There are a lot of fashion blogs out in the blogospere. So when I decided to start my fashion blog, Chic Renegade, I knew that if I wanted to seriously compete for traffic, I had my work cut out for me. I must admit that although I only started the blog about a month and a half ago, I have a little more experience in traffic generation being that I have been blogging for three years and this is my third blog.
I used my past experiences and lessons learned (mostly the hard way) to get my new blog to about 350 unique visitors per day and an Alexa Rank of 500k (everyday I jump anywhere from 10-30k, so who knows what this number will be by the time you read this) in just a month and a half!!
Those numbers by no stretch are as impressive as the stats of other guest posters on this blog, but for a blog that's been around for just a month and a half, I will say that I'm impressed with myself. Also, keep in mind that I'm not the best social media marketerout there (I hate social media marketing), so most of that traffic is pure organic search engine traffic.
Although a lot of fashion bloggers use Blogger's Blogspot platform, I decided to use WordPress because I am a WordPress junkie! Before I actually started my fashion blog, I had an idea of what functions and design elements I wanted since I am so familiar with WordPress and a good amount of its plugins.
I also, picked up a few of the best WordPress plugins during the building process that have proven to be the perfect plugins for a fashion blog. So here are my:
Top 5 Worpress Plugins for Fashion Blogs
Top Worpress Plugins for Fashion Blogs #5: WordPress SEO By Joost de Valk:
Since there are so many fashion blogs, then that can only mean one thing…many Fashion Bloggers are competing for the same keywords. Why not give yourself a leg up by having total control over your post keywords, meta data, and indexation. With WordPress SEO By Joost de Valk, you can edit each posts meta description, SEO title, key words, 301 redirects, sitemap info, and Canonical URL right in the post!!!! So cool and convenient. Thanks Joost!
Top Worpress Plugins for Fashion Blogs #4:YD Recent Posts with Thumb Nails by Yann Dubois
Some WordPress themes come with a widget that you can add to your sidebar that will display your latest posts. Most of the time the display is pretty boring, and includes only the title text. When you have a fashion blog, if you want people to actually click on your recent posts, you are gonna have to do a little better than that. 🙂  Fashion blogging is all about images, so why not include an image with the thumb nail of your recent posts? YD Recent Posts with Thumb Nails Plugin (updated version) allows you to display your recent posts with a cool thumbnail of each post. After installation, the plugin adds a new sidebar widget that can display the recent posts with automatic thumbnail images and allows for different settings on the homepage. You can choose to list all recent posts, or specify by tag. You can display a different selection on the home page and on other pages. You can even adjust the size of the thumb nails. Love this plugin!!! Bring on the pictures!
Top Worpress Plugins for Fashion Blogs #3: Ajax Post Carousel by Mantish – 8manos
The Ajax Post Carousel Plugin (updated version) is one of my favorite plugins for fashion blogs.
It allows you to display your post thumb nails in a carousel, giving your visitors the option to quickly browse through your content by only looking at images and clicking the carousel arrows…Perfect for Fashion Blogs! It is especially cool if you have a WordPress template with a wigetized homepage (The full homepage layout is controlled by widgets, not just the sidebar, giving you full control over your homepage post preview layout) . But you can also use the Ajax post carousel in your side bar. There are some limitations in placing the Ajax Post Carousel in the sidebar due to space constraints (depending on the size of your sidebar) but nonetheless, it works just fine and is just as cool! You can filter posts by category and control how many show up at a time. I use Ajax Post Carousel widget in both my wigetized homepage area AND my sidebar. #POW
Top Worpress Plugins for Fashion Blogs #2: Image Zoomer by Reza Erauansyah
The Image Zoomer plugin is simple. It allows for your images to be zoomed in when you hover your mouse over those image. Kinda like when you hoover over an image on any ecommerce site. This is good for a fashion blogger who is showing an image that has minor details that are difficult to see. With the Image Zoomer plugin, the user can set all images to zoom or specify some images to allow preferred by image class. The Image Zoomer is so simple yet so necessary!
Top Worpress Plugins for Fashion Blogs #1: Quick Page/Post Redirect DE by Don Fischer
This plugin is cool because you can redirect any post to an internal or external link. Why would a fashion blogger need this? Let's say for instance, you are an affiliate for your favorite online clothing store and want to offer a hot new pair of jeans to your visitors in hopes that they buy them. Just create a post, add the title and meta data for SEO purposes, add a featured image for the post thumbnail, and set the post to redirect to your product affiliate link. This way it looks nice and pretty on your blog home page and blends in with the rest of your content. It looks like a normal post but guess what? When the visitor clicks on the image, they are taken to the website to buy the jeans…with your affiliate commission link. I know…I'm a genius
If you have any questions about fashion blogs or any of these plugins please feel free to leave a comment below or contact me on my new website Lidyr.com.
Perfect plug-in that I can use to create a new fashion blog site, sometimes its kind of hard to choose what kind of plug-in that I can use because some are complicated and not user friendly, I think that this is the best solution for creating a fashion blog site.
Yes, some plugins are complicated and not user friendly. I tried to include all user friendly plugins for this blog post. Thanks!
You are so much welcome Nikki, you know what, as I have read your post it inspired me a lot to create a good fashion themes that will sure attract many interested readers thanks for this.
Nikki, thank you for sharing these plug-ins. I don’t have any fashion blogs personally, however, I will keep these in mind as attempt to boost the tech knowledge and skills of teens.
Thanks for the comment Marcie. Although you don’t have any fashion blogs, some of these plugins may help with other types of blogs as well.
Hey Ileane,
Even though these are great plugins for fashion blogs, the methods for finding plugins and generating more traffic could apply to any blog, so thanks for the great advice 🙂
Liz
Hey Liz,
You’re right! These plugins could work for any blog. Thanks for the read and comment!!!
These plugin are really nice to build fashion blogs. Now a day found that Ajax Post Carousel Plugin is become more popular plugin to give new look to webpages and easy browsing by looking at images.
You are correct, we should know everything about any plugin that we use. Thanks for the comment!
Hi Bhupendra,
The Ajax Post plugin does make it easy to browse by looking at images. Thanks for the comment!
Yay! I am glad to know about it and this is truly useful. The following plugins are definitely great for all fashion blogs.
Your traffic numbers are nothing short of AMAZING for such a young site. Thanks for the plugin tips. I have a question about the last one you mentioned. Does it show the affiliate URL when you hover over it? I’m only asking because of Amazon’s new “no link cloaking” policy. Cool idea though. I think I might put it to use with some non-Amazon offers.
Great plugins ! I am always looking for more useful plugins for my blog. Thanks for sharing this info Nikki. I am not a fashion blogger either but this can definitely applied to other types of blogs. The Ajax carousel plugin is totally awesome !
Thanks !
This was an interesting list of plugins despite the fact that I’m not a fashion blogger. Instead of Quick Page/Post Redirect DE I use Pretty Link Lite which is really simple to use and has a bookmarklet. Is there a benefit to Quick Page/Post Redirect DE over Pretty Link?
By the way, WordPress was sometimes spelled as Worpress in the post, you might want to fix that 🙂
Awesome! This one is really great, it made more interesting well surely pull the attention of a viewer…
Well, this is interesting. Even though I’m not running a fashion blog, but still, I think it’s a very useful information. Great share!
This plugins will really make my life easier. All of the plugins are great but I really like top #1. You can place a link for making money and other specific links.
Several of my sites make use of thumbnails. They can be tricky sometimes so I appreciate the plugin recommendation.
First of all, is the WordPress SEO by Yoast and Joost the same? I’m gonna try #s 1,2, & 3. I’ve never used to those 3. And I’m curious of the ajax carousel. Thanks a bunch for your post.
Thanks for the great list of plugins here. My girlfriend asked me to create a fashion/girly blog for here, so I will try to install some of these plugins on it. 🙂
My friend is a budding fashion designer and I just forced her into blogging so she is finally doing it!
So, this is nicely timed! And yes, I love the images! 🙂 Trust you designers you come with pretty things!
Thanks!
Well an image slider[auto ] will be a great plugin for fashion blog plus some hot designs
Excellent post! I am not a fashion blogger (although I toyed with the idea…), but love hearing about WP plugins. I hear you on the WP junkie! Seems I can never know *too much* about plugins. Thanks for the insight… may just use some of these for my non-fashion-blogs 🙂
These are nice plugins, which will gonna help to make fashion blog more interesting for the fashion lover like me 😛
Thank you for this nice post here, useful one;)
Yes, couldn’t agree more that all these plugins are indeed great plugins.
These plugins are very useful for me. Thanks for sharing and Keep good posting.
These plugins are actually for any types of blog and I’m using right in the first one while with Genesis which is also SEO plugin. It sounds pretty cool to me with last plugin. However, I’m not sure, are we have to use a lot of plugin to support our blog.
really very great information for plugins.it will be very helpful for me.thanks for sharing your nice blog.keep it up.
Nice post. Very useful . Thanks for sharing.
he he.. Nice reply.. 🙂 BTW there ais limit to use the too many wordpress plugins with your wordpress site.
Really its great post. its very helpful for me it give lot of plugins imp info thanks for its sharing.
Some good recommendations and I’d like to add that I like the look and attitude of your site, very cool, keep up the good work.
wow…some unique plugin to boost Fashion blog site. I’ll try to use it in my site too 🙂
Online business on fashion are success. Mostly, look on latest trend that would fit on the style and weather. There are some relates on old times fashion that remember on the old ones. Often, even child influence on the modern way of wearing clothes.
I just want to create a fashion blog site and I think that these plugins are just perfect. Thank you. I will try to use them.
I’m thinking which one is suitable plugin for my blog. Whether the Ajax match in my blog?
Nikki this article is a great help for beginners like me. Thank you so much.
Omg! I was in search of WP plugins like you have described.
kindly share more WP plugins