When we are talking about a successful WordPress blog that makes massive money, we’re talking about some must-have plugins that are doing a great job behind.
One of the reasons WordPress became my favorite was its choice of hundreds of plugins. I think of a feature and the plugin is there. However, stuffing your blog with tons of plugins will only slow down the site and loading.
Let me share only these 12 must-have and best WordPress plugins (mostly free) for bloggers and I am using all of them for many of my blogs.
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Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress plugins for SEO that help to make your site search engine-friendly. Yoast helps writing “just right” meta details using the targeted keywords that make a convincing and catchy snippet in search engines.
It lets you use focus keyword and related keyphrases to help you optimize your pages and posts.
Sites like SearchEngineLand, The Next Web and the New Yorker use Yoast SEO.
And it’s free. The premium version gives you more features such as allowing multiple related keywords etc.
2. Smush.it
A blog post is always incomplete without a relevant image attached to it. An amazing way to upload some high-resolution images to your blog post is to optimize them. Smush is one of the favorite plugins for many bloggers. It has become a benchmark and never compromises with its speed and quality.
It is a brilliant image optimizer, compresses any image without compromising the image quality.
Good news! It’s Free too.
3. Sumo Social
Sumo Social is one of the best looking lean social sharing plugins for wordpress that allows your blog visitors to share your posts with their networks.
What I love about this plugin is its stats I receive every week on my email about how many people shared my posts and on what networks. Gives me a good insight which social networks are popular among my audience.
It has got good placement options that allow you to put your share feature anywhere on the page from top to bottom or floating vertically.
You can use the free version.
4. Akismet
Your blog will be a mess without having an anti-spam wordpress plugin. I prefer the Akismet. Old and trusted. It checks the comments and filters them if they appear to be spam. Even the comment body shows URLs to unfold hidden and misleading links. Akismet is one of the best spam detector and preventer plugin.
Akismet is free for personal bloggers.
5. Wordfence
As blogging is getting popular, the population of hackers is rising too. Wordfence works as a firewall and security scanner to keep your website from any malware or hacking.
It deliberately identifies malicious traffic and blocks them. Moreover, it also scans the core files, themes, URLs, spams, etc.
It is one of the available free wordpress security plugins but I suggest buying the premium version get to avail the best features and keep your blog safe.
6. Revive Old Post
Oh, I love this one. It was gold I found the way it increased my blog traffic multifold. The traffic spike made this plugin to the best wordpress plugins list I had. Revive Old Post helps to keep the old (and new) posts of your site alive by sharing them on regular internals and driving more traffic to them from Social Networks.
What does it do?
1. Share new and old posts on your choice of social networks.
2. Set your time interval between posting.
3. Choose the number of posts to share.
4. Use hashtags
5. Exclude categories.
6. Exclude specific posts.
7. Integrated with Google Analytics.
8. Compatible with URL Shorteners.
The plugin is free and comes with a premium version with more attractive features.
7. Shortcodes Ultimate
How your content and post looks matter. The presentation is the key to repeat readers. Shortcodes Ultimate is a collection of various visual and functional elements that help in the post editor. Use Shortcodes Ultimate to highlight prominent stats and texts, easily create tabs, buttons, boxes, sliders and carousels, responsive videos, etc.
The plugin provides 50+ beautiful shortcodes. Try the free version today if you have not been using it already.
8. UpdraftPlus
To be safe is to be prepared. UpdraftPlus helps in backups and restoration in your site, just in case something bad happens. It is the most popular backup plugin, with more than two million currently-active installs.
It can backup to Dropbox, Google Drive or email to your emails.
You can even set your backup schedules. Weekly is good unless your blog is updated daily. Try the free version of updraftplus.
9. OptinMonster
Blogging is orphan without an email list. And getting emails from your readers isn’t easy. It requires a tool that creates the most pleasing opt-in creative. OptinMonster is a bloggers’ favorite. This is one of the best wordpress plugins that helps you to create and integrate effective and attractive email signup forms on your website. It can easily integrate with popular email tools such as Constant Contact, Aweber, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, etc and offers advanced page level targeting.
The beauty of this plugin lies in its ability to create popup forms, exit-intent popups to the floating header. Try them all. Use what works for you.
10. Beacon
Beacon is a turbo. It creates stunning eBooks and bonus content that your readers will love as downloadables. And guess what, you’re growing your email list with this.
It automates the design process so that your content will instantly look great. You can change the font, use free stock imagery available and customize your brand colors.
All of a sudden, your blog becomes rich with several downloadable resources. This is a paid plugin but worth the value.
Don’t miss this tool. Try it now.
11. Ad Inserter
Ad inserter is by far the most active, well-maintained and best free WordPress ad plugins. With 4.9 out of 5-star rating and over 40000 active installs, this plugin is famous for its ease of use among bloggers.
From Adsense to affiliate ads, it works perfectly with all different kinds of ads.
You want to keep some of the pages like your about me page ad-free. The plugin makes it easy to exclude specific pages and post.
Another best feature is to be able to post the ad at any point in your content.
12. Grammarly
Grammarly is a gem for bloggers when it comes to proofing and producing error-free content. My own blogging life is incomplete without using Grammarly. Apart from the blogs, it helps me keep my social media posts and emails error-free.
Though I love human editing but this no-brainer is a time saver. Add it to your must-have plugins and it will keep you from major embarrassment those spellings can cause. The list is incomplete without this free and one of the best must have wordpress plugins
That’s all from me and it’s enough to get started with a rocking blog that readers would love and one that makes massive money.
Do you have some favorite wordpress plugins that worked well for you? Share in comments. I would love to try them.
Happy Blogging!
Sunita Biddu is a digital business coach and power blogging mentor helping coaches and small business owners. She helps with building a strong and profitable online presence and reputation that creates a self-sustaining business. Sunita writes on this blog once a week about easy-to-use guides and articles about business, coaching, social media and blogging. You can grab some of her free resources and ebooks from the resources section.