A great way to enhance engagement on your website is by highlighting your most popular content in a timely fashion. Featuring popular posts enables your visitors to easily find your best articles, which can lead to increased page views and higher conversion rates.
By showcasing popular posts organized by day, week, and month, you provide your visitors with a curated selection of relevant and engaging articles. This approach can result in longer time spent on your site and a greater chance of users exploring more content.
In this guide, we will demonstrate how to display popular posts by day, week, month, and all time in WordPress.
The Importance of Displaying Popular Posts in WordPress
When you first launch a WordPress blog, your content is limited, allowing you to manually feature selected posts in a sidebar widget.
As your website expands, you may find that older articles receive less visibility. By highlighting your top content, you help new visitors quickly find the best articles on your site, which enhances user engagement and boosts page views.
The challenge with displaying all-time popular articles is that only a small selection gets repeated visibility. You can address this by showcasing popular posts by day, week, or month to provide a more varied selection.
Discover how to effortlessly showcase your most popular posts in WordPress by day, week, month, or all time.
How to Add Popular Posts by Day, Week, and Month in WordPress
The most effective way to display popular posts in WordPress is by using MonsterInsights, the leading analytics plugin that simplifies the setup of Google Analytics without the need for coding.
In this tutorial, we will utilize the MonsterInsights Pro version, which allows you to automatically display top posts sourced from Google Analytics.
There is also a free version called MonsterInsights Lite, which includes the Popular Posts feature but does not integrate with Google Analytics.
For a detailed review, be sure to check out our MonsterInsights review.
First, you need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. If you require assistance, please refer to our guide on installing a WordPress plugin.
Once activated, you will be taken to the MonsterInsights welcome screen. Click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button to proceed.
Next, follow the on-screen instructions to set up Google Analytics.
For further information, please refer to our guide on installing Google Analytics in WordPress.
Now that Google Analytics is integrated into your website, the next step is to navigate toInsights » Popular PostsAccess your WordPress dashboard.
MonsterInsights allows you to showcase your best articles within the content, as a sidebar widget, and highlight popular products if you run an online store.
In this tutorial, we will utilize the ‘Inline Popular Posts’ feature to display highlighted articles within the content of other blog posts.
The plugin includes pre-designed themes, and you can preview how your popular posts will look on your site.
After selecting a theme, simply scroll down to explore additional customization options.
For example, you can modify the title’s color and size, change the label and background colors, and more.
Display Popular Posts by Day, Week, Month, and All Time in WordPress
Next, you will need to decide how the plugin identifies your popular posts. Let’s explore how to display posts by day, week, month, and all time.
Displaying Popular Posts by Day, Week, and All Time
In MonsterInsights, you can manually choose which posts are featured in the Popular Posts widget.
This feature is helpful for showcasing top content from a specific day or week. Additionally, you can display your all-time best articles anywhere on your website.
Simply select the ‘Curated’ option in the ‘Sort By’ section and choose the articles you wish to highlight.
These could include your evergreen content, weekly announcements, trending topics, or news from a specific day.
Start typing the titles of the posts you want to feature, and select them as their names appear in the dropdown. To keep your top posts visible, just select them, and as long as ‘Curated’ is active, they will be displayed as popular posts.
If you want to showcase popular posts by day or week, you will need to manually update some of the curated posts to keep the content fresh for your audience.
For example, if you are highlighting different WooCommerce products each week, you will need to select which posts to feature under ‘Curated’ weekly.
Displaying Popular Posts by Month and All Time
With MonsterInsights, you have several options to automatically display popular posts by month and for all time.
You can display your most commented pages from the past 30 days by selecting the ‘Comments’ option. The plugin will randomly rotate blog posts with the highest comment counts and showcase them in the popular post widget.
Additionally, MonsterInsights allows you to automatically showcase popular posts based on social shares through the ‘SharedCount’ feature.
It connects with SharedCount to help you highlight your most shared articles of all time, making it easier for visitors to discover content that generates social engagement.
MonsterInsights provides an option to display the top 5 posts from Google Analytics over the past 30 days, allowing you to feature your best-performing content from last month or all time anywhere on your website.
Begin by selecting the ‘Curated’ option in the ‘Sort By’ section.
Next, enable the ‘Add Top 5 Posts from Google Analytics’ feature in the ‘Automated + Curated’ section.
To verify that your data is being retrieved from Google Analytics, click the ‘Test Automated Posts’ button found under ‘Automated + Curated.’
A popup will appear confirming that the popular posts are being successfully retrieved. You can then click the ‘Close’ button.
Important Note:You must configure the ‘Post Type’ custom dimensions in both MonsterInsights and Google Analytics to utilize the Automated + Curated feature.
Custom dimensions are extra metrics you can monitor in Google Analytics. For more information on custom dimensions and how to set them up, check out our guides on enabling author tracking in WordPress and determining the best times to publish your blog.
Add Popular Posts to Your WordPress Site
Next, choose how you want to display the featured articles on your website.
MonsterInsights provides two options: automatic placement and manual placement.
If you choose the ‘Automatic’ option, you can specify how many words you want the popular post widget to display. You also have the option to include or exclude certain pages from showing featured posts.
Once you are finished, return to the top and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
This will save your settings, and MonsterInsights will automatically showcase popular posts on your site.
Alternatively, you can display popular posts in any blog post by adding the MonsterInsights block or using a shortcode.
First, create a new post or edit an existing one. In the content editor, click the ‘+’ button and add the ‘Popular Posts’ block.
After that, you will see a preview of your featured articles in the content editor.
After finalizing the design of your widget, you can proceed to publish your article.
We trust this article has assisted you in showcasing your most popular posts by day, week, month, and all time in WordPress. Additionally, you might find our guide on tracking link and button clicks in WordPress and our recommendations for the best WordPress table plugins useful.
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