15 Essential WordPress Plugins For Your Blog

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Top Plugins You Need On A New WordPress Blog

WordPress is a great blogging platform but a fresh install is very, very basic and may not have all the functions you want.

This is why we use plugins to add factuality to our blogs. You can think of plugins a lot like the apps you install on your phone to add better features.

You can use them to add icons, block spam, optimize SEO, make a nicer comment area and so much more.

There really are plugins for everything you can think of adding to your blog.

The problem is deciding what plugins you really need to use on your blog and avoiding the temptation to add to many plugins.

Yes, it’s true having a lot of plugins on your WordPress site can cause it to slow down. Ideally, I like to keep my sites between 6-13 plugins.

This will work for most bloggers but if you are running a store in WordPress you could be using up to 20 plugins to add features to plugins like WooCommerce.

The Best Essential Plugins For WordPress

ShortPixel

We all want our blogs to load fast right? Readers will leave your site quickly if they have to wait more then a few seconds for your post to load.

One of the biggest reasons for blogs to load slowly is if you are using photos that are too big.

It’s always best to resize your photos before you upload them to your blog but it’s better to go one step further and also compress those images. I’ve tried a lot of photo compressors over the years and my absolute favourite is ShortPixel.

Features I Love:

• It compresses JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP and PDF’s
• It easily converts PNG’s to JPG’s. This is a great option if you’ve been using PNG’s for larger images on your blog because JPG’s load a lot faster than PNG files do.
• No file size limit on commissions
• Works with retina images
• Will convert images created in CMYK to RGB color schemes.
• ShortPixel has bulk optimization so you can let it compress all your existing photos while you work on something else.
• Compresses in Lossy, Lossless, and Glossy. Lossy will give you the largest size savings but glossy will give the best looking photo quality. Glossy is what I use most of the time.
• It keeps a backup of your original photos making it easy to roll back if you want.
• 1 API key that you can use on all of your blogs.

ShortPixel also offers a free plan that you can compress 100 photos per month. If you need more then that their paid options are a great value.

Yoast

Yoast is always one of the first plugins I install on any new WordPress site. Why? Because it does a great job of helping me to optimize my blog posts for SEO so they are found in Google search.

When you are writing a blog post put your main keyword into the focus keyword box. Yoast then “scores” your post based on how many times the keyword is found, whether your images have the keyword in the alt tag, and if the keyword is found in any headings in your post.

But that’s not all Yoast does for you. It has suggestions for whether or not your post has enough internal links to your content, enough external links and if your content is broken up with enough headers.

Yoast also has options that can:

• Verify your blog on Pinterest
• Verify your blog on Google Webmasters (and Bing too!)
• Create an XML sitemap of your blog so that Google and other search engines can find and index your content.
• Let’s you enter custom titles and metadata for your search index.
• Integrates with Google Webmasters so you can fix crawl errors right from your blog.
• Easily set your author pages or tag pages to not be indexed.

Anti-spam

Dealing with spam comments on your blog is frustrating and can take up a lot of time. That’s why I love the Anti-spam plugin!

This one is a very lightweight WordPress plugin and so easy to use.

Simply install and activate Anti-spam and it just starts working. There are no registrations or settings that need to be changed.

Simple is so nice.

Thrive Leads

If your looking to grow your newsletter having great opt-in forms really helps.

Thrive Leads is my favourite newsletter plugin for WordPress. I’ve been using it for years and found it very easy to use.

It comes loaded with tons of templates that you can simply change the wording an images on if you’re just starting out. But every part of the form is completely customizable too!

They include forms for:

• PopUp Lightbox
• Sticky Ribbons
• Inline forms to place inside of your blog posts
• 2 Step opt-in forms where you can connect the form to a button or image. When it’s clicked the opt-in form pops up.
• Slide-In forms
• Opt-In widgets for your sidebar or any other widget area
• Screen Filler often called a welcome mat
• Content lock lets you “lock” parts of your post and readers have to sign up to read the full article
• Scroll mat similar to the screen filler form this one covers the full screen but slides down from the top.
• Yes/No and multiple choice forms

As with all of Thrive Theme’s products they are very focused on A/B testing and reporting. So you can really see what forms are working and what needs some tweaking.

The forms in Thrive Leads are beautifully designed and easily customizable. It integrates with most newsletter services.

ThirstyAffiliates

ThirstyAffiliates is a simple to use plugin that lets you mask affiliate links on your blog. You can also see click stats and report to see what affiliate links are the most popular on your site.

I love this plugin because it makes it so easy to update and bulk change an affiliate link that is used in multiple posts at once.

Unlike most affiliate link managers, ThirstyAffiliates also lets you unmask affiliate links. This means you can use links from Amazon that doesn’t allow link masking but still monitor how many clicks each link gets.

Features I Love:

• Allows for redirect options including 301, 302, and 307
• Great click stats and reports
• Uses hierarchical link categories to segment links
• Has a link picker to make adding links inside your blog post easy
• Works with normal links, shortcakes, and images
• You can create new affiliate links right in your post editing screen
• You can set global options like No Follow and open in a new tab.

This is one of the most fully featured free link masking plugins out there. If you do need more features they also have paid add-ons available.

FMTC Affiliate Disclosure

Do any of your blog posts contain affiliate links? If they do then you need to be disclosing that before the first affiliate link in your post to comply with the FTC regulations.

There are a few ways to do this. You could simply type your disclosure into your post, but if you ever need to change the wording or the link to your discloser page it can be an inconvenience to have to edit all those posts again.

This is where the FMTC Affiliate Disclosure plugin comes in handy.

After activation, you’ll find a sample discloser on the setting page. You can use this or customize it to your own voice.

Instantly your disclosure is shown at the top of each blog post. You can update the wording or links used at any time.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP)

Adding your Google Analytics tracking code to your blog is a must!

While you can simply add it to the header of your theme it’s possible you could forget to update that if you change themes at some point or maybe you want to see more stats right from your blog dashboard.

That’s why I love the Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP) so much! It’s a lightweight plugin that is so customizable too.

GADWP Features:

• IP address anonymization – This is especially important with the GDPR regulations for EU visiter. With just one click you can make sure your analytics code isn’t collecting IP address, yet their views and sessions are still counted.
• Option to respect Do Not Track signals sets by a browser.
• Support for users to opt-out of tracking
• Remarketing, interest, and demographics tracking
• Cross-domain tracking
• Exclude user roles from tracking – I block Administrator roles from being track so my own views are not throwing off my true numbers.
• Event tracking – Lets you track downloads, outbound links clicked, and so much more.

You can also view your performance report right in your blog dashboard including real-time visitors, and your most popular pages/posts by day.

Lazy Load by WP Rocket

Along with compressing your images, making sure they lazy load really helps to speed up your blog.

That’s where the Lazy Load plugin from WP Rocket comes in handy. After activating this plugin you can choose to lazy load just images, or to also include iframes and videos.

You can even replace your YouTube videos with a thumbnail image what when clicked the original video starts to play.

If you have some images you want to not use lazy load on you can add a tag to the image to block it. This can be handy if you place you pin images at the bottom of your post.

Ninja Forms

I’ve tried many form plugins for WordPress and my absolute favourite one is Ninja Forms for making contact pages.

Ninja Forms Features:

• Easy drag and drop form creator
• No limited on how many forms you can make, or fields, or actions you can add to each form.
• You can save your modified fields to reuse in other forms
• Make fields required 
• Multiple anti-spam options including integration with Google reCaptcha
• Pre-made forms for GDPR compliance

That is just a little of what the free version of Ninja Forms offers.

If you also need to integrate your form with a payment processor or newsletter service the have add-ons available for that.

Sassy Social Share

When setting up your blog you really need to make sure your readers have an easy way to share your awesome content.

There are many different social share plugins available for WordPress and I’ve tried a crazy number of them. My favourite one is Sassy Social Share.

Honestly, I can’t believe this plugin is free! I use Sassy Social Share on all of my blogs now, with one also using a paid add-on.

One of my blogs used to use a different URL structure and you can get an add-on for Sassy Social Share to recover your share counts.

Sassy Social Share Features:

• Very lightweight plugin
• GDPR Compliant – doesn’t save any cookie data in the browser of the user
• Works with about 100 social sharing and bookmarking sites
• Words with the Gutenberg WordPress editor
• Includes the option to show share counts
• You can easily customize the social icons, size, shape, and color.
• Allows caching of share counts
• Works with URL shortening services
• Offers inputs and floating share bars.
• Great support

I normally don’t expect support out of a free plugin but this one does give support and I have to say I’ve been quite happy so far. When I had questions about using Sassy Social Share they were answered quickly.

Tasty Pins

Pinterest is one of the largest sources of traffic for most bloggers. So anything that helps me to boost my SEO and Pinterest game at the same time is a winner.

Tasty Pins Lets You:

• Set custom Pinterest descriptions for your images. You can include keywords, hashtags, whatever you like.
• Leaves the ALT text open for using SEO image descriptions and accessibility.
• Let’s you hide Pinterest images in your post that appear when the pin button is clicked.
• You can disable pinning on certain images. I love this option and use it often in roundup posts.
• You can set it to force the pinning of hidden images.

I really enjoy using this lightweight plugin on my blogs. It’s made optimizing images for SEO and Pinterest so much easier.

Table of Contents Plus

Having a table of contents inside your post not only makes the post easier to use for your readers but Google loves it too!

Writing long-form content that fully answers your reader’s questions is great, but sometimes they may only be interested in one part of your post. Having a table of contents inside of it gives them the option to click and jump to just the content they are looking for.

Google also loves having tables of contents inside the post because it clearly shows them exactly what the post is about. I’ve found over and over again that the content links inside the table of contents get pulled up in search results.

These are highlighted and if you click on them they go right to that section of your post. I love this!

I’ve been using the Table of Contents Plus plugin for years now, it’s simple and easy to use.

TOC Plus Let’s You:

• Chose what headings are included in your Table of Contents
• Pick where in the post the Table of Contents will display
• Have it shown or collapsed inside the post
• Use default color schemes or create your own

I have never had a problem with this plugin but it hasn’t been updated in about 3 years now. Probably because it simply works well. However, there is a newer fork fo this plugin called Easy Table of Contents that is more updated.

Wordfence Security

Keeping your WordPress blog secure is one of the most important things you need to do!

While Sucuri is my favourite service for site protection if you’re just starting and need a free WordPress plugin then Wordfence Security is a great option.

Wordfence will:

• Scan your site for malware, changes in themes and plugins, SEO spam, code injections, malicious redirects and more.
• Compares your WordPress files to the originals kept in the WordPress repository and report any changes to you.
• Can fix the changed files by overwriting them with a copy of the original version.
• Setup firewall rules to keep bad bots off your site.
• Lockout people and bots trying to log in with unknown usernames
• Lockout people for using too many password requests or login attempts
• Block attackers by IP or IP range, hostname or referrer.

Wordfence is great for security but if you do find that you have a hacking problem I highly recommend using Sucuri for cleaning and protecting your blog.

UpdraftPlus

It’s so important to keep a current backup copy of your blog. Depending on your host they may be doing daily or weekly backups but this isn’t available on all plans and there have been times when backups done by hosts have been corrupted.

It’s a very heartbreaking thing to lose all the work you’ve put into growing your blog. So make sure that you have a good backup system in place.

One of the most popular choices is UpdraftPlus for good reason. It’s easy to use and the free version is packed with features.

The Free Version of Updraft Offers:

• Backup and restore your WordPress site
• Backs up to many cloud storage options ( Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, UpdraftVault, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, OpenStack Swift, and to your email.
• You can set automatic backups
• You can do a manual backup before updating plugins

The free version is perfect for most bloggers but if you want more backup storage options, incremental backups, back up of non-WordPress files or other options check out their premium version.

WP Super Cache

Caching your WordPress blog can really help to speed it up and save on server resources. There are many plugins available for this but my favourite of the free plugins is WP Super Cache.

I found it had little conflicts with other plugins and did a great job at speeding up my sites. With over 2 million users, great reviews this is a good option to start with.

It offers different levels of caching but most users will love the “simple” setting. It’s very easy to set up using the simple option.

What are some of your favourite essential WordPress plugins that you just can’t live without?