Paul N
IT Contracting / Web Sales & Marketing/Wildside Salmon Cat Treats at Globalbytes
Do you use widgets on your blog? Which deliver the most?
Do you use widgets on your blog? If you have a blog or visit blogs you probably have noticed those little rectangles such as Bogaorama, TopBlogArea, and Technorati.
These widgets can sometimes generate more terrific to your blog. What I have noticed I that some do a much better job than others of providing real stats. Many leave you guessing. Some do nothing at all.
Hands down the best stat provider is Blog Rush - http://www.blogrush.com/r16160035
You can’t get a better stat dashboard anywhere. How many hits you get delivered to your blog depends on how good you article’s title is.
I get any where from 0-12 referred hits from Blog Rush, per 1000 hits that my blog generates on hits own. If I could write better titles I would no doubt get more….
Do you know of other widgets with stats that perform better?
If you are not sure or happy with your current widgets, I highly recommend Blog Rush. I have used it for several months now.
Answers (10)
Hal G
President, Goodtree & Company
Best Answers in: Advertising (1), Internet Marketing (1), Business Development (1), Writing and Editing (1)
Hi Paul -
Since WordPress became widget-friendly about a year ago, we've only installed themes that take advantage of the new tools.
Widgets (as you know) can do a lot more than just stats - add weather, news, flickr streams, twitter, just about any content - to any blog. Here's a good source for new widgets:
http://widgets.wordpress.com/
If building visibility with an eye toward readership is your goal, you've got to get Arne Brachhold's Google Sitemap Generator:
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/
Of course, every WP blog should have Akismet for security and wp-db-backup for archiving.
Whatever blog engine you use, I completely agree that good writing (especially headlines) is the key to an interested readership.
Links:
John W
Principal / Sr. Consultant at Vuturus
Best Answers in: Government Services (2), Small Business (2), Customer Service (1), Corporate Taxes (1), Financial Regulation (1), Government Contracts (1), Government Policy (1), Internet Marketing (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Non-profit Management (1), Quality Management and Standards (1), E-Commerce (1), Enterprise Software (1)
I currently use a number of Widgets on my two primary blogs:
http://digitalpipedreams.blogspot.com
http://bitingpoliticks.blogspot.com
The widgets I use include an Amazon referal widget, the Blogger Choice Award widget, the Blog Catalog widget, the PayPerPost widget and my all time favorite, the "Call Me" widget by Grand Central.
The Call Me widget allows you to embed a button on your blog or web site, that sets up a call between any phone you choose and the caller's designated number, via Grand Central. The web site for Grand Central is:
www.grandcentral.com
Of course, I also have my LinedIn profile button displayed on each blog! For anyone who reads this answer, thank you in advance for visiting my blogs and voting for them via the "Bloggers Choice" button!
Links:
Suprateep M
Business Manager - PES at Patni Computer Systems
Best Answers in: Car and Train Travel (1), Biotech (1), Computers and Software (1)
Well Paul our experience Technorati & Top Blog Arena have been really excellant. Morover using these widgets in conjunction with services from Feedburnes & Google can further expand your horizons and drive more traffic to your blog. Please understand that the content and subject are essentially key drivers for traffic - better and more relevant the content, the tags etc, more traffic will be diverted to your website/blog by various search engines - thats as simple as that.
Dr. Letitia W
Producer at Wright Place TV Show, www.wrightplacetv.com
Best Answers in: Small Business (2), Mentoring (1), Business Development (1), Professional Networking (1)
I use a widget from Magnify that shows all the video I have available online.
It'slike a little automatic slide show!
I really love it
Its on my blog at
http://wrightpassion.blogspot.com/
Dr. Wright
www.wrightplacetv.com
The widgets i use are mostly of Flickr or Technorati or Adsense etc . Personally i don't like Blogrush ...all the blogrush uses and users i have seen are trying to gain affiliate points ;) nothing more .
Nathan K
Social Media Optimization, Ethical Search Engine Optimization, & Content Management Specialist
Best Answers in: Search Marketing (1), Non-profit Management (1), Small Business (1)
I happen to like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog. They both add a community feature and its a nice way to add a little community to your blog--it gives you a better idea of exactly who is visiting your site.
The del.icio.us widget has several permutations (including your most recent social bookmarking posts or a tag cloud of your del.icio.us account)
The Grandcentral widget sounds cool.
If you're on wordpress the top posts widget is quite nice. I also like their tag cloud widget for easy blog navigation.
Mac offers a widget of sorts that allows you to place your business card on your blog.
I use:
AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (drop-down)
http://www.addthis.com
This widget allows your visitors to promote your website or blog to any of the popular bookmarking services.
Akismet
http://www.akismet.com
This allows you to filter out spam comments from your blog. You’ll have to sign up for an API key directly from WordPress.com to use it, but the spam catcher is extremely effective.
Customizable Comment Listings
http://www.coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/
This plugin allows you to display recent comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks.
Custom Query String UTW
http://andybeard.eu/custom-query-string-utw
When you’re displaying the results from a search, you may specify the number of results that display using this plugin. For example, when displaying the archive pages, I request to show all archives within a particular category (instead of five at a time, or three at a time).
Google Sitemaps Generator
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/
A great plugin to generate a Google Sitemaps-compliant file, so your blog constantly gets updated correctly in the Google archives.
Jerome’s Keywords
http://vapourtrails.ca/wp-keywords
I like this keyword tagging function, which allows you to use your own keyword taxonomy on your posts. It also allows you to specify the ‘tag cloud’ you see on the right column, which shows you at a glance the types of subjects covered by the blog.
Similar Posts
http://rmarsh.com/2006/10/04/similar-posts/
Displays a “related posts” link depending on word usage patterns in your existing post. The plugin increases the “stickiness” of your site by keeping visitors on your site and allowing them to click from one related post to another.
Top Posts by Category
http://www.macalua.com/2007/02/01/top-posts-by-category-plugin/
This nifty plugin allows you to display the top posts by category, with a counter of how many times that post has been visited.
What Would Seth Godin Do
http://www.richardkmiller.com/blog/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do/
An easy-to-use plugin that uses cookies to display a welcome message to new visitors: the message invites visitors to sign up for the feed or receive updates via e-mail.
Wordpress Database Backup
http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
Very important to create regular backups of all your precious blog postings. This plugin makes that work easy.
Tag Cloud
I’ve used the cosmos code within http://vapourtrails.ca/tag/WordPress to create a tag cloud on the sidebar, which is based on the keywords assigned to each post.
Custom 404 Page
I’ve also found a nifty plugin to manage your 404 Error page. If a user visits a broken link on your site, give them a chance to see some potential hits instead of a plain error message.
http://www.askapache.com/seo/404-google-wordpress-plugin.html
Additionally, I recommend installing the two following if they fit your specific needs:
Contact Form with Spam Protection
http://www.douglaskarr.com/2006/09/22/wordpress-contact-form-with-spam-protection/
If you need a contact form on your website.
and
Viper’s Video
http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/
Viper’s Video if you link to a lot of Youtube or Google videos: this makes the linking process easier.
Clarification added March 3, 2008:
These are all Wordpress-specific plugins, not necessarily "widgets" although I do use Flickr, Adsense, and other ad provider widgets in my sidebars.
OK you guys are talking a foreign language here but thanks I' on a steep learning curve and reading these posts is going to help.
The Virgin Blogger
Daniel T
Digital Marketing Manager at Absolute Radio
Best Answers in: Blogging (4), Internet Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1), Telecommunications (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
I've used a few to drive traffic via communites: MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, and particularly Entrecard, which results in plenty of traffic, but a very high bounce rate.
But most of my widgets are either advertising, or to pull in my content from elsewhere. It's not always about reaching the biggest numbers - I'd rather focus on trying to make more valuable connections...
At the end of the day, widgets can help draw in readership boosts, the same as Digg, Stumbleupon or Del.icio.us. But it's rare that any website has the content to convert many of these people to regular readers.
I think the most important widget for me was installing a decent RSS feed and analytics package for free from Feedburner, to drive loyalty and repeat visits...
Links:
Kevin D
Online Sales & Marketing guy, run Social Media campaigns for companies that want to engage the blogosphere
Widgets never really produce high traffic, that is down to content.
I own a community of over 10,000 bloggers and I have someone that actually manually monitors each and every new blog signing up to ensure there is no spam, porn etc. Our widgets offer the chance to leave a private comment and see other blogs one reads (a kind of blogroll). I have left a link that explains how to really use a community and why we guarantee new readers (not traffic). And of course a link to our widgets page (you need to be logged in to see show the blog friends widget) :-)
