So often we as bloggers tend to have our favorite plugins… sometimes we share them and sometimes we hoard them like they are the best-kept secret. I decided to share my top 10 plugins with you! These plugins are ones that I feel every blog should have. From social shares to security… these will keep you up to date, secure, and loving your site!
My Top 10 Plugins for WordPress
1. Wordfence Security
Cost: Free or Premium for $59 per year (if you buy more years and licenses it gets cheaper to see chart visit here)
I love how it scans my site and plugins to help keep me secure. You can even personalize your settings to lock out hackers after two password attempts. You would be surprised at how often as a blogger this happens. Wordfence thinks of everything and it is must have for all blogs.
2. Akismet
Cost: Free or Plans starting at $5 per month and you can see plans here.
Akismet checks your comments to see if they are spam before sending them to you to review. I hate all those spam comments, and they do a great job of filtering most of them out.
3. Yoast SEO
Cost: Free or $69 per year and you can see the comparison of features here.
This truly is the easiest SEO plugin to use. I have tried a few and always end back up with Yoast. I love their rating system that shows you when you have reached optimal SEO rating. This is one plugin that I actually pay for. That should tell you how much I love it. With paid version, you can set more than one keyword, and it has a lot of other cool features.
4. SumoMe
Cost: Free or different paid options for more pro accounts depending on options. See options here.
I love their list builder function, and it works great with MailChimp or several other email providers. Image Sharer is also great because it not only puts a Pinterest hover button over your images but also Facebook or Twitter. SumoMe also has share buttons, welcome mat, a smart bar, and several other great features.
5. UpdraftPlus
Cost: Free or plans starting at $70 per year. See different plans here.
You have worked very hard on your blog, and the last thing you want to do is loose all that hard work. I don’t recommend just relying on your hosting service to back up your blog. I have heard of several who thought they were and didn’t or it wasn’t a complete backup. UpdraftPlus will back up to several popular places like Dropbox, Google Drive, and email.
6. NextScripts
Cost: Free or $49.95 per year see details here.
This makes my life so much easier. Once your post publishes, NextScripts will automatically send it to your favorite social media accounts. The free version has several social media accounts, and you can upgrade to paid (for about $50 per year) and post to almost all of them. They just released Instagram!!! Plus they support shortened links like bit.ly. You can customize your shares to add excerpts or hashtags.
7. Yuzo – Related Posts
Cost: Free and you can donate if you wish.
This is one of my newer plugins that I have fallen in love with. Yuzo has some amazing ways to customize which post show up as related. You can change the size of images, background color, and so much more. I like how easy it is to setup and finalize. The finished product looks as if it was custom coded into my theme.
8. Better Click to Tweet
Cost: Free or you can donate if you wish
I love their support! I also have looked at several of their competitors and their click to tweet boxes look the best. Better Click to Tweet helps with Twitter engagement and gives you a nice mention anytime someone uses it. I love to make sharing super easy and this way it is. Plus it provides a nice break in longer posts. See doesn’t it looks nice 😉 . Go ahead and click it and you will see how great it works.
9. Duplicate Post
Cost: Free or you can donate if you wish
If you have any posts that are in a series Duplicate Post makes it so much easier. With one click it copies your previous post into a new draft that you can edit from there. I know you can copy and paste HTML, but this copies everything including other fields.
10. Yoast Comment Hacks
Cost: Free
This is a little less known plugin. What do I use Yoast Comment Hacks for? I love the option to redirect first-time commenters to a thank you page. Why? It is a way to show off some of my best posts and welcome them to my site. If you have never commented, feel free to test it out below. Just make sure you comment on WordPress and not Facebook comment box. It also has an option to email commenters directly from comment page, and some other great features.
I hope you enjoyed this list of my top 10 plugins and will consider installing a few if not all on your site today. What are your favorite plugins? Let me know in comments below.
Don’t forget to ‘pin’ to your favorite blogging board so you can easily find this list later.
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