Starting a WordPress blog is super-easy; anyone can do it. However, managing said blog, building an audience, and growing it to a point where you can make a living from it? Now, that’s a different story altogether. Fortunately, there are plenty of great WordPress plugins out there that make life as a blogger easier. In today’s post, I’m going to introduce you to to the essential WordPress blogger plugins for your website.
WordPress blogger plugin
The free plugins below are all available via the Official WordPress Plugin Repository where you will find installation instructions, detailed feature overviews, ratings, reviews, support, and more.
Yoast
If you only install one plugin on your blog, make it Yoast. When we hit publish we all secretly (or not so secretly) dream that our articles will go viral. However, the truth is that writing and posting is only a small part of the job. What you actually need is distribution (i.e. getting your blog posts in front of readers). And, in the travel blogging world, that means promotion through social media sites (more on that below) and search engines.
It can be very difficult in a saturated market to get your content at the top of Google’s search results but it can happen – with the help of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). I’ve spent a very long time looking into this ever-evolving topic. As a new blogger or just someone who’s looking to be better at SEO than they are now, I’d say quit all the homework and start with Yoast.
Postmatic Comments
If you’re a newbie blogger, nothing beats the excitement of receiving that first blog comment. And, if you want to encourage readers to leave comments, it’s well worth upgrading the native WordPress commenting system.
I recommend Postmatic Comments. Why Postmatic? Because it lets your audience read and comment on your content in the most convenient way possible – directly from their inbox. Visitors can simply respond to a standard email and their message is posted as a blog comment – neat, huh?
Disable Comments
Or perhaps you want to take the opposite stance when it comes to comments and shut down your comments section for good.
The Disable Comments plugin does exactly what it says – it disables comments site-wide, putting an end to nuisance spam comments.
Akismet
Want comments but had enough of the spam? Then look no further than Akismet, the top anti-spam plugin on the market.
Developed by Matt Mullenweg and Automattic (the people behind WordPress.com), Akismet analyses your comments, then blocks the spam. It’s free for non-commercial sites.
Editorial Calendar
As a blogger, it’s your job to publish consistently so that your audience knows what to expect. And when it comes to creating a publishing schedule, few plugins can compete with Editorial Calendar.
Simply drag-and-drop your posts into the calendar to schedule them. This also helps you to spot gaps in your content schedule.
WP-Optimize
As a blogger, you’ll probably save a post many times before hitting publish, right? I typically save my posts around nine or ten times, so I know how these things go.
But, did you know that all of these post revisions are stashed away in the WordPress database? These are revisions you are never, ever going to need again, so why keep them? Answer: don’t!
WP-Optimize is one of the essential plugins for bloggers. It completely declutters your WordPress database of draft post revisions, as well as the thousands of spam comments that accumulate. Why is this important? Because it can make your website load faster.
Simple Share Buttons Adder
If you can’t generate a comment, a social share is often the next best thing – it’s a great way to increase traffic to your blog, too.
Simple Share Buttons Adder is one of the best free social media plugins for WordPress. You can configure your buttons using drag-and-drop, with over 15 networks supported. The buttons look beautiful, with a number of icon sets and counter styles available.
Conclusion
I hope that this article helped you a lot in order to find the perfect WordPress blogger plugin for your website. So, which one is your’s favorite? For any query feel free to comment below. Thanks for reading.