved

When a user submits a comment on your blog, WordPress shows them that their comment is awaiting moderation. The users have no idea when you approve their comment or delete it.

You can increase your pageviews as well as user engagement by simply notifying users when their comment is approved.

Simply install and activate the Comment Approved plugin. Upon activation, go to Settings » Comment Approved page to configure the plugin.

Comment Approved Settings

For detailed instructions see our tutorial on how to notify users when their comment is approved in WordPress.

10. Allow Users to Edit Comments in WordPress

By default, users cannot edit their comments once they have submitted them. This can be frustrating for users as they may want to correct a typo or grammar mistake.

Simply install and activate Simple Comment Editing plugin, which allows users to easily edit their own comments on your site. You can set a time limit to editing permission.

Simple comment editing

For details, see our article on how to allow users to edit comments in WordPress.

11. Get Better WordPress Hosting

Comments consume resources on your web hosting server which may affect overall WordPress speed and performance.

Each time a user submits a comment on your WordPress site, your server runs a PHP script. If multiple users are submitting comments at the same time, this could slow down your site or even crash your site.

So to get more comments on your site, you first need to make sure your website can handle more comments.

The easy way to deal with this is by using a WordPress caching plugin. This should work for most websites on shared WordPress hosting provider.

However, for busier websites, this may not be enough. If you have a larger site, then try a managed WordPress hosting provider like WP Engine or SiteGround for better speed.

We hope this article helped you learn some new ways to get more comments on your WordPress blog posts. You may also want to see our guide on how to style WordPress comments and improve WordPress SEO on your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

10 Important Metrics to Measure on Your WordPress Site

Are you wondering how is your WordPress website performing?

Measuring important website metrics can help you find out what’s working and not working in your business. You can then tweak your content strategy, try new ways to increase website traffic, and optimize your site for higher conversions.

In this article, we’ll show you important metrics to measure on your WordPress site.

Important Metrics to Measure on Your WordPress Site

How to Measure Important Metrics in WordPress

When running a successful business, it’s essential to know your WordPress website’s performance. However, many business owners use their ‘best guesses’ to make decisions instead of working with data.

This is where tracking important web metrics can help you make informed decisions and grow your website with confidence.

You can see which strategies are working, which content your visitors like, where they are from, and how you can improve your traffic and WordPress conversions.

The easiest way to measure important metrics in WordPress is using MonsterInsights. It’s the best WordPress analytics plugin and is used by over 3 million websites.

MonsterInsights makes it super easy to properly setup Google Analytics in WordPress, bring important stats inside your WordPress dashboard, display popular posts, and offers advanced tracking features.

MonsterInsights

To start, you’ll first need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Editor’s Note: if you want to unlock advanced tracking features like eCommerce tracking and more dashboard reports, then you’ll need the MonsterInsights Pro version. There is also a free version of MonsterInsights that you can use to get started.

Upon activation, you’ll be taken to MonsterInsights welcome screen in WordPress. Go ahead and click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button.

You can now follow the steps to configure the plugin and connect Google Analytics to your WordPress site.

Set up MonsterInsights

After that, simply head over to Insights » Reports from your WordPress admin panel to view metrics and get insights to grow your business.

MonsterInsights dashboard reports

That being said, let’s look at some of the most important website metrics to measure on your website.

1. Sessions

The first thing you should measure is your website traffic. To do that, you can look at the number of sessions. A session represents a single visit to your site, and it can include many pageviews.

In MonsterInsights, you can easily view the number of sessions by navigating to Insights » Reports and see the ‘Overview’ report.

See the number of sessions

The graph shows a trend from the last 30 days. Simply hover over the graph to see the Unique Sessions on a particular day. You can use this website metric to see how many people visit your site and if your traffic is increasing or decreasing.

For example, if you have a WordPress blog, then looking at sessions can show whether the number of readers is rising. If it’s not, then you need to find more ways to increase your blog traffic.

Besides that, you can also look at the average session duration and bounce rate to get more insights into user engagement.

Having a high session duration means people enjoy reading your content and spend more time on your website. Whereas a high bounce rate means users didn’t find what they were looking for and left your site.

2. Top Referrals

The next metric you should be measuring is Referrals. These are websites that link to your content and send traffic to your site, also known as referral traffic.

Top referrals

Since these websites are linking to your articles, it means they’re providing a backlink. Backlinks are an important Google ranking factor, and they give a vote of confidence for your content.

Having backlinks from high authority sites means your content is excellent, and you can see a positive impact on your keyword rankings.

Using the top referrals metric, you get to see which websites are sending visitors to your website. This helps in finding similar sites to get more backlinks and boost your WordPress SEO.

Similarly, you can also uncover which guest post is driving a lot of referral traffic. It helps in choosing the type of content and topic to cover for future guest posts.

3. Top Countries

Ever wonder which country your visitors are from? In MonsterInsights, you get to see which region drives the most traffic to your site by looking at the Top Countries metric.

Top countries

Using the data from the top countries report, you can uncover new content ideas.

Let’s say one region that’s sending the most traffic is India. You can write about the best web hosting services in India if you have tech website or 5 places to visit in India if you have a travel blog.

Besides that, you can also create personalized marketing campaigns and provide a custom user experience for people from different regions. For instance, you can offer free shipping or discount offers to people for a particular location.

You can also check out our ultimate guide to geolocation targeting in WordPress.

4. Top Posts and Pages

Do you know which landing pages and blog posts drive a lot of traffic, engagement, and conversions on your site? A simple way to find out is by measuring the top posts and pages metric.

In MonsterInsights, you can uncover your most viewed pages and posts in the Overview report.

Most viewed pages and posts

If you’re using the MonsterInsights Pro version, then you can unlock the Publishers report and get more insights about how people interact with your most important pages.

Simply head over to Insights » Reports and click on the ‘Publishers’ tab. Next, you can see the Top Landing Pages report and how many visits your pages get along with visit duration and bounce rate.

Top landing pages

Once you know which articles are performing the best, you can create more content on similar topics and grow your traffic. You should also check keyword rankings for these top pages and see if you can improve their rankings to reach the #1 spot in Google.

On these top pages, you can also place your newsletter subscription form and convert visitors into email subscribers to build an email list. If you’re selling products or services, then you can optimize your high-traffic pages to boost sales and conversions.

5. Outbound Links

The next site metrics you should measure is the outbound link clicks. These are links in your content that are from other websites. When a user clicks on an outbound or external link, they’re taken to another site.

In MonsterInsights Publisher’s report, you can see the Top Outbound Links. Do note that Google Analytics doesn’t track external link clicks by default. However, with MonsterInsights, you get link tracking out of the box.

Outbound links report

Measuring which outbound link is getting the most clicks can help you create new partnership opportunities.

For instance, you can reach out to the sites that you’re sending traffic to and ask for a backlink for your blog as well. You can also build partnerships and join their affiliate marketing program to earn more money.

Aside from that, tracking outbound links can also help you better understand your user’s behavior and come up with new content ideas. Since people are clicking a link to view content on another site, you can create a better version of that article on your own website.

6. Demographics

Another important web metric to measure is user demographics. It helps you better understand your audience. You could then offer products that they’d prefer or write content based on their interests.

With MonsterInsights, it’s straightforward to track and measure demographic information. You get to see the age, gender, and interests of your visitors in WordPress.

Demographic reports

Demographics help you find hidden WordPress user data that you can use to make business decisions.

For example, let’s say you have an eCommerce store that sells shoes. If your audience is primarily females, then you can add more women’s shoes to your store compared to men.

Similarly, if you’re writing blogs about the latest tech and one of the top audience interests is smartphones, then you can create more content on smartphones compared to other categories.

7. Top Google Search Terms

Do you want to know which keywords your users use to find your website? You can quickly uncover this insight by measuring the top Google search terms for your website.

MonsterInsights brings your Search Console report inside your WordPress admin area and allows you to see the top 50 keywords people use to look up your site on Google.

You can see our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

Search console report

By measuring the Google Search Terms metric, you can see which keywords drive traffic to your site. The report shows clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position for each search term.

From the report, you can select keywords that are close to reaching the #1 position in Google and optimize them.

The report also helps identify low-hanging fruits, which are keywords that can easily reach the first page on Google with a little tweak in meta title, internal linking, and keyword optimization.

Besides that, you can also find new keyword ideas to target on your website. For instance, look for similar search terms that are already performing well and optimize them in your content. As a result, you’ll grab keyword rankings for different search terms and grow your organic traffic.

8. Form Conversions

Forms play an important role in running a successful business, whether you’re running a WooCommerce store, a blog, a membership website, or a company website.

Forms help you keep in touch with your visitors. You can easily get feedback from your customers and resolve their queries through contact forms.

However, simply adding a form to your WordPress site isn’t enough. You should track their performance and see how well they’re converting. This is where measuring the form conversion metrics comes in handy.

With MonsterInsights Forms addon, you can easily track form conversions in Google Analytics. It works smoothly with WPForms, Formidable Forms, and any WordPress form plugin.

The best part is that you get to see the report inside your WordPress dashboard. Simply head over to Insights » Reports » Forms to view the report.

Forms report

The report will show the total number of impressions, conversions, and conversion rate for each form.

Using the information from the report, you get to see which forms get the most conversions and which don’t. You can change the low-performing forms’ design, layout, questions, and other elements to improve their conversions.

On the other hand, placing your highly converting forms on the most important pages or in the sidebar can further boost their conversions.

9. Site Speed

Site Speed is another metric you should be tracking in your WordPress website. That’s because Google now considers your site’s loading speed as a ranking factor.

If your website is slow to load and doesn’t provide a great user experience, then Google will not rank your content higher and instead prefer other sites that are faster.

A simple way to measure load time is by using the MonsterInsights Site Speed report.

Site speed report

The report shows an overall site speed score for desktop and mobile along with other web metrics to measure page speed. You also get recommendations on how to improve your site’s load time.

You can go through our detailed guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.

10. Custom Dimensions

Custom dimensions are additional pieces of information that you can use to understand how people use your website. They help uncover things like content types, SEO performance, user engagement, and more.

Using MonsterInsights Dimensions addon, it’s very easy to set up custom dimensions in WordPress. You can track popular authors, post type, top categories and tags, and more.

Popular authors dimension

For example, if you’re running a multi-author website, then you can track your most popular authors using custom dimensions. You can also uncover which post category gets the most traffic, so you can optimize it for conversions and find new content ideas to cover.

There are more custom dimensions you can set up with MonsterInsights. The plugin lets you track logged-in users and see which post type your audience likes. For instance, if your readers prefer guides and tutorials, then you can create similar content to get more traffic.

Logged in user and post type

If you’re using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin, then you can track the TruSEO score of your posts and pages using custom dimensions. Similarly, it also lets you track Focus Keyphrases that you’ve set for each post and find out which keyword gets the most traffic.

Focus keyphrase and TruSEO score

We hope this article helped you find important metrics to measure on your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress site and the best email marketing services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.