If there is one thing that bloggers can’t resist, it’s reading about the essential WordPress plugins that other bloggers use!
It’s almost like if you’re a professional chef and someone shares a killer recipe… you can’t just not look, right? Or a woman sharing a tidbit of juicy gossip; it’s impossible for other ladies to ignore.
It’s taken me the past 10 months of actively trying to improve my blog to come up with this list. This isn’t just some list that I Googled and haphazardly through together; this is every single active plugin that I have on my blog right now.
Enjoy my list of essential WordPress plugins!
Akismet
One of the most basic plugins for any WordPress user. If you’re not using this, you’ll be sifting through thousands upon thousands of unwanted spam comments. This plugin takes out the garbage so you never have to see it!
All In One SEO Pack
Does all the crazy annoying SEO junk for you. Gives you a simple form to fill out with each post (title, description, tags) and then automatically optimizes it for you. I love this one because my descriptions show up on Google the way I want (and they rank FAST).
Broken Links Remover
This one can be a lifesaver. On blogs with dozens or even hundreds of posts, it’s a tall task to click on every link and make sure they’re still going where they should. This plugin gives you a list of every single link on your site that’s not going anywhere. Another must-have!
Cbnet Ping Optimizer
So, every single time you update your blog, it automatically sends a “ping” (basically an update) to the search engines. This lets them know to send back their “bots” and index the new content.
But, if you’re updating a lot, your site is sending out a lot of “pings”, and the search engines might think you’re just spamming them to get your site indexed. This plugin helps to optimize your pings and make you appear less “spammy”.
CommentLuv
Very cool plugin that promotes a more social, interactive atmosphere! Basically, when someone leaves a comment, they also leave their website URL. This plugin goes to their website and automatically picks up their last blog post and shows it in the comment they just left. People are much more likely to leave comments if they’re getting love back to their own blog.
Comment Redirect
When someone leaves a comment, they’re automatically taken to a page of your choice. You can take them to a thank you page, or (if you’re bold) straight to a capture page… it only does this for the very first comment they leave so it’s not annoying.
Digg Digg
Puts all those cool little share buttons at the top of each post. Gives you a list of several social media sites and you pick which ones you want to show up. Also displays how many times your post has been shared, so your readers can see some proof that you are indeed popular.
Edit Comments
Have you ever written something stupid, and then realized you couldn’t edit it? And it’s on the internet for everyone to see? This simple plugin lets readers edit their comments for up to 30 minutes.
Exclude Pages From Navigation
For when you want to include a “secret” page within your blog that you don’t want the general public to see! You can create a page that is only accessible with a direct URL; it doesn’t show up as a post, tab, or even in your sites navigation. Perfect for exclusive content you only want to share with certain people.
Fast Secure Contact Form
Not only an easy way for readers to send you a message straight to your email inbox, but gets rid of the spam robots from leaving you messages as well.
Favicons
It puts a little image in the tab in your browser. It gives your site a little more personality, and a little more recognizable as well. Plus, when a reader leaves a comment, it puts up a little image of them as well. I couldn’t find this plugin in the back office of WordPress, so click on the title for the download page.
FD Feedburner Plugin
When a visitor wants to subscribe to your feed, this plugin redirects them to Feedburner.com. Within Feedburner, you can add pictures, allow your readers to share certain content, and customize other features. It helps your feed to stand out among others that your readers may be following.
Feed Subscriber Stats
Shows on your dashboard how many people are subscribed to your feed through Feedburner.
Google XML Sitemaps
This is another SEO plugin that most humans don’t understand but Google and Yahoo loooove. Basically, it makes it easier for search engines to index your blog. That’s always good.
Popularity Contest
Keeps track of which posts are the most popular according to your visitors’ behavior. You can even change up the values to make commenting or visits more heavily “weighted” when figuring up the most popular. After you install this plugin, head over to the widgets and drag the “Popularity Contest” widget wherever you want it.
PopUp Domination
My favorite and one of the most essential WordPress plugins that I use! It creates that awesome looking pop-up opt in form that comes up on my blog. It allows for very easy customization, and even allows you to decide exactly how often it pops up for each visitor. Costs $47, but well worth it to get higher opt-ins.
Pretty Link (Lite Version)
A very, very useful plugin! It lets you cloak links and then tracks how many clicks have been made. It’s not a super-detailed tracking system, but it’s free! It’s useful if you have some long, ugly affiliate link that you want to track as well. Your links are your domain, followed by whatever ending you want to put in. For example, mine look like who-is-erin-smith.com/FP or whatever else at the end. Pretty nifty (plus people are more likely to click on it if the link looks like a blog.)
Related Posts Thumbnails
This one is great for keeping visitors on your log much longer. At the end of each post, pictures and descriptions for six other related posts are displayed. I’ve had many comments from readers that they couldn’t leave my blog because they kept clicking on those thumbnails and jumping to other posts.
ReplyMe
When someone leaves a comment, they have an option to be notified of follow-up comments. Normally, this means they will be notified of every single comment that comes after theirs. But, with this plugin, they are only notified if someone replies to their specific comment. Helps keep your visitors from receiving a bunch of unwanted mail, and only receiving one or two useful messages when they get a reply.
Robots Meta
Another boring SEO plugin… It just cleans up unnecessary junk.
SEO Friendly Images
Zzzzzzzzz… more SEO. Helps your images get found by search engines (like in Google Image Search)
SEOPressor Unlimited
Another SEO plugin… but NOT boring! Probably the most essential plugin I have because it makes all the “on site” SEO stuff super duper easy. It makes a list of all the things you should do inside your post to make it rank (like certain tags, keyword density, no follow links, etc) and gives you a percentage out of 100. This one costs $37 for one domain, or $97 for unlimited domains… has been worth every penny for how many posts I’ve had rank on Google.
SEO Slugs
BORING! (but darn useful) Cleans up the URL for individual posts (takes out words like “a” “and” “an”) so the search engines like it better.
SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic)
Comes up with a bajillion different share links to social media and social bookmarking sites. They show up at the bottom of each post and they look snazzy.
Thank Me Later
This plugin automatically sends out a Thank You email to everyone who leaves a comment. It allows for some variation on the message. Overall, great for reader satisfaction and keeps them coming back!
Top Level Categories
More SEO junk. It takes the category out of the post URL’s. It makes it look cleaner, plus it focuses more on the keyword in the post URL.
WordPress EZ Backup
ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL WordPress PLUGIN!! Sorry for the all caps… but one of the worst days I had last year was when I went to my blog and all that was there was the shell. All my posts, pics, videos, EVERYTHING was gone. Helps you recover a disappeared blog in no time flat. Helps keep blood pressure down, too.
WordPress Thread Comment
Allows you to reply to a single comment. When you find a specific comment you want to reply to, your reply will show up in the same box as the original comment. Basically, it makes it obvious who you’re talking to.
WP Frame Breaker
Have you ever clicked through from a 3rd party site to a blog, and the 3rd party site’s header takes up half the page? Well, you don’t want that happening to you. This plugin gets rid of the frames that referring sites sometimes put on your blog when sending visitors through.
WP Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a tracking resource that keeps track of everything you want to know about your visitors: where they come from, what posts they enter and exit on, how many unique visitors, and a million other things. This plugin makes it easy to incorporate Google Analytics on to your blog.
WP Greet Box
Another “reader satisfaction” plugin that basically greets every visitor who shows up. It puts up a different message depending on where your visitor came from. If they found your site on Google, a message pops up saying something like “Welcome Googler…” You can edit these messages.
WP Super Cache
Makes your blog super duper fast! Not only is it less of a pain for your visitors, but it also helps your blog rank better.
Whew! I know that’s a lot of plugins! Like I said above, this list of plugins is taken directly from my back office and I use every single one of these. If you use all of these, I guarantee you’ll be able to get more opt-ins, get your readers to stay longer on your blog, have more repeat visitors, and have more posts indexed by Google. Sound good?
Hope my list of essential WordPress plugins helps!
