How to Showcase Trending Articles Based on Views in WordPress

No matter your niche, if you publish content regularly, learning how to showcase trending articles in WordPress can help you generate even more value from your best content.

In this guide, we’ll show you two quick and easy methods to put your most popular posts front and center and outline the key benefits you can gain by doing so.

The benefits of showcasing articles that have already proven a hit with your readers all come down to one very important thing:

Using your best assets to grow your WordPress blog and take things to the next level by:

Trending posts keep visitors hooked by highlighting fresh content that’s already garnered buzz, piquing their curiosity to see what all the fuss is about.

The more those visitors click on that trending content, the higher your engagement rates soar, and the lower your bounce rate falls.

Increased engagement can send positive signals to search engine crawlers, which may come to view your site more favorably.

Ultimately, this can have a positive impact in terms of improved search visibility both for your site as a whole and individual posts, resulting in more organic traffic and making your most popular content even more popular.

It may sound obvious, but the more eyeballs you get on your content, the more conversions you can potentially generate.

For example, if you’re running an eCommerce store, using the methods below to showcase your hottest-selling items can help improve your store’s customer journey and drive more sales.

Meanwhile, the bloggers and small business owners among you who are using effective Calls to Action (CTA) on your most popular posts can boost leads, newsletter sign-ups, and more.

Showcasing trending posts demonstrates your content is fresh, relevant, and in tune with current interests, all of which can help strengthen your reputation as an authoritative voice within your niche.

By doing so, you not only have the potential to gain a further boost to your conversion rates as more customers come to trust you but also improve the way Google perceives your site, which could result in better search rankings.

If that’s enough to convince you, let’s dive in and see how it’s done:

One of the few things that WordPress lacks is an in-built widget for displaying popular blog content.

Fortunately, there are a couple of easy workarounds:

If you already have an engaged audience, you can use the free Display Posts plugin to showcase articles with the most comments or social media shares.

Not only is this a great way to use popular posts to enhance your social proof, but it can also prove really effective in enticing more click-throughs as visitors click through, eager to see what everyone else is talking about.

Here’s how this method works.

The one downside to this plugin is that it has no user interface, with all the functionality and customization options handled via shortcodes.

While this makes it a little less user-friendly, the good news is that Display Posts has an extensive library of tutorials that contain all the ready-made shortcodes you could need to display trending blog content in a way that fits with your brand.

For example, if you want to display your most popular content based on the number of comments, you simply need to copy this shortcode:

[display-posts orderby=”comment_count”]

If you want to show articles with the most social media shares, use the following code, replacing meta_key_here with the meta key value used by your social media sharing plugin.

[display-posts orderby=”meta_value_num” meta_key=”meta_key_here”]

To customize the look of your custom posts, you can expand your shortcodes to include things like thumbnails.

You can use the following shortcode to show popular posts by comment count with thumbnails and excerpts:

[display-posts orderby=”comment_count” include_excerpt=”true” image_size=”thumbnail”]

PRO TIP:
If you decide to deactivate Display Posts, your shortcodes will no longer work, and the code itself will be displayed on your website.

So, if you’re working on upgrades or bug fixes on WordPress that require you to turn off all your plugins temporarily, it’s better to put your site in maintenance mode to avoid users seeing your raw shortcodes.

When you publish or preview your page, you’ll now see your most talked-about content listed.

Prefer to add posts to your sidebar or footer?

You can do that via widgets.

First, go to Widgets – Available Widgets and select Block.

Choose a location for your block widget (here, we’re adding it to the homepage sidebar) and click Add Widget.

From there, you must paste your shortcode into the HTML block, click save, and refresh your homepage to see your beautiful new trending articles showcased on your website.

PRO TIP:
You can also use the display posts plugin to showcase articles based on other conditions, such as categories and custom taxonomies or most recently published ones.

The last plugin we looked at did a solid job of displaying basic popular posts lists. However, if you really want to draw attention to your biggest hits, you may prefer to have them take center stage as a slider on your homepage or other landing page.

You can do that using another free shortcode-based plugin, Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget from EssentialPlugin.

Here’s how:

Once the plugin is activated, you’ll be invited to opt-in to the developer’s mailing list.

You can choose to sign up or skip this step. Either way, you’ll be redirected to the Settings page, where you have two basic settings to configure.

The first is to determine whether you want to showcase your most popular articles of all time or within a set date range.

In our example, you’ll see that we’re choosing to display our top trending articles from the last 7 days.

The second is the type of content you want to include.

Along with standard posts and page options, the Trending Posts Slider plugin is also compatible with both WooCommerce and the Elementor page builder, so you can choose to include product pages, landing pages, and even Elementor templates.

This makes the plugin a great option for eCommerce websites, pulling your customers’ focus and interest towards your current best-sellers.

Whichever options you choose, your next task is to simply click Save.

• Display popular posts as a standard slider – [wtpsw_popular_post]
• Display as a carousel – [wtpsw_carousel]
• Display as an attractive gridbox – [wtpsw_gridbox]

Copy your chosen shortcode and add it to your page using your preferred WordPress site builder tool.

In this example, we will add the shortcode to our homepage using the Elementor Page Builder.

From there, all you have to do is paste your chosen shortcode into the box provided and hit Apply.

PRO TIP:
Be sure to click Update in Elementor after adding your shortcode. Otherwise, the changes you’ve made won’t be reflected in the live version of your website.

Alternatively, if you’re using the default WordPress blocks editor to create your pages, you just have to add a shortcode block, paste in your code, and hit save.

With that, you’re all set and should now have a beautiful slider, grid, or carousel showcasing your hottest content.

PRO TIP:

Don’t like the style and layouts offered by this plugin? Upgrading to the EssentialPlugin bundle pack (prices start from $199) gives you over 40 design options, more custom display settings, and a package of additional plugins.

If you read through both of the above two methods for showcasing trending articles on your WordPress, we hope you agree that each one is as quick and easy as you could hope for, even if you have no prior coding knowledge.

The Display Posts plugin is perhaps the easiest method for adding popular post lists to your sidebars, though we understand that the lack of a user-friendly interface may be off-putting for some novice users.

Meanwhile, the Trending Posts Slider plugin is even more beginner-friendly, proving itself to be an excellent option for making trending articles a major highlight of your pages.

Of course, now that you’re displaying popular posts on your site, you’ll naturally need to keep creating top-quality content to ensure that your showcase never gets stale. Not sure where to start with that? Start with our top five tips for creating amazing website content.