GUERRILLA

15 Free WordPress plugins that every blogger should have

One of the many great things about WordPress is that it allows you to install all sorts of plugins that do all sorts of awesome stuff. So today I am going over 15 of the must have plugins for every WordPress blogger out there. I recommend these to each of my clients and recommend them to you now as well.

The plugins below span various areas of your site, from search engine optimization to backing up your database, making your WordPress powered website faster loading, interacting with your readers & more. If you run a WordPress powered blog and don’t have all of these plugins installed, you need to.

1. WordPress SEO – Built by the popular Joost de Valk (aka Yoast), this is a plugin that every blogger should have. If you’re wanting to rank well in search engines, this is a must install plugin.
2. WP DB Backup – Writing for your blog takes time and effort, so why wouldn’t you have something setup to give you backups in case your blog ever crashes or is hacked? You don’t want to lose your content, so make sure this is a plugin you’ve got installed from day one.
3. Akismet – Spam. We all hate it and fortunately for WordPress bloggers, there’s a plugin that does something about it. Akismet is another must have plugin for every blogger. Trust me, you don’t want to spend an hour a day deleting spam comments; let Akismet do it for you.
4. Contact Form 7 – Setting up forms on your site has never been easier when you’ve got Contact Form 7 setup. You can deploy as many forms as you want and it’s options allow you to create the most simple form in the world or the most complex; whatever you want to do, it can handle it for you.
5. WP Super Cache – One downside to WordPress blogs that have a lot of content and ‘stuff’ around the sidebars is that it can become a resource hog for your hosting, so by installing WP Super Cache, you’re able to turn your dynamic page into a static html page, making the load times faster and less stressful on your hosting and bandwidth.
6. Google XML Sitemaps – Getting your blog into the search engines just got easier because with the Google XML sitemap generator, it automatically (you guessed it) sets up a sitemap file for you that the spiders love.
7. Search Meter – If you’ve got a search form on your site, this is a plugin that you MUST have. What it does is simple, but it’s so effective. Every time someone searches anything on your blog, you’re able to see what they’re searching for in your WordPress admin panel. It’s great to know what your users want so you can give them more of it.
8. Subscribe to Comments – When someone leaves a comment on your blog, are they coming back to check and see if anyone replied? Odds are that they aren’t, so by installing this plugin you give the user an option to receive email updates to comment replies. Keep them coming back & keep them connected.
9. Google Analytics – Yes, Yoast is making the list for the second time. It’s for a good reason though because this plugin is ridiculously awesome and gives you so many tracking options for Google Analytics that you wouldn’t get by simply just copy and pasting the tracking code into your theme.
10. Tweet Old Posts – Keeping up with all of your social media profiles can be hard. It can also be equally hard to know your new readers & followers on Twitter might be missing your older awesome content. This plugin fixes all of that. Set the time on how often you want it to tweet old posts and how old the posts have to be, sit back and watch as your older posts get traffic from Twitter. Simple, yet effective.
11. WPTouch – With the amount of people browsing the web with phones, it’s a good idea to make sure your blog is showing properly. Don’t have money to hire a blog designer to make your blog mobile friendly? That’s o.k. because WP Touch does it for you.
12. Popularity Contest – When someone comes to your blog, you want to show off your best work & with the help of Alex King’s popularity contest plugin, you can. It’s easy to use and can be deployed on your blog in seconds.
13. Series – A plugin that lets you easily interlink posts in, you guessed it, a series. Another simple, yet effective plugin for your WordPress blog that you should always have on file, especially if you like to write posts in a series a lot.
14. OptionTree – Gone are the days where the commercial WordPress theme companies are the only ones providing you with your very own theme options panel. OptionTree is free and does everything that an option panel is supposed to.
15. Broken Link Checker – Last but not least, Broken Link Checker does exactly what it’s name says; it checks for broken links. This is great to have so you’re making sure that links in your posts or pages aren’t linking to dead ends, which Google frowns upon.

So there you have it, 15 must use WordPress plugins for every blogger. I hope you enjoyed the list and found something new in it. Any questions you have about the above plugins or if you have alternative plugins you think should have been included in the list, feel free to drop a comment and let me know.