Looking for the best WordPress plugins?
Wondering which plugins you should install from day one?
| WordPress Plugins | Purpose |
|---|---|
| RankMath Plugin(Recommended) | SEO Plugin |
| Yoast SEO(Freemium) | SEO plugin |
| WP Forms(Freemium) | Contact form/Forms |
| Contact Form 7 | Contact Form |
| WP-Rocket(Paid/Recommended) | Cache Plugin |
| Perfmatters | Performance Optimization |
| ShortPixels | Image Optimization |
| Jetpack(Freemium) | Multi-purpose |
| Akismet (Freemium) | Prevent Spam comments |
| WP-DBManager(Free) | Database optimization/DB-Backup |
| PushEngage (Paid) | Push notifications |
| Social Snap | Social Media sharing |
| WordFence | Security Plugin |
| Lasso(New & recommended) | Link Cloaking Plugin |
| ThirstyAffiliates(Freemium) | Affiliate link cloaking plugin |
| Broken Link Checker | SEO/find broken links |
These are some of the best WordPress plugins as of this year.
Note: For a specific task, you only need one plugin. For example, for caching, you can use WP-Rocket, WP SuperCache, or W3 Total cache. If you have any questions, please use the comment box below.
So you’ve just created a new blog and are wondering which are the best WordPress plugins you should install?
If your answer is yes, then today you are lucky.
Here I’ll share a list of the best WordPress plugins that you should install from day one.
As we all know, plugins can extend the functionality of WordPress.
But with the vast number of plugins available online, the biggest problem is choosing the right WordPress plugin for your WordPress website.
You may have a lot of plugins on your website, but do you have the necessary plugins for your WordPress blog?
Let me take this opportunity to point out some plugins that can improve your website’s user experience and make WordPress management tasks much easier.
These **top WordPress plugins **come handy for every blogger and webmaster on the WordPress platform .
Best WordPress Plugins for Every WordPress Blog and Website
Without wasting any more time, let’s take a look at the best WordPress plugins for your blog.
1. Yoast SEO WordPress plugin
For any WordPress blog, having an SEO plugin is a must to improve your search engine ranking. This can help you attract free traffic from search engines.
This plugin is a must have for every WordPress blog . I have never seen any other free SEO plugin as powerful and effective as this one.
Need I say more?
With this plugin you can cover all of your onsite and on-page SEO .
This plugin is available in free and pro versions.
2. WP Rocket WordPress Plugin
Wouldn’t it be great if your website loaded super fast?
WordPress is a memory-intensive CMS. To ensure that WordPress doesn’t crash your web server, use a caching plugin along with a powerful server like Bluehost or Kinsta .
There are many great WordPress caching plugins out there , but WP Rocket stands out for its simplicity and effectiveness. Plus, it even works great on shared hosting!
Whenever a user views one of your blog posts, WordPress has to fetch that post from the WordPress database. Now, this process requires too many PHP calls and thus puts a lot of strain on your hosting server.
Imagine this:
One hundred visitors try to access your blog. In this case, WordPress runs 100 PHP calls to serve those pages to everyone.
When you use a caching plugin, it creates static HTML files of your web pages and allows WordPress to serve the pages from this cache. This significantly reduces server load and allows your pages to be served within seconds.
The plugin is easy to configure and offers features not offered by other similar plugins.
You can download the plugin from the link below and read a detailed review of the WP Rocket plugin .
3. Jetpack WordPress Plugin
Jetpack is a versatile plugin that comes with many powerful features.
This plugin is made by the people behind WordPress and is one of the best maintained WordPress plugins you’ll come across.
Here are some of the things you can do with the Jetpack WordPress plugin:
- Add a contact form.
- Track page views and search queries with powerful analytics.
- Monitor downtime and get notified when your website is down.
- Prevent hackers from brute-forcing your blog's login page.
- Provide social sharing buttons to let your readers share your blog posts.
- Automatically promote your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus after you publish any blog post.
- Show related posts to increase engagement and reduce bounce rate.
- Provide a subscription option so that users can subscribe to your blog updates.
- Create a sitemap . However, I recommend that you use the sitemap feature of Yoast SEO.
- Back up your blog daily with VaultPress
- Get a free CDN with Photon .
You get a lot more with Jetpack.
Once you start using Jetpack, you can ditch many other plugins from your blog and reduce the number of plugins you use.
Here are some guides and tutorials for more information about the Jetpack plugin:
4. Akismet
Keep spam out of your blog!
From day one, you’ll face the problem of WordPress comment spam.
When you start a WordPress blog, you shouldn’t get excited if there are some cheesy sentences in the comments. This is most likely a spam comment. For example:
- “I love your blog. Your writing is great.”
- “Your writing is great, I have subscribed to your blog.”
- "Wow! That's a lot of information!"
Check the URL and you’ll see that it directs you to some spammy affiliate site.
Akismet is an official WordPress plugin from Automattic that is used to prevent spam comments in WordPress.
This is the first plugin you should install on any new blog . Your new blog will have WordPress commenting functionality, and if you don’t use this plugin, your blog will be attacked by spam. Spammers just want to place their links on your articles and don’t want to participate in the discussion.
The plugin will automatically move comments that are considered spam to the trash (which will be permanently deleted after a period of time).
This is a must-have .
You need to get the WordPress.com API , which you can get by creating a free profile on WordPress.com.
5. PushEngage
PushEngage is a unique plugin that will drive more traffic to your blog. It provides a new way for your readers to subscribe to your blog. It adds web push technology and readers using Chrome, Safari or Firefox browsers will be notified of updates to your subscribed blog.
Thereafter, whenever you publish a new blog post, your subscribers will receive a push notification alerting them of the new post. You can also send manual push notifications to direct traffic to any specific blog post, landing page , or even advertiser website.
Here is a complete tutorial on how to use the plugin .
6. Social Snapshots
Social bookmarking has become a major ranking factor in SEO.
A rule of thumb for getting more shares is to place social sharing buttons in prominent places. When readers see these options at the right time, they are * more likely * to share your article.
Social Snap is the best **social media sharing plugin ever. ** It allows you to add sharing buttons to your desktop and mobile websites.
It supports all modern platforms such as:
- telegraph
- Pinterest (directly on the image)
- Reddit... and many more
7. Contact form 7
When you search for a contact form plugin, you’ll be overwhelmed by the number of options.
There are many premium plugins out there (like Gravity), but Contact Form 7 is the simplest one to configure.
It’s also helpful because it shows information like referral sources, which is great for understanding how visitors navigated through your site before using your contact form.
One of the great things about Contact Form 7 is that it can be customized to your needs. You can create a form and every entry in the form will be sent to your email.
You can also create multiple forms containing multiple tables.
Note: If you are using the Jetpack plugin, you don’t need to use this plugin. You can add a contact form using Jetpack.
8. WordFence Plugin
Now is the perfect time to secure your WordPress blog.
There are many security-related WordPress plugins available , and you can use any of them.
However, WordFence is one of the top security plugins that can keep your blog safe from hackers.
There’s so much more to this plugin, but essentially, this plugin makes sure your blog can’t be hacked.
They roll out updates from time to time to counter the latest hacking and cracking techniques.
9. No self-pinging
I’ve seen countless lists of useful WordPress plugins online, but surprisingly no one has listed the No Self Pings plugin.
This simple plugin can save you a lot of trouble.
When you link to any post from any other post on your blog, it sends pingback. With this plugin, your blog will stop sending pingbacks from the blog itself.
This is a plug-and-play plugin and does not require any additional configuration.
Download the No Self Pings plugin
10. Easy Affiliate Links
This is a free plugin for WordPress that allows you to manage all your affiliate links.
You can read all about this plugin here .
Easy Affiliate Links helps shorten and mask incongruous-looking URLs. It also helps redirect readers to your favorite affiliate programs .
For affiliate marketers, this plugin will add a lot of value to your website.
Download Simple Affiliate Link
11. OptinMonster
Can you think of a blog that doesn’t have an email list?
Well, OptinMonster is a great plugin that helps you capture emails.
The plugin offers many advanced features like A/B testing, geo-targeting, conditional popups, and even email subscription forms for mobile sites.
12. Broken Link Checker
Broken links are a dead end for search engines and suicide for your website’s SEO.
Broken Link Checker is a free plugin that continuously scans your blog for broken links and allows you to fix them with one click.
This plugin also avoids sending pings to your website when you publish posts with links to your own posts.
I have been using SidelinePlay since its inception and I can confidently say that every WordPress blog should be using this plugin.
I wrote this guide on how to use the Broken Link Checker plugin . Please take a look at it.
Download the Broken Link Checker plugin
These 12 plugins are not only useful but also one of the top choices for any type of WordPress website.
They will add another layer of functionality and features to your WordPress blog, enhancing the experience for both users and administrators.
You should also check out our list of essential WordPress plugins we use at SidelinePlay .
Do you know of any must-have or essential WordPress plugins that every WordPress blog should have? Let us know in the comments.
Don’t forget to share this list with others on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!
Here are some selected guides for you to read:
- WordPress Security Guide: 14 Pro Tips to Secure Your WordPress Site
- Best Cheap WordPress Hosting
- Best WordPress Hosting Services Compared
- How to Speed Up WordPress (Performance Tuning)
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you click through to visit us, at no extra cost to you. See how SidelinePlay is funded, why it’s important, and how you can support us.
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