By default, WordPress comes with a very basic and fundamental setup. You will need plugins to enhance the functionality of WordPress to make your blog more professional and conversion-friendly. WordPress repository has over 50000 plugins. So you will have a hard time choosing plugins that are good for your blog. So in this article, we will talk about the 10 Best WordPress Plugins For A Blog. In fact, these are the plugins that are the most essential.
Few bloggers use tons of plugins, and few bloggers use just a few plugins. This is purely based on personal choice and requirement. For Example, if you want to create a Woo Commerce store on WordPress, you may need 25-30 plugins to achieve the required functionalities. But on the other hand, if you create a simple WordPress blog, you may need about 8-10 plugins only.
How many plugins that you need to install depends on the type of blogs also. For example, if you have a news blog, you may need very few plugins, but an affiliate blog needs more plugins. So it all depends on the type of blog that you own and what kind of functionalities you want to have.
Buy why should we really care about how many plugins we are installing? Is there any issue if I install more plugins? My hosing provider is giving unlimited space, so why not utilize the space and install more plugins?
So here are some of the drawbacks of installing more plugins.
- More plugin means more space consumption.
- Blogs with more plugins loads very slow
- There are chances of plugin conflicts
- The blog may have broken CSS or JavaScript
- Bandwidth utilization will be very high.
- More CPU utilization per page view
- Page size will be more if there are more plugins
- WordPress admin dashboard will be super slow
- Loss of search ranking
- Potential loss of visitors and customers
10 Best WordPress Plugins [ At A Glance]
1. Rank Math
By default, WordPress does not have any SEO functionality. You need to install SEO plugins to achieve SEO features in WordPress. Free plugins are good to start with but with limited functionality.
Yoast is the leader in the WordPress SEO plugin category. But I won’t recommend that. Instead, I would suggest using Rank Math SEO plugin, which offers much more than Yoast. On top of that, Rank Math’s free version offers more than that the paid version of other SEO plugins offers.
Rank Math is a new entry into the SEO market, which was dominated by Yoast earlier. As I said, the free version has all the bells and whistles you need in SEO. But if you want to take your SEO experience to the next, you should try the premium version of Rank Math.
With Rank Math, you can get rid of several plugins. For example, if you want to create a FAQ block, you would have been using a plugin before. But the FAQ block is inbuilt in Rank Math. So you don’t need that extra plugin. A fewer number of plugins means better speed.
Rank Math also has an onboard search console feature where you get a sneak peek of how your blog shows up in searches. You don’t need to get into the Google search console anymore. You get a broad overview of what are the keywords that are ranking. Ideally, those kinds of features are rare in SEO plugins, but Rank Math has all those extra features in its bucket.
Rank Math can connect to Google Analytics and get the analytics data directly on the WordPress dashboard itself. So you no longer need to log in to Google Analytics to see how your blog is performing.
It Few of the other features include 404 monitors, Redirection manager, Local SEO, Woocommerce SEO, Schema markup, FAQ block, How To block, quick indexing, etc. The list goes on. Trust me; this is the best SEO plugin for WordPress.
Rank Math Pro Features
- Advanced Google Analytics Integration
- Google News sitemap
- Video sitemap
- Image SEO pro
- WooCommerce SEO pro
- Google Adsense earning history
- Advanced how to schema
- Automatic image caption
- Track page speed for each post and page
2. WP Rocket
Website speed is important. No doubt about it. Right? As per the latest update, Google is considering Core Web vitals as a ranking factor. What does that mean? If your blog takes more time to load, you can lose search ranking no matter how good the content is.
There are a lot of ways to improve website speed. One of the ways I already mentioned here, Less number of plugins. The other key factor is hosting. You should always choose a good hosting like Siteground if you really care about website speed.
Now let’s talk about cache. Even if you are not into blogging, you may have heard about cache. What cache does is that it stores the static content of your website when someone visits your website for the first time. When they revisit the same page, the browser does not load the server’s contents but instead loads from the cache memory. Since there is less load on the server, the website speed gets improved.
WP Rocket is one of the most reputed and best cache plugins for WordPress. You will see a drastic difference in speed when you install WP Rocket. Not only does it help in caching, but this plugin also minifies codes, preload fonts, combines JavaScript files, combines CSS files, database optimizations, etc. It can also control WP Heartbeat, which is a bottleneck to speed.
WP Rocket does not have a free version. However, I can guarantee you that you won’t regret spending money on WP Rocket. Like other plugins, the best time to buy WP Rocket is during the Black Friday sale when they give up to 40% off. Sometimes they give offers on other occasions as well. You need to keep visiting this thread to get information about the WP Rocket plugin.
WP rocket Features
- Caching static contents
- Combine CSS files
- Combine JavaScript files
- Combine HTML files
- Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML
- Defer JavaScript loading
- Font preloading
- Sitemap preloading
- Control WP Heartbeat
- Database optimization
- Gzip Compression
- Image Lazy loading
- Cloudflare integration
![WP Rocket Review 2021: Best Cache Plugin For WordPress [+ Complete Setup Guide]](https://cdn1.rianstech.com/review/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/WP-Rockett-review.jpg?strip=all&lossy=80&ssl=1)
3. Updraftplus
Uncertain things can happen to your WordPress blogs. It can happen due to a new theme, new plugin, or it could be because of an update. It could also be due to a malware attack or poor coding. It’s always safe to take a backup of your WordPress blog periodically so that you can restore your blog in case of any issue.
When we talk about backup plugins for WordPress, Updraft plus is the first choice of many bloggers. It creates a backup of your WordPress files, database, plugins on demand or at a frequent period set by you. In case of any issue, you can easily restore your website from the backup very easily.
Updraftplus also has an option of remote backup. What that means is that you can take a backup of your WordPress website in cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. So in the worst case, even if you lose your Updraftplus backup, you can still restore your website using the cloud backup.
Updraftplus can also take periodic automatic backup. Once you set the interval and need to take the backup, Updraftplus will automatically backup your blog. I set this interval weekly so that every week my website gets up to cloud storage.
Updraft has a free version which is more than enough. But if your WordPress backup folder size is more than 500 MB, then it is better to your the premium version that allows you to take incremental backup. Not only that, the premium version comes with many other useful features, as listed below.
Updraftplus Pro features
- Incremental backup
- Free 1 GB for Updraftvault
- Clone websites
- Send backup to multiple cloud drives
- Database encryption
- Multisite support
- No advertising
4. Short pixel Image Optimizer
Do you know that images contribute about 70% of website space? The more images you have on a page, the slower that page will load. So if you want to improve your website speed, you need to optimize images. Unfortunately, most of the cache plugins can not cache images. On top of that, traditional CDN’s like Cloud flare can not deliver images through their CDN. Images are really a pain area for bloggers. Agree?
Then what is the solution? The solution is to use the Image Optimizer plugin. You will get tons of free and paid image optimizer plugins, but Shortpixel Image Optimizer is the best. When I talk about the best, I am talking about the most value for money plugins that do regular image optimization.
Shortpixel has a free plugin that gives you 100 MB credit per month. So If I consider an image size of about 500 KB, then you can optimize up to 200 images per month with the free plugin. The free plugin will also create a WebP version of all images and deliver the same at the frontend.
You can also install one more plugin called Shortpixel adaptive images to load your website image files through Shortpixel CDN. This will drastically reduce the load on your hosting server, and your website will load much faster than before.
If you want to optimize more images, you have to buy premium subscription plans or buy one-time credit. For example, you can buy 5000 image credits for $3.99. The rate is comparatively cheap compare to other similar plugins.
Shortpixel usually offers a lifetime deal during the Black Friday sale on Appsumo. During that sale, you can get a lifetime subscription to short pixel by paying just $49. You can keep visiting this space for that offer.
Shortpixel Image Optimizer Features
- Three types of image optimization, Glossy, Lossy or Lossless
- WebP conversion and front end delivery
- Image CDN
- Image lazy loading
- Smart crop
- Image hover handling
5. Mailpoet
No one can ignore the importance of email marketing in 2021. Many bloggers have very little traffic to their blog but still earning thousands of dollars just by doing email marketing. Unfortunately, most email marketing tools come on a subscription basis, and the cost is too high. For new bloggers, the cost is way too high.
Mailpoet is an excellent tool for email marketing. You can have email newsletters, welcome emails, automated post updates email using this plugin. You can also get transaction emails if you have a Woocommer store. To do your job easily, this plugin comes with a lot of prebuilt templates.
MailPoet is a product from WordPress team, so you can be sure that this is a very high quality plugin. In fact this is one of the best and cheapest email marketing tool available for WordPress.
Mailpoet has a free version that allows 1000 subscribers per website. If you have more subscribers, then you can buy their premium plan. The premium plan cost varies based on the number of subscribers.
The cost of the premium plan is a bit high. But I would suggest you buy their lifetime plan on Appsumo during the black Friday sale. During Black Friday, you will get a lifetime deal for just $49 that allows you to have 5000 subscribers per website for unlimited websites.
MailPoet Appsumo Deal Features
- Up to 5000 subscribers per website
- Unlimited Websites
- Up to 50000 emails per day per website using MailPoet server
- Free transactional email
- Free templates
- Free welcome email for new subscribers
- Automated email to subscribers after post publish
6. Social Snap
If you are a new blogger and not getting enough organic traffic, social media is the only way to get some traffic. WordPress does not have any social sharing buttons by default. You need to install a plugin to achieve this functionality.
Social snap is an excellent plugin to share content on social media. You will be able to share content to over 40 social network channels. You will also get an option to share images on Pinterest. This plug-in comes with a dedicated “Click To Tweet” widget that can help you to share content on Twitter directly.
You can show the social share button at the top of the content, at the bottom of the content, or you can show anywhere using shortcode. You can also show sidebar floating widgets using this plugin.
Social snap has a free version with fundamental functionalities. You will only get six social networks in the free version. But the premium version has 40 social networks, as I said before.
In the premium version, you also have the option to show floating widgets for mobile devices. You can also see detailed statistics about how many times your post was shared to different networks, how many times users clicked on those links etc.
Social Snap Features
- Over 40 social networks
- Click To Tweet widget
- Share on Pinterest button
- Sidebar widget
- Show widget using shortcode
- Floating sidebar widget
- Bottom floating widget for mobile devices
- Detail statistics
7. WP Coupons And Deals
If your blog’s main monetization strategy is affiliate marketing, then you need this plugin for sure. If I am not wrong, you always wanted to show different deals and coupons on your blog in the simplest way. Right? This plugin can help you to achieve this.
This plugin has a free version that comes with only one template to show different deals and coupons. The template has an option for adding a featured image, deal button or call to action button. The free version also allows you to show deals anywhere on your blog using shortcodes.
The premium version has six templates and has click to reveal coupon code option. You can also show the social share button on the deals. You can hide expired coupons and create coupon count down in the premium version.
One of the other best features this plugin has is creating an archive page for all deals. So visitors do not need to navigate around different pages to find deals. They can go to the single deal page to get all their deals.
I am using the premium version of this plugin on this blog, and all the deals are created using this plugin only. The free version is ok, but the paid version offers way more than its price.
WP coupons And Deals Features
- Six intuitive template
- Click to reveal a coupon
- Hide expired coupons
- Deal countdown
- Deal social share
- Archive page
- Show deals using shortcode
8. Ultimate Addon For Gutenberg
As you already know that WordPress comes with minimal features to create an eye-catching and attractive blog. You have two options, either use a page builder like Elementor or use an advanced Gutenberg blog plugin.
Using page builders will unnecessarily make your blogs heavy, and it will take more time for your website to load. On top of that, most of the page builders are very costly too. So using an advanced Gutenberg block plugin makes more sense as those are almost free.
Ultimate Add-on for Gutenberg is a Gutenberg block plugin from the Brainstorm Force house, the same team that developed Astra, which is the number one WordPress theme. In fact, this blog using the Astra theme and Ultimate add-on for the Gutenberg plugin. Trust me, this is the best free WordPress plugins if you want to build your blog using Gutenberg.
This plugin comes with over 30 useful blocks that are sufficient to create a professional and eye-catching blog. It has some useful blocks like Table Of Content, How to schema, FAQ schema, and a contact form block. So you can surely get rid of some of the plugins as those functionalities are already there in the Ultimate add-on for Gutenberg plug-in.
Advanced Add On For Gutenberg Plug-in Features
- Section block
- Advanced column block
- Styled list block
- FAQ schema block
- How To Schema block
- Table Of Content
- Contact form
- Click to action
- Inline Notice
- Advanced heading
- Social Share
- WP Search
- Taxonomy
- Blockquote
- Google Map
- Content timeline
- Infobox
- Multi buttons
- Price List
- Team
9. WP All In One Security
WordPress is the most popular CMS. So it is excepted to have security issues. By default, WordPress does not come with security features. You need to install a third-party plugin to enable security features in WordPress.
Usually, all full-fledge security plugins are paid, but this is the only plugin that is 100% free. What that means is the there is no premium version of this plugin.
WP All in one security saves blogs by protecting user logins, brute attacks, spam attacks, etc. It can also save the database and WordPress directory. Also, it can backup important files like .htaccess and WP config.
You can also change the WP-Admin URL, add Google Captcha in the comments form, get a notification for WordPress file change, and many more other features.
WP All In One Security Features
- Protect against brute force login attack
- Rename WP admin login URL
- Notification for WordPress file changes
- Backup of WordPress .htaccess file
- Backup of database
- Google Recaptcha
- Frontend copy protection
- Disabling editing of PHP files.
- Advanced firewall
10. AMP For WP
Trust me, AMP is the future. Google is recommending bloggers to have the AMP version for added benefits in the Google Search. If you search news on Google, you will see that most of the news sites have AMP versions and those are ranking on the first page.
What AMP plugins do is creates an AMP version of your website content and delivers the same when visitors consume your website content on a mobile device. AMP makes your website pages lightweight by removing all javascript, unnecessary CSS, and other elements to make your website load faster on mobile devices.
If you have a new blog, then it is a must to have the AMP version to rank higher, however, for other types of blog you can skip the AMP version for now but in the long run, you may need AMP.
AMP for WP is the best plugin if you want to have an AMP version of your site. It comes with its own theme and other styling elements irrespective of what theme you have on your blog. You can also put ads on your blog. It can be integrated with Google Analytics and compatible with SEO plugins.
AMP For WP Features
- Comes with three themes
- Google font support
- Google analytics support
- Google AdSense support
- Social share option is available
- The Facebook instant article support
- Breadcrumb support
- Woo-commerce support
- YouTube video embedder support
Conclusion: Must Have Plugins For WordPress
So that’s it we have in this article. These 10 plugins are the bare minimum to create an eye-catching blog and earn money from it. Of course, you can install more plugins to add more features.
I use the same 10 plugins on this blog and I can see that this is really fast and styling is also not so bad. What do you feel about this blog? Please write your opinion in the comment section and I will be happy to respond to you back.
Few Optional Best Plugins For WordPress
These are the plugins that are not really required but if you have these, it may make your life easy by adding more functionalities and automating the process. However, these plugins may cause a dent in your website speed.
Elementor Pro
Elementor is the number one page builder for WordPress. It’s a drag and drops page builder that can help you create very attractive and professional blogs. It comes with over 60 blocks that include contact forms and email marketing tools as well. So you can save money on other tools and invest in elementor.
Elementor also supports WooCommerce. So if you plan to use Woocommerce, elementor is a great plugin. It has a free version that comes with very limited numbers of blocks. If you want to explore the potential of elementor, then you should try the pro version only.