Did you know that adding a WordPress popular posts plugin to your website can actually improve your SEO?
It’s true! Adding popular posts to your site can dramatically change how visitors interact with it. By strategically highlighting your top-performing articles, you can keep readers engaged for longer, sending content quality signals to Google
I’ve been able to test a few of the top WordPress popular posts plugins to analyze their features, performance impact, and ease of use. After taking all of them into account, I’ve narrowed down the absolute best options available now.
In this guide, I’ll share the 6 best WordPress popular posts plugins to help you display your most viewed, commented, or shared content across your website to increase engagement and boost your overall SEO.
Why You Need a WordPress Popular Posts Plugin
Have you ever created a brilliant piece of content that eventually got buried under newer posts?
A WordPress popular posts plugin solves this problem by keeping your best content visible and accessible. Here’s why you should consider using one:
- Improved Content Discovery: Help visitors easily find your best articles
- Increased Page Views: Highlighting your top content can lead to more page views per session as visitors discover more of your valuable articles
- Better User Engagement: Keep visitors on your site longer with relevant content suggestions, increasing user engagement times
- Enhanced SEO Performance: Create more internal links and reduce bounce rates
- Higher Conversion Rates: Guide visitors to your highest-converting content
Now, let’s dive into the best WordPress popular posts plugins I’ve found that will help you boost engagement and keep visitors glued to your site.
My 6 Favorite Popular Posts Plugins for WordPress
1. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is my top recommendation for the best WordPress popular posts plugin. What sets it apart is that it integrates directly with Google Analytics to determine which posts are truly popular based on actual user data.
The plugin offers beautifully designed pre-built templates and some key customization options without requiring a single line of code. You can preview each template before implementing it on your site.
With MonsterInsights, you get 3 distinct ways to display your top-performing content:
- Inline Popular Posts: Showcase different articles within the body of your blog posts
- Popular Posts Widget: Display articles at the end of your content or in your sidebar
- Popular Products: For eCommerce stores, showcase your best-selling products anywhere on your site
After selecting a template, you can customize virtually every aspect to match your website’s design. This includes changing the colors and sizes of titles, labels, backgrounds, and icons.
MonsterInsights gives you multiple sorting options for your popular posts, including:
- Number of comments
- Share count
- Manual selection
- Google Analytics metrics (views, unique pageviews)
What I love most about MonsterInsights is its ability to automatically curate articles based on Google Analytics data. As long as you’ve set up a Post Type custom dimension, it will automatically pull your top 5 posts from the past 30 days.
Plus, MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. Besides helping you set up popular posts, you’ll get tons of amazing analytics features. Use it to set up Google Analytics on your WordPress site in just a couple of clicks, add a big stats dashboard of easy-to-read reports, track authors, track form submissions, track video views, and so much more.
For detailed instructions on setting up popular posts using MonsterInsights, check out our step-by-step tutorial on how to display your most popular posts in WordPress. And for more on what you’ll get with MonsterInsights, check out a full tour of the MonsterInsights reports dashboard.
Get started with MonsterInsights now!
2. WordPress Popular Posts
WordPress Popular Posts is one of the most highly customizable plugins in the popular posts category, with over 100,000 active installations. I’ve found it particularly powerful for sites that need detailed control over how popularity is calculated and displayed.
This plugin offers great flexibility for showing top posts with multiple sorting options:
- Total views (default)
- Comment count
- Average views per day
- Custom time ranges (last 24 hours, last 7 days, last 30 days, etc.)
What makes WordPress Popular Posts stand out is its ability to create multiple independent widgets throughout your site. You can have several popular post lists, each with completely different settings! This is perfect for showcasing different types of content across your website.
For visual appeal, it includes thumbnail support with automatic generation, plus several built-in themes to style your popular posts widget. If you prefer complete control, you can create your own custom layout and styling.
Get started with WordPress Popular Posts now.
3. Relevant
Relevant is a versatile free popular posts plugin that handles not just popular posts, but also related, featured, and latest content. I’ve found it to be a decent all-in-one content showcase solution.
What makes Relevant stand out is its flexible placement options. You can position popular posts before or after content, in widget areas, or anywhere using shortcodes. The plugin also offers category-specific displays, showing popular posts only from the current category.
Customization is straightforward with options to adjust:
- Section titles and post counts
- Featured image sizes
- Background and text colors
- Read more text and excerpt length
Relevant displays helpful additional information about each post, including publication date, author, reading time, comment count, and view count. You can sort popular posts by either comment numbers or view counts.
The user-friendly interface requires no coding knowledge, with real-time previews making customization quick and intuitive. The plugin is fully compatible with the latest WordPress version and comes with comprehensive documentation.
Get started with Relevant now.
4. Top 10
Top 10 is one of the most feature-rich WordPress popular posts plugins I’ve tested. Unlike WordPress, which doesn’t have a built-in system to track page views, Top 10 counts views on posts, pages, and custom post types while giving you multiple ways to display your popular content.
What I appreciate about Top 10 is its comprehensive tracking system that works on an hourly basis. This lets you display both overall popular posts and trending content from custom time periods. The plugin uses AJAX for tracking, making it compatible with most popular caching plugins like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.
Top 10 offers several ways to display your popular content:
- Two dedicated widgets for daily and overall popular posts
- Full Gutenberg/Block Editor support with a “Popular Posts [Top 10]” block
- Shortcodes for displaying popular posts and for showing view counts
- Functions for developers to integrate with themes
You get some good customization options including the ability to exclude posts from specific categories or by ID, and complete control over the styling. The plugin adds helpful admin features like sortable view count columns to your Posts and Pages screens, plus an export/import interface to transfer data between sites.
5. Display Posts
Display Posts is a free WordPress popular posts plugin that’s minimalistic in nature but offers a lot of flexibility. Instead of just using the plugin to display popular posts, you can show a list of posts based on category, social shares, tags, post type, id, author, category, and more.
While shortcodes provide a lot of room for customization, it can be tricky for beginners to start using the plugin out of the box. However, the best thing about Display Posts is that it offers detailed documentation and tutorials.
Get started with Display Posts now.
6. Jetpack
Jetpack is an all-in-one WordPress plugin powerhouse that includes a popular posts block feature among its many capabilities. I’ve found its popular posts functionality to be effective, but only for sites already using other Jetpack features. If you’re not using its other features, it doesn’t make sense to install only for the popular posts block.
The popular posts feature in Jetpack comes as a dedicated Gutenberg block, making it extremely easy to add to any post or page. You can simply insert the “Top Posts & Pages” block wherever you want to display your most viewed content.
With the Jetpack popular posts block, you can customize:
- Number of items
- Stats period
- Items to display (content types)
- Metadata settings
- Style settings
The popular posts functionality is available in Jetpack’s free version, so you don’t need a paid plan to start showcasing your best content. If you’re already using Jetpack for security, performance, or other features, using its built-in popular posts capability makes sense.
While not as feature-rich in the popular posts department as some dedicated plugins, Jetpack offers a good balance of simplicity and functionality for most WordPress sites.
Which WordPress popular posts plugin is the best?
So, which of the popular posts plugins on this list is the best for your site? The truth is, it depends on what your site already has. If you struggle to track your traffic and get the insights you need to grow, then MonsterInsights is the best popular posts plugin. It takes something super complicated (GA4) and turns it into easy-to-understand reports. It also tracks data for you that’s not tracked out of the box with Google Analytics.
If you’ve got your analytics all dialed in and you don’t need help with GA4, WordPress Popular Posts is the best standalone popular posts option.
That’s it!
I hope you found this comparison of the best WordPress popular posts plugins helpful! You might also want to check out:
45+ Best WordPress Plugins (Many FREE)
10 Best ChatGPT WordPress Plugins
7 Best Plugins to Speed Up WordPress Sites
Not using MonsterInsights yet? What are you waiting for?
And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and YouTube for more helpful WordPress and Google Analytics tips, reviews, and tutorials.
Popular Post Plugin FAQ
How do I add a popular posts widget to my WordPress sidebar?
Most popular posts plugins like MonsterInsights and WordPress Popular Posts include a widget that you can add to your sidebar through the WordPress Customizer. Go to Appearance » Widgets, find the popular posts widget, and drag it to your sidebar. You can then customize the settings according to your preferences.
Do popular posts plugins slow down my website?
The impact on website speed varies by plugin. Lightweight options use AJAX to load content only when needed. MonsterInsights is optimized for performance and won’t significantly impact your load times. If speed is a concern, look for plugins compatible with caching solutions.
Can I customize how my popular posts look?
Yes, all the plugins mentioned in this article offer customization options.
How are “popular” posts determined?
Each plugin uses different metrics to determine popularity:
- MonsterInsights uses Google Analytics data
- WordPress Popular Posts uses view count, comments, or average daily views
- Other plugins may use comments, shares, or manual selection
Can I manually select which posts to display as popular?
Yes, plugins like MonsterInsights allow manual selection of posts to display in your popular posts widget, giving you complete control over what content you feature.
Will popular posts plugins work with my theme?
Yes, all the plugins mentioned are designed to work with any WordPress theme. Some, like MonsterInsights, offer additional customization options to ensure your popular posts widgets match your theme’s design perfectly.