How to Find the Most Important Page of Your WordPress Site (And What to Do Next)
Do you know which page on your website gets the most traffic and engagement? Identifying your most popular and highest-converting pages is crucial for understanding your audience and optimizing your site‘s performance.
In this in-depth guide, we‘ll show you exactly how to uncover your top-performing WordPress pages using tools like Google Analytics and MonsterInsights. Then we‘ll walk through actionable steps to improve your best pages to drive even more traffic, engagement, and conversions.
Let‘s dive in!
Why You Need to Know Your Most Important Pages
Before we jump into how to actually find your VIP pages, let‘s talk about why this matters in the first place. Knowing which pages get the most attention can help you:
Double down on what‘s working. Your top pages reveal the type of content and topics that resonate most with your audience. You can use these insights to create more of what people want.
Improve key SEO rankings. Top-performing pages likely already rank well in search. But with a little on-page optimization, you may be able to boost rankings even further and maximize organic traffic.
Optimize for conversions. Popular pages get the most eyeballs, so they‘re prime real estate for converting visitors into subscribers and customers. Calls-to-action, opt-in forms, and sales copy will get the most visibility here.
Enhance user experience. Slow load times, poor formatting, outdated info, and other user experience issues have an outsized impact on high-traffic pages. Prioritizing UX improvements here is a smart use of time and resources.
Distribute "link authority." Internal linking helps Google understand your site structure and spreads "link juice" to important pages. Linking from top pages can boost SEO site-wide.
Now that you understand the why, let‘s look at the how. Here are three methods to surface your most valuable pages:
Method 1: Use Google Analytics to Find Top Content
Google Analytics is a powerful (and free!) tool for understanding how people find and interact with your website. You can use it to see metrics like pageviews, unique visitors, time on page, bounce rate, and conversion rate for every page on your site.
Here‘s how to find your best-performing pages in Google Analytics:
- Log into your Analytics account and select the property for your WordPress site.
- In the left-hand menu, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.
- You‘ll see a list of all your site‘s pages, ranked by number of pageviews by default. The pages at the top are your most-visited content.
- You can adjust the date range in the top right to see top pages for a specific period.
- Click on a page to see more detailed metrics like average time on page, bounce rate, and exit percentage.
Want to compare desktop vs mobile traffic? Click the "Secondary dimension" drop-down above the list and choose "Device Category."
The "All Pages" report gives an overall picture of your top content. But your most important pages could be different depending on your goals.
For example, say you want to optimize for search traffic. In that case, landing page reports will show you the pages people most often enter your site through, typically from search results.
To see top landing pages in Google Analytics:
- Go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages.
- Note the pages that get the most entrances, especially those with high engagement metrics like a low bounce rate and more pages per session.
If you‘re an ecommerce site, your VIP page might be the one that generates the most revenue. To find that, go to Conversions > Ecommerce > Product Performance in the left-hand menu of Analytics. You‘ll see revenue and conversion rates for individual product pages.
As you can see, Google Analytics provides a wealth of data to help you understand how people interact with your website. Reviewing the numbers regularly will reveal your MVP pages where you should focus attention.
But what if you don‘t want to log into Analytics every time you need a top content report? Our next method puts your most important pages right in your WordPress dashboard.
Method 2: See Top Pages in WordPress Using MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It lets you easily connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics, so you can view key reports without leaving your dashboard.
The plugin offers a quick look at top posts/pages in its Overview report. For more detailed insights, an Publishers report (Pro version) shows top landing pages with metrics like visits, time on page, and bounce rate.
Here‘s how to use MonsterInsights to find important pages right in WordPress:
Install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. (For basic features, the free version works great. We recommend the Pro version for advanced reports and tracking.)
Go through the quick setup wizard to connect MonsterInsights with your Google Analytics account. (Detailed instructions in MonsterInsights‘ setup guide if needed.)
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Insights > Reports.
Scroll down to the Top Posts/Pages list in the Overview Report. This shows your most viewed content over the last 30 days.
For more insights, jump over to the Publishers tab and look at the Top Landing Pages report (Pro version). This shows engagement metrics for pages people enter your site through.
That‘s it! With MonsterInsights, your top content reports are always just a couple clicks away.
The plugin makes it easy to stay on top of your best-performing posts and pages, so you always know where to focus your optimization efforts. Plus, the Pro version can track other important metrics like ecommerce conversion rate, form conversions, custom dimensions, and more.
Method 3: Look for Strong Engagement Signals
Tools like Google Analytics and MonsterInsights are excellent for surfacing top pages based on hard data. But sometimes important pages reveal themselves in other ways.
Here are some additional signals to look for:
- Pages with lots of quality comments and discussion
- Posts that get high numbers of social shares and "likes"
- Content that earns natural backlinks from other websites
- Pages that rank in search for competitive keywords
- Posts that convert especially well for email opt-ins or sales
While not as cut-and-dried as pageview counts, pages with these characteristics are clearly resonating with your audience. They indicate the topics and types of content you should focus on to build a loyal following.
So in addition to studying your analytics, take note of pages that generate disproportionate engagement relative to your averages. These are diamond-in-the-rough posts with potential to become top performers with a little polishing.
What to Do After Finding Your Most Important Pages
Identifying VIP pages is an important first step, but it‘s what you do with that information that really moves the needle. Here‘s how to capitalize on your newfound insights:
- Optimize for search
Top pages are likely already ranking well for relevant keywords. But with some on-page SEO, you may be able to boost rankings and visibility even further.
To optimize a popular post for search:
- Make sure the content thoroughly covers the topic and includes semantically related keywords. Consider expanding thin content to make it more comprehensive.
- Craft a compelling meta title and description to entice searchers to click through from results pages.
- Use short, keyword-rich URLs.
- Include primary and secondary keywords in H1 and H2 headings.
- Add descriptive alt text to images.
- Link to the page internally from other relevant content using keyword-optimized anchor text.
Even minor tweaks can make a difference in the hyper-competitive world of search engine rankings. When you‘re working with an already popular page, it‘s absolutely worth the effort.
- Boost time on page with better formatting
Is your best content presented in a user-friendly, easily digestible way? Proper formatting makes pages more skimmable and can significantly increase dwell time (a positive ranking factor).
Try these best practices:
- Break up long paragraphs into shorter ones (2-3 sentences max).
- Use plenty of subheadings to break up content into sections.
- Add bullet points and numbered lists to highlight key information.
- Use plenty of relevant images, screenshots, and other visuals to break up text.
- Add a table of contents with jump links for long-form content.
Improved formatting helps readers quickly find the information they need and makes pages more engaging overall.
- Speed up load times
Page load speed is both a ranking factor for search and a key part of a good user experience. Slow-loading pages frustrate visitors and hurt conversions.
Use a tool like Pingdom or GTmetrix to test the load speed of your most important pages. If they take longer than 2-3 seconds to load, look for opportunities to optimize. Some quick wins:
- Compress and resize large images
- Minify CSS and JavaScript files
- Use a caching plugin like WP Rocket
- Enable Gzip compression on your server
- Upgrade to a faster WordPress hosting provider
Shaving even a second off load times can make a big difference in user experience and search engine visibility.
- Add opt-in opportunities
Don‘t let first-time visitors to your best content slip away without inviting them to join your email list. Popular posts and pages are prime locations to convert engaged readers into subscribers.
Some effective ways to capture emails:
- Exit-intent popups that appear when a visitor is about to leave the page
- Sidebar opt-in forms
- Content upgrades (bonus downloads offered in exchange for an email address)
- Slide-in scroll boxes
- Floating bars at the top or bottom of posts
- Full-page welcome mat overlays
With the right messaging and incentive, your highest-traffic pages can become lead generation machines. Just make sure to deliver real value and not annoy visitors with overly aggressive tactics.
- Refresh and republish
Even your best content can get stale over time as information becomes outdated. An easy way to give top-performing posts a boost is to refresh them with new information and republish with the current date.
Some things to look for when updating content:
- Data, statistics, and examples that are out of date
- Broken links to external resources
- Irrelevant or low-quality images
- Outdated advice or best practices
- New information you can add to make the piece more comprehensive
Republishing triggers search engines to reindex the page, which can improve rankings. It also pushes the post to the top of your blog feed and back out to RSS readers.
When you update a popular page, make sure to also re-share it on social media and in your email newsletter to drive fresh eyes to it. You can even reach out to people who linked to the original version to let them know about the new-and-improved edition.
Keeping top content fresh and current helps maintain its performance over the long haul. Make it a habit to revisit and spruce up elite posts every 6-12 months.
Conclusion
Your top-performing pages are a goldmine of insights about what your audience craves. Capitalizing on their success can help you get more organic search traffic, leads, and customers from your website.
Use tools like Google Analytics and MonsterInsights to zero in on your most popular posts and pages. From there, make on-page SEO improvements, enhance the user experience, and add conversion opportunities to squeeze the most value from your best content.
By focusing your optimization efforts where they‘ll have the biggest impact, you can work smarter, not harder, to hit your traffic and revenue goals.
Now it‘s your turn: Go find your VIP pages and show them some love. Your bottom line will thank you!
