8 Great WordPress Plugins
When WordPress came out, it changed my life, and not only because it was a lot easier than managing static pages, once you get to learn it, you’re going to realize that there are so many things that you can do in terms of customization and more.
Whether you have a WordPress blog, or you’re in the process of setting one up, if you don’t have plug-ins installed, or you don’t know what they are, I strongly encourage you to learn more about them, as well as what they can do for your blog.
When starting out a blog, I highly encourage those to install the following plug-ins. They are not only free, but can help out your blog tremendously. If you don’t know how to install WordPress plug ins, this is a great guide that you can read. It’s very simple, and this is coming from someone that doesn’t know much about programming!
#1 Akismet – This is the plug in that comes standard with all WordPress downloads. You don’t want to overlook this one as it is going to get rid of all the spam that comes your way. Trust me, 99% of the comments that you’re going to get are going to be in terms of spam, or promotion.
#2 All in One SEO Pack – The best free way to draw traffic is via the big search engines such as Google, and Bing. This plug in makes it easier to make your posts, “SEO Friendly.” At the end of each post, you can enter your title, description, as well as throw in keywords. This is essential if you want a search engine presence.
#3 Facebook Like – Facebook is massive, and I can’t see it going anywhere anytime soon. This plug in will simply add a, “like” widget at the end of each post. If someone likes your post, it will show up on their Facebook feed, allowing their friends to like it. This is a great way to make things go viral.
#4 Clean Archives Reloaded – A lot of the default settings in WordPress really aren’t that SEO friendly. Clean Archives allow your previous posts to show up as a link, rather than a snippet.
#5 Google XML Sitemaps – Sitemaps is another must have when it comes to SEO. This plug in will update your sitemap automatically every time you add a post, and more. This is going to save a lot of time, and headaches. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to submit your sitemap (.xml file) to the Google Webmaster Tools. This is free to do, so take advantage!
#6 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – I love this plug in because it keeps visitors on my site longer. What it does is automatically spider the post on the page, and throws other posts from your site at the bottom of your post. This is a great way to get people to click on other stories of yours. I would only recommend this for blogs that have 100+ articles that are active.
#7 WP Super Cache - The WP Super Cache plug in is one that is recommended by many web hosting provides. WP Super Cache will generate static HTML files, and show it to a majority of your users. Instead of process the file to each individual visitor, this will bring down your server load time significantly.
#8 WhyDoWork Adsense – If you want to put Google Adsense on your blog, I highly recommend this plug in. You will simply upload this plug in, as well as your Adsense code to the dashboard options. From there, you can state where you want Adsense on your blog. You can put it at the end of your blog posts, the beginning, in the middle and more!
All of these plug ins are free, and you will find that there are hundreds of them out there that you can more than likely use! While these may not be for everyone, it’s a great start to get the ball rolling with your blog.
This guest post was written by Liz Cutten. She is the editor for FindBizCards.com, a business credit card / blog helping business owners with tips, tricks and more.
Tags: wordpress plugins
These plugins in your list is mostly all you need for a nice little blog. I have to admit i don’t like these related post and tag clouds, but the other tools such as SitemapXML and akismet are must have/use plugins…
Hi, I took your advice on the Facebook Like plugin and just installed it (Like I said I would on my previous comment) on my global warming site.
I thought I would tell your readers that there are about a dozen different Facebook Like plugins. I decided to try the “WP Facebook Like” Plugin as it ha built in multi lingual support AND it had a high rating.
It came pre-configured after auto installing it thru my wordpress dashboard. All I changed was to give it a rating 1 sdo the facebook like icon appeared first after the blog post and to select a darker color so it shows up better.
The only plugin I would not have listed is the All In One SEO plugin. But then again I am giving SEO a miss this year.
I use SEO Ultimate, the plugin from Seodesignsolutions.com (terrible business name, but I love the plugin).
Also, I use efficient related post, syntax highlighter, and a “no category base” rewriter plugin that’s pretty nifty for nice URLs.
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I’ve found the All In One SEO plug-in to be very useful and I have it installed on all of my blogs. I also use a site map generator plugin.
I’ve only just started using WordPress.com but I’m already thinking about moving over to .org because of all the tools that you have access to. Thanks for the list.
I have a wordpress blog and i did not know about these useful plugins but now i will use these great plugins to increase traffic on my blog.
Thank you for this great list. I’m going to implement some of these soon on our real estate blog sites. I didn’t know too much about these plug-ins. Learning something new everyday! Thanks again.