For those of you who’re starting a WordPress blog for the first time or those who’re still trying to figure out the gems amongst the countless plugins in the world of WordPress, I decided to create this post (moreover, to save the time of replying to hundreds of pings i get each day, from the newbie bloggers, seeking suggestions on right plugins to use) to list out top 10 WP plugins to make the most out of your new blog.
I’m going with just the basics, because the list could grow really big, and a lot could depend upon the niche of your blog too.
1. Jetpack or Stat counter: Helps you track the number of visitors to your blog in a seamless manner, without having to deal with lot of complicated stuff, but of course you’ll need to create a free account on statcounter.com for using stat counter plugin.
For advanced users, it’s recommended to integrate Google Analytics by placing the GA code in the footer file in editor.
2. All in One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert or SEO Yoast: It’s the most crucial plugin for on-page SEO of your website.
3. Contact Form 7: This helps you ensure that contact form submitted by your visitor lands safely in your inbox in a hassle-free manner
4. Google XML Sitemap by Arne Brachold – This helps you generate sitemap for your blog and ping all search engines at regular intervals so that crawler frequently visits your newly-created (and existing) web pages.
Related Posts – IGIT or YARPP – This helps you display related posts to your visitors, and generate more page views per visitor.
5. Social Sharing – any of your choice would do, and it’s a must-have, especially in this social media driven world where social shares can do wonders
6.Tweetily can help connect and auto-tweet all your WordPress posts to save time, and it can help in quick indexation too.
7. Google Adsense Manager: If you’re not comfortable in adding your Adsense code manually on your blog posts, then this could be a handy plugin
8. Enable Akismet & Delete all unwanted default plugins like Hello Dolly to reduce the possibility of your blog getting spammed with junk comments, and hacked due to vulnerability in some useless plugin.
WP Supercache or Any similar caching plugin – this may not be essential for a new blog during the initial days.
9. Related Posts – IGIT or YARPP – This helps you display related posts to your visitors, and generate more page views per visitor, and monetise your blog better.
10. WP Supercache or Any similar caching plugin – this may not be essential for a new blog during the initial days.
Additionally, you should also generate privacy policy, disclaimer pages and write a good “About” page, and ensure that you’ve added a newsletter module/widget to capture email IDs of your blog visitors, and inserted ads smartly to make the most out of the incoming traffic.
If you’ve been using a plugin that you really loved, do drop in your comments and let the Bloggers World know about it.
Furthermore, don’t forget to keep updating all your plugins and themes to ensure that you don’t have any outdated versions, which might make your WordPress blog vulnerable – that’s one of the common mistakes committed by new bloggers.
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