As you probably already know, WordPress is an excellent platform with enormous potential. It’s a great choice for your blog, particularly because of the many customization options that are possible thanks to plugins.
There is a plugin for virtually anything you need, from design to security and even social sharing. But how do you choose from the tens of thousands of awesome plugins? Which ones are best suited to your blog?
What Are Plugins and What Do They Do?
Plugins are comparable to the apps you install on your smartphone. They add new features and capabilities to your blog or website. There are tens of thousands of plugins available, pertaining to different categories, depending on what the software does for your website. Some plugins help with design, security, commenting, placing photos, etc. The ones you pick depend on what your goals are for your blog.
For example, you can turn your page into an online store with a plugin for e-commerce, turn it into a gallery, a wiki page, etc. with different dedicated plugins. They significantly contribute to the potential of your WordPress website.
There are thousands of plugins that are developed with blogs in mind, but here are the top 10 WordPress plugins for your blog.
1) Jetpack
What does it do? Jetpack helps with security issues for your blog. Nowadays, cyberattacks can include malware infection, spam, and even a brute force attack, all of which you can protect against with the help of Jetpack. Also, you get updates and notifications about your site, so you can always stay on top of what’s happening.
Why do you need it? Website security is one of the most important aspects of maintenance, so do not underestimate it for your blog. One attack can hurt you financially or lead to loss of data. The plugin also has additional features relating to design customization, SEO, and faster loading for managing one or multiple websites.
2) Yoast SEO
What does it do? Yoast SEO is in charge of optimizing your blog for SEO. There’s a series of actions that can help attract more users to your page, including sitemaps, making sure your site is on the Google Search Console, adding meta tags, setting up social media optimization, and others. This plugin does all those things for you, so that your blog is optimized for SEO.
Why do you need it? WordPress is already designed to help with your SEO efforts, but it is so important for visitors that you cannot live without a dedicated plugin. This one is the most popular, and it can save you significant time and effort.
3) WPForms
What does it do? You know that all websites have a contact form of some sort. Well, this plugin sets that up for you. It is incredibly easy to use, as it’s a simple drag & drop process. It doesn’t only set you up with contact forms, but also online order forms, polls, surveys, subscription forms, and others.
Why do you need it? A contact form is important on a blog and WPForms is the very best for your needs. In addition, it also allows you to create login pages and user registration forms in case you want to make your blog private and only allow access to a select audience.
4) Akismet
What does it do? This WordPress developed plugin filters your comments to make sure that no spam is getting through. Not only does it perform this convenient filtering service, but it also puts a comment history at your disposal so you can see what users have been approved and be able to remove any unwanted links.
Why do you need it? Blog comments are, unfortunately, like catnip for spammers. But moderating comments can take up a lot of your time, so having an automated service to do it is worth it.
5) MonsterInsights
What does it do? MonsterInsights is a Google Analytics plugin for your blog. With its help, you can keep an eye on your blog statistics, including demographics, location, devices, etc. If you also sell on your blog, you can also measure conversion rates and monitor ad views.
Why do you need it? Monitoring and being aware of your stats are essential in understanding your blog and how to aid its growth. MonsterInsights will show you where your blog excels and what you need to work on to ensure that your site can be as successful as it can be.
6) Social Snap
What does it do? Social Snap is a solution to every blog’s need to integrate all channels, including social media. Sharing posts to social media is crucial for audience growth, so this plugin makes it easy to add your social media sharing buttons in the best places. All the platforms of interest are featured, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, Whatsapp, and others.
Why do you need it? Having a social media sharing plugin is no longer an option, but a requirement for your SEO strategy and overall growth. Social Snap is the best one on the market, and it supports sharing buttons on the desktop, but also on mobile versions.
7) Wordfence Security
What does it do? Without WordPress Security Practices, your blog is vulnerable to attacks. Wordfence is a security plugin that offers attractive safety features, like scanning for vulnerable points, blocking networks it identifies as malicious, analyzing metrics that may leave you vulnerable to attacks, etc.
Why do you need it? You can never have enough security measures and protections, so even though you may have password protection in place, you may consider some extra security, for your peace of mind. Cyberattacks are more and more frequent, and prevention is better than cure.
8) Beaver Builder
What does it do? Like the name suggests, Beaver Builder is a page builder plugin. Essentially, it makes it easy for you to get the attractive, user-friendly website you want. Even if you have no skills or experience, the drag & drop feature is intuitive, and the options for customization are endless. Plus, it works great on mobile.
Why do you need it? The more attractive and user-friendly your blog is, the more visitors it’s going to attract. A gorgeous design also contributes to user retention and can help your blog look more professional. That not only contributes to growth, but also possible affiliates, and opportunities for advertising and sponsorships.
9) Smush
What does it do? Every blog needs a plugin for image optimization, and that’s exactly what Smush does. Essentially, it’s a software that automatically optimizes your images to reduce loading times. The plugin will compress, optimize and resize photos for maximum efficiency, with no loss in quality.
Why do you need it? One of the primary qualities of a good web host is speed, and WordPress can offer you that. However, images can impact your loading time, thus driving users away. An image optimizer does the work for you and cuts down on server strain and waiting times.
10) Pretty Links
What does it do? Pretty Links is a plugin that assists you in cleaning up and shortening your affiliate links. That can achieve an attractive, more streamlined look. In turn, that helps generate more clicks, but it also keeps things organized.
Why do you need it? Link shortening is not necessary, but it makes it much easier to track your links and see the details on each hit. You’ll also want to track your social media and email clicks. Especially when promote your blog gains traction and you are working with multiple affiliates and placing more links, a plugin is helpful with monitoring.
Bottom line
As you can see, there is plenty to choose from when picking out your plugins. Some will recommend that you limit their number, lest it impacts your loading speed. However, according to WordPress, it is the quality of the plugins that matters more than the quantity.
All the plugins on this list run smoothly, are very efficient, and are safe to use. Thy are ideal to get your blog up and running. All you have to do is install them and your blog should be good to go.
Thank you for sharing your flawless work with us.
I would like to suggest another best Blog Designer Pro WordPress plugin. It allows you to create and manage your blog on your WordPress website in just a few minutes. You can give your blog a perfect look by using 50 layouts that are available with this plugin.
Thanks for your recommendation, Michael.