In our WordPress for Beginners series, we have covered How to Install WordPress on Bluehost and how to setup WordPress. Extending the list, I’m sharing a list of must have WordPress plugins that every blog should have.
Now, it’s not necessary that you should install all below mentioned plugins, but I recommend you to look into the description and decide if this plugin is going to be useful and important for your WordPress blog or not.
- Akismet
- JetPack WordPress Plugin
- WordPress SEO by Yoast
- SocialSnap
- YARPP: Yet Another related post plugin
- SEO friendly Image
- PushPress
- AMP: Accelerated Mobile pages
- WP-Rocket
- WPForms
- WP-Db manager
- WP-Optimize plugin
- ShortPixel
I will also add some of the best alternative options to these free and best WordPress plugins, so in case, if you are stuck with the configuration of any single plugin, you can try the alternative. Read on..
Contents
Must have WordPress Plugins For Every WordPress Blog:
If you are new to WordPress plugins, once you are inside the dashboard, click on Plugins > Add new and search for the desired plugin. I will add the exact name of the plugin that you need to search and install.
Most of these plugins come with extra configuration, and you should make sure to make optimum changes for making most of these plugins. If you need a tutorial for any specific WordPress plugin set up, you can let me know on our Facebook fan page.
Akismet
This plugin is managed by official WordPress creator Automattic. This plugin is very useful to avoid spam comments. There are many alternatives to this plugin, but I prefer this one, as it’s fast and does the job pretty well. You can download the plugin from the official page here.
You need an API Key to activate this plugin, and you can quickly create a free account on WordPress.com and get your WordPress API key. Here is a video guide on how to get free API key from Akismet:
JetPack WordPress plugin
Jetpack is an official plugin by WordPress parent company Automattic. This plugin does multiple things & have various modules which you can enable or disable. Here are few things which you can achieve with this plugin:
- Automatic share your new posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus
- Offers contact form
- Subscription form powered by WordPress.com
- Related posts
- Mobile theme
- Blog Analytics
And many more modules. This is one plugin which is actively updated & most popular choice for all WordPress users.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
SEO by Yoast is the most popular WordPress SEO plugin which is free. Using this plugin, you can configure your WordPress site On-Page SEO, On-Site SEO, Generate Sitemap, Configure Robots.txt file, Edit .htaccess file & check all your crawl errors from WordPress dashboard. If you are serious about your WordPress blog & want to increase a huge volume of organic traffic, this is a must have plugin for your blog.
This plugin also offers Keyword suggestion and Keyword Optimization, which will give you an extra edge in Search engine ranking. Also, you can configure indexing and no-indexing of your site structure which is very useful for proper SEO of your blog.
Here is a video guide on how to configure this plugin:
SocialSnap
Social signals have become an essential part of SEO and to encourage social sharing of your blog post, you should implement social bookmarking button. SocialSnap plugin helps you to quickly add most of the popular and new social bookmarking buttons.
Moreover, this plugin comes with many settings like lazy load button, social button size and other placement settings, which you are hoping in a Social bookmarking plugin.
Though this plugin is more of usability plugin but I prefer it as SEO plugin, because it helps in linking to related articles. YARPP also offers settings to show related posts in feeds, which helps in decreasing down the bounce rate and increasing user experience on your site. If not YARPP, you can use any other plugin but showing direct related posts will help in boosting your site usability.
SEO friendly Image
Images helps a lot in driving traffic to your blog, but to rank for images you need to work on alt tag optimization of your blog. SEO friendly image plugin does the same by, converting your image name into Alt tag and make it search engine readable.
Bonus tip: Always use your Keyword or relevant name as an image name. Avoid using Image-001.jpeg and such names. <Download
<Download SEO Friendly image>
PushPress
If you are suffering from indexing issue on your blog, try PushPress which is a free WordPress plugin to ping cloud servers. It helps in faster indexing of your blog. This is a plug and play plugin which doesn’t require any configuration.
<Download PushPress>
Note: You don’t need this plugin if you are using a responsive WordPress theme.
AMP: Accelerated Mobile pages
This is the latest addition in our must have plugins for WordPress. This plugin will automatically make your blog ready for Google’s AMP project. This will help you to get more traffic from mobile once you have installed the plugin.
How to Add Google AMP to WordPress to Speed Up Your Mobile Site
WP-Rocket
Page load time is one important factor for great user experience and also for better search engine ranking.
WP-Rocket is a complete solution to your WordPress caching. This plugin comes with advanced configuration and caching options. Also, if you are using any CDN service and CloudFlare, this plugin offers easy to implement option for configuration.
<Download WP-Rocket>
WPForms
Contact page is an essential element of a website. WPForms plugin let you create multiple contact forms and you can also add a contact form in the sidebar of your blog. There are many more contact forms like Gravity forms, but in free options, this is one of the easy to set up contact plugin for WordPress.
I have also tried Enhanced WordPress contact form by Yoast, which is equally good and easy to configure. This plugin shows the referral link location and you will get an idea, who visitor landed to your contact form. Check out Enhanced WordPress contact form.
Read: How to create contact page and add contact form in WordPress?
WP-Db manager
One stop plugin for doing various maintenance job and schedule job in WordPress. Using this plugin you can quickly optimize WordPress database, clean WordPress tables, take WordPress backup and configure WordPress timely backup. Very useful plugin to get many things done.
Update: If you are looking for more features, Advanced WordPress database cleaner is a better solution.
WP-Optimize plugin
Another useful plugin to delete all posts revisions, delete all spam comments and optimize WordPress table. You don’t need to use this plugin all the time but running this plugin once in a month, will keep your blog performance in good shape.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
ShortPixel does the job pretty well of compressing your images for faster loading. Your image quality remains the same and using image compression technology, this plugin will compress images at the time of loading.
This plugin also comes with bulk image compression of already uploaded images. So, if you have a new or old blog, ShortPixel plugin will help you to keep your blog loading time faster.
The list of plugins for WordPress are endless and you can browse WordPress plugin repo to find plugins for every use.
But, these are some of the must-have WordPress plugins, which are essential for every WordPress blog. Do let us know about any other new WordPress plugins,which should be in this list.
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Great compilation and your blog content is just amazing. I want to add some more to your list 🙂
alinks: Automatically link certain words in your blog to other blog posts or websites.
WordPress Automatic upgrade: Upgrade your wordpress automatically!
wp-cache: Makes your pages load faster.
Share this: Allows your visitors to spread your post throughout the internet with social networking websites and more.
@Avantika
Thanks for your useful comments and letting me know about more plugins. Alinks is something very new to me..
I don’t recommend using WordPress automatic upgrade, as at times it may break your blog, due to theme or plugin incompatibility… I recommend to update WordPress after taking a complete backup of the blog…
Sharethis is very useful for making your blog social-friendly…
great. I have tried few plugins suggested in this post they are working pretty fine. Thankz a lot
If you have WordPress SEO by Yoast, you don’t need google XML and Image sitemap as they are included in Yoast plugin.
Thanks for sharing! 😉
Hi Harsh Agrawal, Great list of plugins bro. I am using some of the plugins which are listed above. Thanks for Suggesting Great Plugins!
WP Touch and PushPress are great plugins. Thanks for such a useful post.! I want to share one more plugin – SiteOrigin Page Builder – To create wonderful user friendly pages without Coding skills required.!
I have also created my website without any knowledge of coding with the help of these plugins.
My favorites:
Yet Another related post
WordPress SEO by Yoast
WP Mail SMTP
Google XML Sitemaps
Jetpack
WP Super Cache
Akismet
** i prefer Facebook comments or generic wordpress comment system then Disqus.
I have installed WP touch for my blog, but it was slowing the page speed. When I checked with google page speed checker, I found that it ranked below 60. So,removed it because my theme has a good mobile theme.
There is no doubt that These are the must have WordPress plugins for every blogger.
Currently I am using few of them like Yoast SEO, Jetpack, W3 Total Cache, Redirection, Wp Smush.it.
For WordPress security, I am using ” iThemes security ” also known as ” Better WP Security “.
Thanks for sharing this list with us.
Hey Brenda
Welcome to my blog & thank you for sharing your list of plugins. 🙂
Hey Harsh, Great article again.
Can you please tell me about an alternative plugin to jetpack subscription. I want to send newsletter feeds to my readers but I don’t have much money to invest in email marketing like Mailchimp/Aweber. Please help.
Thanks
Hey Harsh Could you please tell me which caching plugin is very faster for shared hosting?
@Rantu
I like Super cache + Cloudflare (Both together) for shared hosting. However, in certain scenario, W3 Total cache works great too.
Thanks for sharing this list of WordPress plugins among them I have tried few plugins suggested in this post they are working pretty good.
The blog is very interesting and knowledgeable and if you have any further information, please keep me updated with that information also.
Hey Harsh Awesome Post
Can you tell me which plugin is best for image optimize and speed please may site speed was slow
This is a great collection of plugin. Wp Auto optimize is also one of the best plugin to clear all your cache. I am also using akismet, w3 total cache, wp smush for my blog and it is working fine. Good list of plugin.
Thanks for the info.
Thanks Harsh for sharing really helpful article.
I have just started a blog. I want to add live market data charts in my website can you suggest any good plugins for that?
Also I have doubt whether adding many plugins will really be healthier for any website or it may be making your real work tough? What do you say?
Also updated version of wordpress may have some of many features inbuilt.
So what is the criteria for adding plugins to a website.
@Rakesh
Regarding live market data chart, you need to talk to provider in your industry. At times they have something built already.
Plugins are meant to make life easier only if you are spending enough time to test, learn & use the plugin. If there is in-built feature in WordPress, there is no point on using the plugin for the same purpose.
Hey Harsh, Great article again.
Can you please tell me about an alternative plugin to jetpack subscription. I want to send newsletter feeds to my readers but I don’t have much money to invest in email marketing like Mailchimp/Aweber. Please help.
so it will help m alot
Hey Harsh
thanks for sharing the list. I was looking for Social buttons plugins and still using the theme’s sharing button but now, going to install Social Warfare.
I wanted to ask one question, which is the best plugin for inserting Adsense Ad Code in between the post?
Hey Harsh,
Thanks so very much for sharing this. I’m currently using two of the above plugins you mentioned. I use the W3 Total Cache plugin to speed up my website and I use the Yet Another Related Post Plugin to display related post under my posts. I’ll give the rest a try and see how they function. Thanks buddy.
GREAT PLUGINS HARSH , IMUST SAY!!! , BUT NOWADAYS THERE IS A HUGE COMPLAIN REGARDING JETPACK PLUGIN LIKE ITS NOW TOTALLY OUTDATED& DOESNT GIVE WHOLE LOT OF RESPONSE TO ITS SITE
@Arjun
That’s a misconception. Jetpack is one of the well managed & regularly updated plugin. Their support team is also solid.
This is an informative list, Thanks for sharing!
I think the following are very important and must have too:
– Broken Link Checker
– No Self Pings
– ThirstyAffiliates (For Affiliate Marketers)
– WPS Hide Login
Thanks again,
Keep up the great work
Thanks for sharing such great list! My top faves are SEO by Yoast, Akismet and Jetpack and, if you don’t mind, I’d like to add one more to the list: it’s a community/comment plugin called GraphComment, very user friendly, don’t sell your info to third parties like some of them do 😉
Any alternative of Photan feature of Jetpack?? it doesn’t seems working on my site. Even after enabling.