The right author box plugin builds trust and loyalty with people and search engines, which grows new and repeat visitors to your blog.
Which free or paid author bio box plugin is the best choice for WordPress creators?
After testing and reviewing over a dozen author plugins, we conclude the best free plugin is Creators EAT by Zyra App and the best paid plugin is Zyra Console for Creators, as both plugins are best overall in mobile responsiveness, author branding, and popular posts internal linking — all the things that matter for SEO and user experience.
Read why and compare against other popular options available in 2023.
1. Zyra Console for Creators (Paid)
After years of tinkering and disappointment with every free and paid author box plugin for bloggers, we decided enough was enough. Our clients needed a robust author box solution that would help them build user engagement, grow their social media, and boost their E-E-A-T signals for SEO. So, we built the Power Bio Box, available in both free and paid and Free editions.
The free version first edition alone overpowers the most downloaded plugins in the free WordPress plugin repos. The paid version uses patent-pending Zyra technology that uses Google Search Console and natural language AI to safely and effectively optimize your blog posts.
Key Benefits & Features
- Author bio box shows at end of blog posts, automatically
- Mobile-responsive design looks good on all devices
- Inherits your blog font styles, colors, and sizes so you don’t have to waste hours in customizing
- Adds complex Author and Article Schema for advanced blog post SEO
- Author Bio gives creators chance to leave an impression like an elevator pitch
- Social Profile Links to top 7 platforms for Creators. All others excluded by design to reduce noise.
- Dynamic Popular Posts internal linking feature uses Google Search Console automation and Zyra algorithms to show new and top articles created by any and all authors on your blog
- Co-authoring supported. Choose primary and secondary authors.
- Plus related posts plugin (Relevance Editor) and category SEO plugin (Post Miner)
- Exclusively available for creators only.
2. Creators EAT by Zyra App (Free)
The Creators EAT by Zyra App plugin gives you the free version of the Power Bio Box. It comes with all features in the paid version, except GSC automation and advanced schema. Perfect for the hobbyist blogger just starting a new WordPress blog.
Key Benefits & Features
- Mobile-first responsive author box added at the end of blog posts, automatically
- Author box displays three tabs: Author Bio, Article Info, and Popular Posts
- Author Bio tab displays important information pulled from your author profile page in WordPress admin, such as: author name, social media links, custom job / professional title, profile image, and short author bio.
- Ability to upload your profile photo directly to WordPress, instead of needing to use Gravatar.
- Supports multiple authors on co-authored blog posts and set primary contributor
- Article Info tab displays useful details about the blog post, such as breadcrumb links, category and subcategory links, author info, article creation and last updated dates.
- Article Info tab complements Yoast and RankMath plugins to pull in Focus Keywords and Primary Category (and Subcategory).
- Article Info tab pulls in
Tagsdata (no links to Tag pages) to let Google know articleMentionsentities and subjects in the article. - Popular Posts tab uses smart logic to automatically create internal links to the newest or best blog posts by the (main) author.
- Popular Posts are determined in one of two methods.
- Default method: each article will pull in the 6 most recent posts from the primary category of the blog post by the author
- Power Posts method: combination of select Power Posts and the most recent blog posts from parent categories and subcategories by the author.
Other plugins only show the same fixed Recent Posts links, while Creators EAT plugin gives you ability to add static or generate dynamic links for higher variance, relevance, and SEO impact.
The second edition comes out soon with custom WordPress author archive page template.
3. Simple Author Box
If neither Power Bio Box options are right for you, try the Simple Author Box. No frills. It is a good, basic, popular free plugin option.
4. Molongui Authorship
The Molongui premium plugin was one of our favorite plugins tested mainly because it allows you to add latest posts in a separate tab. It was simple to set up and it got the job done, but that’s all it did.
5. Ultimate Author Box
In our experience, the Ultimate Author Box had too many customization nightmares waiting around the corner. The options look good when you shop on the CodeCanyon landing page, but it took hours and hours to create custom styling. All the pre-set themes color palettes were too flashy for our clients, conflicting with the styles and branding on blogs.
6. WP Post Author
Nice clean plugin design.
7. StarBox
An old school author box plugin. Not a bad option. It came with about 8 different themes, has latest posts tab, lots of social media site icons.
8. CoolAuthorBox
Comes with a bunch of different color options on a single template. Allows you to add it to your sidebar as widget.
Conclusion
Whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional creator, you need a decent author box to brand yourself and to let people and search engines know you’re a real person with real skills, expertise, and integrity, especially if you’re in the financial, legal, or medical niche industries. Even if you’re in the DIY, lifestyle, travel, education, food recipes, arts & crafts, home & garden, and other family-friendly categories, you need to differentiate yourself from all the marketing content creators. After all, it’s creators and real people like you Google wants to rank atop of search results.
Additional Author Box Plugin FAQs
What’s an author box plugin?
A plugin that inserts an author box at the end of blog posts to give credit to the original author. A good author box tells your career and life story. It helps you build rapport with our audience. It should establish trust with search engines.
There are dozens of free and paid author bio box plugins out there, but they only offer partial benefit.
Author boxes are great ways to signal trust, credibility and subject matter expertise of content creators and professionals. Site owners often add an author byline at the bottom of the post, but this doesn’t cut it. Neither do all the free and paid WordPress author bio box plugins. While they give you complete control and customization, they lack SEO features, namely with Google authorship. The Power Bio Box Pro will help boost rankings of your top posts in Google search results.
The Power Bio Box guarantees every author’s top content on your blog has the highest internal link counts in your Google Search Console Internal Links report. This is one of the many ways it helps you grow your organic traffic.
I have an About page. Do I need author box plugin?
Yes, you need an author box because it gives you a chance to leave a positive, memorable impression with almost all of your blog post readers. Meanwhile, only a small percent of readers will actually visit your About page. An About page is also more general in nature. This is where you can display your full author bio, your press kit, places you’ve been featured, and more.
What other author plugins do I need?
After author boxes, there are author page plugins that create author archives pages featuring all blog posts published by a single author in descending chronological order. There are also Author schema plugins out there as well as author byline plugins that add a generic sentence or two on every blog post.
The Zyra Team
Administrator at Zyra App
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