WordPress is an excellent blogging platform. You can choose from many themes and plugins, making it easier to extend the functionality of your website. However, what are the mandatory WordPress plugins for bloggers in particular? If you are serious about blogging, you need a tool that will help you reach a wide audience and keep your website safe from common threats. You may also need social media plugins to maximize your reach and optimize your website speed.
In this article, we introduce the best WordPress plugins for blogs. Let’s dive in!
1. Yoast SEO – for SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of your top priorities when it comes to growing your audience. This is where Yoast SEO can help. This handy tool will help you optimize your content based on your chosen focused keywords, add SEO-friendly titles, and fill in meta descriptions for pages and posts. In addition, it has an excellent readability analysis that offers practical suggestions for improvement.
Starting a blog can be easy, but building an audience takes time and resources. You need to direct readers to your blog using a plugin like All in One SEO. This plugin attracts visitors from Google, Bing, and social media sites to increase your readership.
2. WP Forms – for inquiries
WPForms lets you create beautiful contact forms, feedback forms, subscription forms, payment forms, and other types of forms for your website in minutes, not hours! At WPForms, user experience is our number 1 priority. Their ready-made templates for forms and workflows make WPForms the most convenient entry-level contact form plug-in on the market.
WPForms will walk you through creating your first form in less than 5 minutes. WPForms includes integrations for popular page builders like WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg), Classic Editor, Elementor, and Divi, which makes the whole process seamless. WPForms is a 100% attractive contact form solution for mobile, so your contact forms always look great on all devices (mobile devices, tablets, laptops, and desktops).
WPForms contact forms are also highly optimized for web and server performance because this plugin understands the importance of speed when it comes to SEO, marketing, and conversions. We can honestly say that WPForms is one of the fastest plugins for creating WordPress contact forms in the world.
Bloggers and publishers can use WPForms to receive guest posts, referral contact form to collect referrals, and partnership agreement form to grow their business.
3. WP Super Cache – for cache
A good and one of the best WordPress plugins for blogs caching can also shorten your blog’s loading time in many areas. For this purpose, WP Super Cache is one of the best WordPress cache plugins out there. It generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog and processes these files instead of the heavier WordPress PHP scripts.
This plugin also processes cached files in 3 different ways, such as Expert, simple, and WP cache caching. Both are categorized by speed, and you can even choose the easy method if you’re not used to manipulating PHP files.
The main features are as follows:
- Multiple caching methods support (Mode_Rewrite, PHP, and Legacy)
- Provides static HTML files to reduce processing time
- Cache recovery – save and maintain old pages
- CDN support
- Uses the garbage collection process to delete old files from the cache
- Although the plugin doesn’t offer advanced settings like other plugins, it does enough to optimize your site for better site loading speed.
4. Jetpack – for multifunctional websites and tracking
Jetpack is a flexible plugin that every website owner should have. It has various security features such as spam and malware protection, backup, and activity logs. Jetpack also gives you the added benefit of SEO with built-in website analytics and social media integration. It allows you to add social sharing buttons to your posts on the most popular networks. In addition, various customization tools are included to give you more flexibility in designing your blog.
5. WordFence – for secure websites
Wordfence includes an endpoint firewall and malware scanner designed from the start to protect WordPress. Rounded out by 2FA and a host of additional functionality, Wordfence is the most comprehensive WordPress security solution available. Your blog is a business that makes anything worth that causes people to steal from you. You worked hard for it, but some others [unfortunately] don’t want to. Wordfence Security is a security plugin that includes a firewall and malware scanner to protect your WordPress blog from external threats.
It blocks malicious attempts to enter your website and even shows you where the IP address is coming from and what credentials the user used to log in. You should never take the security of your blog lightly. Make sure you also use a strong password to log into your WordPress site.
6. Simple Affiliate Link – to convert link into an affiliate link
Easy Affiliate Links helps you to manage all affiliate links on your website. Both the hidden beautiful connection and the usual open connection. Clicks are tracked automatically for your links.
Current function:
- Compatible with the classic editor and the new Gutenberg block editor
- Add Elementor affiliate link using their text widget
- Use simple links or affiliate HTML codes
- Optionally create a short link to disguise your partnership
- Use UGC and sponsor attributes on your connection
- Leave certain links open to ensure Amazon compatibility
- Auto text disclaimer for your partnership
- Easy access to your links in visual and HTML editor
- Assign a category for your link
- Track clicks by month and lifetime
- Import affiliate links from XML and CSV
- Ability to export your links in XML and CSV
- Use CSV export and import to easily update your group links
7. Check Broken Links – to check for broken links and pages not found
Broken Link Checker monitors and tests all internal and external links on your website and looks for broken links. Help you fix bad links for better SEO and user experience.
8. Social Snap – to share on social networks
Social Snap is the best WordPress social media plugin that gives you control over how your visitors share and view your content. Designed with ease of use and performance in mind. Social Snaps are developed according to the latest standards to ensure a smooth and fast process. It works asynchronously so it doesn’t slow down your website at all.
9. WP-DBmanager – database optimization / DB backup
Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete archive database, run/empty tables, and execute selected queries. Supports automatic database backup scheduling, optimization, and repair.