Want to know what the most useful and best WordPress plugins for bloggers are? There are certain plugins that provide fantastic functionality and are what we would suggest are essential plugins for bloggers and anyone using WordPress.
You need to be careful NOT to overuse plugins though! The more plugins you install the more you are likely to slow down your site and site speed is a key consideration for SEO algorithms (in short, the faster your site, the better chance of ranking higher in search results).
So, in this post, I will focus on plugins that are free and that helps your site in terms of productivity, keeping your site clean, safe and secure, and that provide you essentially useful functionality.
Table of Contents
1. BackupBuddy (or Updraft)
One of the very first things I always recommend to do when using WordPress is to ensure that all of the very hard work that you do on your blog, is protected!
You need a plugin that creates one backup file of EVERYTHING.
So you need the posts, images, the tables in the database that holds everything together, the links, and all that make your site work.
Two of the most popular plugins for achieving this are Backupbuddy and Updraft. I understand that Updraft is an excellent option if you so choose.
My own experience over the last 7 years has been of using Backupbuddy and it has always done the job when I have needed to move a site to another hosting company of to reinstall a site for a client.
Whichever backup plugin you choose, the essential thing is to make sure you have automated backups running.
I tend to do weekly automated backups and the backups automatically get sent to my Amazon S3 storage.
2. Social Pug
There are a number of plugins you can use for social media sharing and they often serve much the same purpose.
I have used several social sharing plugins over the years though, and one of my favorites is Social Pug.
There are a number of reasons why I especially love Social Pug.
Easy to Use Interface
Unlike some plugins, Social Pug is especially easy to use. Setting up your blog posts, for example, to show share counts on the top of a post and to select which media to use, is extremely easy.
Good for Site Speed
Every time you add a new plugin you are potentially further slowing down the speed of your site.
Thus, plugins that are lightweight and avoid over-burdening the resources used for your site, are best.
Social Pug is a great plugin in terms of usage and hence an attractive option if you are thinking about your site speed with better SEO results in mind
3. W3 Total Cache (Free) or WP Rocket (Paid)
Now, if you are fairly new to blogging, I do not want to bore you with technical talk, but I will tell you one thing: Using a caching plugin on your website is essential!
Why a Cache Plugin Is Essential
In essence, a cache plugin helps you to maintain a faster site speed by storing static data so that this data does not need to be downloaded every time.
Given that site speed is an essential ingredient in search engine algorithms (meaning a consideration if you want to have the best chance to rank in searches) then you need a cache plugin.
For the best FREE option, I would recommend W3 Total Cache. For free it does a great job of doing the basic caching job and helps speed up your site.
The caching plugin I use and that is in my opinion by far the best (you might want to read my post on How to easily increase your SITE SPEED) is WP Rocket. It is one of the few tools I am happy to pay for.
With WP Rocket it is brilliant for you if you are not a technical genius because with WP Rocket you can very easily optimize many of the site speed settings with minimal effort. (I explain those settings here!)
There are alternatives such as W3 Total Cache and it is a decent enough tool for caching but lacks many of the features that you get with WP Rocket.
The popularity of this plugin is clear with over 1 million installations worldwide, and the free version is more than suitable for most bloggers.
You can learn more about setting up W3 Total cache here.
4. Yoast SEO
Second in value (only behind having a cache plugin) is the Yoast SEO plugin.
This plugin, with over 5 million installations, tells you the popularity and value that this plugin offers.
This is a fantastic plugin that gives you tonnes of help to perfect each new page or blog post that you create, for SEO (search engine optimization).
The key features of this plugin are the ability to:
- View, insert and optimize Meta tags (essential task)
- Easily manage breadcrumbs on your site
- Follow the tips on setting the page URLs, when to add in more keywords in content and image names.
- And a tonne more stuff all in this one free plugin.
There is a paid version of Yoast but in truth, you do not really need it. The FREE version is more than good enough.
5. Easy Table of Contents
Take a look at the top of this page and you will notice an automated table of contents section.
Making your own table of contents without a plugin can be time-consuming and it’s easy to make mistakes.
Alas, the Easy Table of Contents plugin simply creates itself by using the header tags in your post, to dynamically create the table of contents.
This plugin is extremely easy to set-up and the titles are clickable and take you to the specific section you click for.
You can also disable the table of contents on specific pages and decide to have the table open with all titles or closed and to open with a click.
Free and very easy to use and it does exactly what you need if you want a Table of Contents on your pages.
6. Last Modified or Updated Plugin
You might be wondering what on earth a ‘Last-Modified’ plugin is and what the benefit of it is. Let me explain!
On this site, you will see the last modified date at the top of each blog post.
Last Modified versus Publication Date in WordPress
The last modified date is different from the published date of your post and when explained it is perhaps obvious?
The last modified date is the date when you last updated the page. The publication date, on the other hand, is the date when you first put the page live.
Why Is a Last Modified Date Useful at All?
There are two potential benefits to disabling the publication date and using the last modified date:
- Your pages will look much newer to your site visitors because, if you updated a page, the date will be more recent than the publication date.
- It makes it even clearer to search engines that your site has been updated and when (although search engines can normally detect when a page has changed).
So the main benefit is that your users will feel that they are viewing more up-to-date information. You would rather results that are more recent and up-to-date right?
7. ConvertKit Plugin for Mailing Lists
I am sure that you appreciate that the one true way to build up a customer database is to use a mail list provider.
Your site can go up and down in search results. Likewise, social media platforms can cease to exist such as has happened with ‘FriendsReunited’, ‘Friendster’, and ‘Google+’.
The solution is to build your email list and one of the most popular with bloggers is Convertkit.
I include mention of Convertkit here in regards to plugins because once you have started your FREE TRIAL with Convertkit, you can use the ConvertKit plugin to make it extremely easy to add your forms onto your site.
This form below, for example, uses Convertkit and enables people such as yourself to get our FREE Trigger Words PDF to download.
8. Akismet Anti-Spam
Now, if you have not already installed the Akismet plugin, then I would urge you to do so. This is a must-have for all bloggers no matter what your niche.
I would recommend having comments turned on for your blog posts, meaning that people can reply to your post and add their own comments.
Search engines love to see social engagement for your content.
If you have comments turned on though, you need a way to check which messages are spam and which are not. Alas. This is the beauty of Akismet.
Akismet is one of the best plugins on the market for checking and categorizing comments as good or spam.
Furthermore, it is another incredibly easy tool to set up and even though you are asked to contribute for the plugin, you can just pay let’s say USD$5 a year. It is worth a lot more so donate what you desire to.
Just choose the ‘Name your price’ option when downloading the plugin.
9. Fancier Author Box
Most of the plugins I have already mentioned on this page are plugins that I would call essential plugins. They are invaluable for many of us bloggers and online business owners.
The ‘Fancier Author Box’ plugin is one that is not really necessary but it is certainly one we love here at Promarketingonline.com
To see what the Fancier Author Box looks like, take a look at the bottom of this post or on our last post about where to find free stock photos for your site.
Having a nice jazzy style author box can be great for branding and to give your blog a nice feel and look.
10. WP Smush
I have already mentioned site speed and for a good reason.
Site speed is something you should always consider with your site and you want your site to load fast for the end-user.
These days, people are impatient, and if your site loads slowly, they will soon click onto something else. You need your site to load fast!
One key way to speed your site up is to ensure that your images are all optimized as best as possible for the web.
You can do this in one of 2 ways. Firstly, you can optimize your images before you load them onto a webpage. The easiest way to do this is to run an image through Optimizilla, which is a FREE image compression tool. It is what we use.
The second option is this plugin, Smush Image Compression. You can run this plugin and it will optimize all of the images on your site.
Within minutes, you can have a more efficient and optimized site that will aid your SEO efforts.
Final Advice
It is so easy to get carried away and to start adding plugins to your site and ending up with far too many.
I suggest trying and never ever have more than 20 plugins installed on your site. In fact, if you are able to limit it to 15, your site is likely to be faster again. So pick your plugins carefully.
I also strongly suggest taking a look at the information for the plugin before you download it. You will see this information on the main plugin page like you will see on this page for the Smush plugin (on the right side of the page).
So what on earth do you need to look at above I hear you asking! Check the following:
- Last Updated – if the plugin regularly updated i.e. at least every few months? Ideally, it will be.
- Ratings – Do people rate this plugin. A 1 or 2-star plugin is certainly one to avoid.
- Active Installations – The more people that have installed a plugin the more likely it is, one can assume, that people find it useful. Plugins with over 1 million installations you can be sure are popular for a good reason.
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