Starting a Blog? Don’t Forget These 10 WordPress Plugins

When starting a blog and setting up a WordPress website, it’s inevitable that you’re also going to want to add some key features and functionality like link and spam management, a contact form, image galleries, and more.

Here is a list of blogger WordPress plugins you need to consider:

Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights allows you to connect your WordPress website with Google Analytics so you can see how visitors find and use your website and keep them coming back. MonsterInsights is simple to set up and requires you to write no code. The WordPress plugin adds a Google Analytics Dashboard to your WordPress admin area with real-time stats, universal tracking, and much more.

Pro Tip: You can also add Google Analytics to your WordPress site directly by adding code to the WordPress theme functions.php file.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO allows you to manage the search engine optimization of your website pages and posts so you can get found online more often. Yoast SEO helps you handle XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, canonical URLs, HTML titles and meta descriptions, and even the text and images to use for social media sharing. This blogger WordPress plugin also integrates with Google Search Console and supports you in writing SEO-friendly content.

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Pretty Links

Pretty Links allows you to shorten links using your own domain name, track each hit on your URL, and see a full detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, operating system, and host. Pretty Links also enables you to create clean links for affiliate links, download link performance data in a CVS file, create nofollow/noindex links, organize links into groups, and more.

This blogger WordPress plugin also has a paid upgrade called Pretty Links Pro. This upgrade includes priority support and more redirect options including cloaked redirects, timed redirects, geographic redirects, split test redirects, and tracking pixel redirects. It also features Google Analytics plugin integration and the ability to create expiring links and QR codes.

Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker allows you to easily search your WordPress blog or website for broken links so you can fix them before they affect your search engine rankings, damage your brand, or cause grief for visitors. Broken Link Checker monitors links in posts, pages, comments, and custom fields. It also alerts you to links that don’t work, missing images, and broken redirects, all while helping facilitate correction of the broken links. This blogger WordPress plugin also has optional features like preventing search engines from following broken links and displaying broken links differently.

Safe Redirect Manager

Safe Redirect Manager allows you to create a variety of HTTP redirects to forward one URL to a new URL of your choosing. This blogger WordPress plugin is the simplest redirection plugin available and makes it easy to create redirects for old links, URLs removed from your website or blog, affiliate links, and more.

Simple Page Ordering

Simple Page Ordering allows you to easily reorder pages and custom post types in the dashboard with drag and drop functionality. To organize your pages, just drag and drop the page into the desired position. It’s that simple. No new admin menus pages or clunky, bolted-on user interfaces. Just drag and drop on the page or post-type screen.

WP Zero Spam

WP Zero Spam hasn’t been updated in a while, but it still remains a top choice for spam control and works better than Akismet. WP Zero Spam blocks registration spam and spam in comments automatically without any additional config or setup. Just install, activate, and enjoy a spam-free site.

WP Forms

WP Forms allows you to add mobile responsive contact forms, subscription forms, payment forms, and other types of forms to your WordPress blog or website in minutes. WP Forms uses an easy-to-use drag and drop online form builder that lets you add custom form fields and rearrange them, or use a pre-built form template.

Send Images to RSS

Send Images to RSS replaces the images in your RSS feed with smaller, email-friendly images and adds markup email clients can handle. It also makes it easy to create beautiful, email friendly RSS campaigns with minimal setup required, regardless of your feed setup. If you offer subscription by RSS for your blog, this plugin is for you.

JetPack

Jetpack is a beast of a blogger plugin with a huge number of modules that adds all sorts of features to your WordPress blog. While you definitely won’t need many of them – and you should turn off the modules you don’t use with Manual Control For Jetpack – there are some compelling modules that keep this plugin at the top of my recommendation list, including:

• Monitor: monitors your website’s downtime
• Protect: helps secure your website against brute force attacks
• Related Posts: creates a related posts display at the end of your blog posts
• Photon: speeds up your blog by using the WordPress.com CDN
• Publicize: allows you to automatically share your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
• Sharing: gives readers the ability to share your blog posts to their social networks from the end of your blog posts
• Tiled Galleries: displays your images in three different ways: a rectangular mosaic, a square mosaic, or a circular grid.

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