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.