The 10 WordPress Plugins Your Blog Needs To Have

Blog / Wordpress

If you are a blogger and use WordPress, you already know what plugins are and what you can do with them – basically everything!

I’ve been using WordPress for years and would like to share with you the 10 plugins you need to have on your blog and why.

Here they are:

1. All in One SEO Pack

If you have a blog, you know how important it is to invest in SEO.

With this plugin you can do two amazing things:

Add a title, description and keywords for every post you write (and also for the static pages on your website).

The description you write is what Google is going to pick up and what people will read when they find you on the search engine. So it is a great way to add the right keywords.

If you go to Plugins and click on “SEO Settings” on this plugin, it will take you to a page where you can set up your SEO settings.

Scroll down to Home Page Settings and fill in the “Home Title”, “Home Description” and Home Keywords. This is basically what Google will pick up and you’re telling the search engine what your blog is about. Make sure you add the right keywords in there.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

2. Email Before Download

If you want to offer free stuff on your blog and collect email addresses for your mailing list, this is a great plugin to do it!

It works with two other plugins: Contact Form 7 and WordPress Download Monitor.

Basically you create a contact form using Contact Form 7, you upload your offer (for example a free eBook or a guide) and then you use a piece of code to add both to your offer page.

People will have to fill in the form first and submit it, and then they can instantly download the offer from your website or have it delivered on their email address.

If you want to to try it to see how it works, you can order any of this Pinterest free guides.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

3. Hello Bar for WordPress

If you want a a pop up on your blog asking people to subscribe to your newsletter, this is a great plugin.

You have several options: you can add a static bar to the top of your blog, have a pop up in the middle of the screen, a small window at the botton of your blog or show a window that completely covers your entire screen.

You can change colours and add the text you want and you can also test different types and see which one gets you the most subscriptions.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

4. Pinterest Pin It Button For Images

Pinterest is a must for bloggers. The right place to share your blog posts and reach your audience.

To make it easier to share, this plugin is great. It basically adds a pin it button when hovering the image making very simple and easy to pin it into Pinterest.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

5. Pinterest Verify

If you have a business account on Pinterest, you definitely need to verify your website.

By verifying your website you get access to website stats inside Pinterest, so you know which pins from your website are the most popular and are having more repins, likes and clicks. Verifying tour website also adds your name and logo (or picture) to all your pins.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

6. Pinterest Widgets

This is also a plugin for Pinterest and it allows you to have 4 types of widgets:

Follow button: Invite people to follow you on Pinterest from your site.
Pin widget: Embed one of your Pins on your site.
Profile widget: Show up to 30 of your latest Pins on your site.
Board widget: Show up to 30 of your favorite board’s latest Pins.

It’s a great way to show people your pins on your blog posts, tell them you’re on Pinterest and ask them to follow you.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

7. Post Views Stats

Knowing how many views your blog posts have is crucial for many reasons: to know which are your most popular posts, to see if you increased views after a paid promotion on social media, to know which posts become viral, which ones to add affiliate links, etc.

So this is the right plugin to have. It will tell you the number of views for each blog post and in real time!

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

8. Simple Share Buttons Adder

If you want your readers to share your blog posts, make sure you make it easier for them with this plugin.

It adds social media share buttons to every blog post and every page on your website. You can choose which social networks you want to add. I recommend the ones you can see on the image above.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

9. Social Metrics

This plugin is a real time saver!

It allows you to quickly post a new blog article into your social media accounts right after you publish it and without leaving WordPress!

You can post into Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ and also into the bookmarking sites StumbleUpon and Digg.

And it also tells you how many retweets and shares your post have had.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.

10. XML Sitemaps

This plugin generates a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.

So, everytime you have new content on your blog, it notifies all major search engines about the new content and it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently.

It was rated the best WordPress plugin and you definitely want it on your website.

Click here to go to the plugin’s page.