Did you know that WordPress plugins can be one of the most valuable parts of your blog? A plugin can add more features and functionality to your site but if you use too many plugins it can actually slow your site down. So it’s important to choose your plugins carefully. When I first started this blog- I downloaded a lot of plugins but I soon learned I needed to learn from others who had been on WordPress longer to find the right formula for me.
The WordPress Plugins I Use Everyday
I currently have 23 plugins on this blog but there are 4 that I use everyday. These are ones that I consider to be crucial to helping me take this blog to the next level.
- WP Editorial Calendar– This plugin acts as a scheduler for your posts and can help give you a bigger perspective on scheduling your posts and content for maximum results. You can actually set posts for publishing on certain days and time and it will post it for you automatically. I’ve written before about how important a blog schedule is here and this calendar helps keep me on schedule.
- Yoast SEO Plugin– This is probably one of the most powerful plugins for any blog. If you don’t know about SEO it stands for search engine optimization. Good SEO basically guarantees that you will rank higher in search engines and therefore attract more visitors. So how do you get good SEO? It comes down to things like your headlines, article content, graphics and tags (just to name a few). Enter the Yoast SEO which helps guide you to better SEO and it tells you exactly how to improve your article before it’s published. The other reason I love this plugin is it’s free and you don’t have to be a super tech blogger to use it. It simply gives you a rating, green is best, yellow is OK, and red is bad. It is so much easier than trying to figure it out on your own. If you want to learn more about this plugin check out the WP Beginner article here .
- Enhanced Text Widget– Ever have widget problems? Widgets are those cute little sidebar items that tell people how to reach you on social media, subscribe to your email and many other things. WordPress is great but it is sometimes quite hard to load a certain type of widget to your site in WordPress without knowing a ton of code and backend stuff. Enhanced Text Widget is a real time saver- depending on what type of widget you want to add to your blog, this plugin helps you do it quickly and easily. All of my Lead Boxes from Lead Pages are added to my site within minutes using this plugin.
- CommentLuv– Finding a good way to engage with your comments section is key to building reader relationships. As of right now, I feel like CommentLuv is a good, free way to do this. The big draw of CommentLuv is that it gives your readers opportunities to link up to their blog posts (aka extra publicity) so I consider this a win win for both of us.
Honorable Mentions- There are few more plugins that I love here that deserve to be on your site like Akismet which helps filter your spam comments (this plugin cuts down on spam comments A LOT). You also need to have a plugin that helps you track your analytics and for that, I use Google Analytics By Yoast. It is a great plugin that allows you to view important reports for your blog directly on your WordPress site.
So tell me in the comments below- what plugins are on your must-have list? What do you need to keep your blog running each day?
