15 essential WordPress plugins for a professional blogger

WordPress plugins for bloggers are one of the best resources around for generating good, high-quality content. Everything you need to make your content the centerpiece of your strategy.

When you start a blog or even if you’ve been creating content for a while, it’s a good idea to implement different tools that can help you to improve your work. You can use WordPress plugins for bloggers for a variety of purposes.

For example, if you want your blog to be better positioned in search engines or you need it to be more compatible, the WordPress plugins for bloggers you choose must have these two features in common:

1. They must perform the tasks they say they perform. And, of course, they should be easy to use.
2. They have to be agile. I.e. they must not take up much space on your service nor slow down your website.

Which features to prioritize

When choosing the best WordPress plugins, there are a few features you should consider:

1. – They must be compatible with your blog

WordPress is one of the tools that works hardest to stay up-to-date. This is why it’s important to know which plugins have been updated for new CMS versions. And to check that they are compatible with your blog template.

It’s simple: when you go to pick a plugin, you’ll see when it was last updated. If you notice that it’s been a long time since any updates were made to it, you should think about whether it’s really essential for your work.

2.- Free or paid-for plugins?

We are all interested in free WordPress plugins for bloggers. However, there are low-cost tools that may give your blog a bigger boost. So don’t disregard paying for plugins.

In fact, among the range of top WordPress plugins for bloggers that we’ve chosen, you’ll see that a few of the recommendations are not free.

3.- Is it relevant or not?

Thirdly, you should know that the best WordPress plugins for bloggers are not difficult to find. It is as simple as checking the rating other users have given it and compare it with the number of downloads. If these two indicators are high, it’s a sign
that it’s a good tool.

Another yardstick you can use is to check which plugins your favourite bloggers use. Maybe you have more than one reference point or you check out a lot of blogs when you’re looking for ideas. What WordPress Theme is That will tell you what plugins and themes are used by your preferred sites.

4.- How many plugins should I download?

This is the main dilemma. But it will all depend on your hosting. Many people think that you shouldn’t install too many plugins, as they can damage and slow your blog’s load time. You should keep an eye out for this, but you’ll have to decide to install solely those plugins that are truly valuable.

It’s a good idea to download P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) to assess the impact of other tools on your site’s load time, before installing some of these WordPress plugins.

Essential WordPress plugins for bloggers

Don’t know which one to go for? We´ll give you a hand with a selection of 15 essential plugins for different areas:

A.- Safety and maintenance

1.- Wordfence

It is one of the most downloaded WordPress plugins for bloggers. In fact, it’s the number one in security.

Wordfence is a basic security plugin. It adds an extra layer of protection to your website thereby blocking potential hacking attempts. Likewise, it blocks robot IP addresses that attempt to access it.

Furthermore, it allows you to set customized email alerts that notify you if there is any suspicious activity you should keep in mind.

2. – Anti-spam

It is one of the WordPress plugins for bloggers that really does what it says: it’s an anti-spam solution. It stops malicious comments from being posted on your website. And all without using captcha, without asking questions or bothering those users who genuinely do wish to leave a comment. And they are the people you’re most interested in.

3.- Simple Trackback Validartion With Topsy Blocker

As you know, there are two types of spam: spam referring to regular comments and trackback spam. This utility stops the second type. And it does so by verifying that the sites attempting to send trackbacks are real and people-driven.

4.- WP Optimize

WP Optimize keeps your blog running properly as it cleans databases and removes all kinds of old revisions. In addition, it cleans unapproved comments and other items you’ve sent to trash.

In short, this plugin will help your website to run quicker as it doesn’t allow it to accumulate additional and unnecessary data.

5.- Vaultpress

Of all the WordPress plugins for bloggers mentioned thus far, this is the only one you have to pay for. It’s a real-time content syncing service that backs up each post, comment, media file, revision and panel configuration on your website to its servers.

B.- SEO, traffic generation and social media participation

6.- Yoast

This plugin works with almost any topic related to SEO positioning on WordPress. In addition, it allows you to integrate various functionalities in one single application. Think about it: if you don’t use this plugin, you’ll have to install a number of separate plugins. The Yoast plugin allows you to:

• Automatically generate Sitemap files in XML.
• Edit the titles and descriptions of your pages and posts.
• Clean duplicate content.
• Deindex pages.
• Set permalinks.
• RSS feed.

In addition, this is one of the best WordPress plugins for bloggers because it is the number one plugin for post and page optimization. Its red, amber and green lights will guide you through at all times, helping you to refine your content. And thus adjust it to the best possible SEO.

7. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin generates a unique XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com for improved blog indexing.

With a sitemap, it is so much easier for web crawlers to see the entire structure of your site and serve you more efficiently. This plugin is compatible with all types of WordPress page generators as well as personalized URLs. In addition, it notifies the main search engines each time a post with new content is created.

8.- Google Analytics Dashboard

It’s one of the most interesting WordPress plugins for bloggers. This is because it gives you the option of tracking your site using the same tracking code you use on Analytics. Therefore, it provides a shortcut to view your key statistics from the main page of your WordPress blog.

9.- Frizzly

Frizzly adds a “share” icon to your social networks on the images that you include in your posts. It thereby increases interest in your content and encourages sharing on social networks.

And if, for example, you have a profile on Twitter, you can put your ID on the configuration so you are automatically tagged when someone shares your publication.

10.- Revive Old Post

This is one of the best WordPress plugins since it automatically attracts traffic from social networks to old posts. It thereby ensures those posts stay alive, promotes your content and drives traffic to them. A more than interesting strategy to keep on extracting value from your published content.

C. – Plugins to create a community

Without a robust strategy that works to build a community, your content strategy won’t make much sense. These plugins can help you work on it:

11.- Comment Reply Notification

There’s nothing better than providing answers if you want to create a community and begin to strengthen ties. In fact, the less time you take to reply to questions or comments, the more important the user who has left their feedback on your website will feel.

This plugin will notify you as soon as there’s been any activity so you can begin building a rapport.

12.- Comment Redirect

The first time a user comments on your blog you have a golden opportunity to introduce yourself, welcome them to your community and get them hooked! In light of this, Comment Redirect allows you to automate this task. It gives you a real opportunity to take advantage of automation applied to digital marketing.

13.- OptinMonster

This plugin is not only useful for reaching users using a pop-up window, It also has more features.

For example, you can publish a bar at the bottom of the screen requesting user emails in return for a free product. In addition, it helps you to create pop-up windows requesting email addresses and it even allows you to do A/B testing to compare which pop-ups are performing best.

14.- CommentLuv

If you want to encourage users to comment on your blog, one of the alternatives is offering rewards. The free version of the CommentLuv plugin does just that.

Although the premium version gives you many more options. Among these options, there is an analysis that displays where your comment traffic is coming from.

15.-Gravity Forms

This is another WordPress plugin for bloggers worth consideration. It has a really simple interface that not only allows you to build a contact form, but also enables you to make surveys or order forms, plus many other features.

All these WordPress plugins for bloggers will help you be more effective in your digital marketing efforts. You’ll save lots of management time which can instead be spent on other activities. They also allow you to be constantly present and active on all of your social network accounts without any great effort.

However, there’s no plugin that will create content for you. Nor one that will put you in contact with brands that need your skills to create digital content. For this task, there’s nothing better than a content marketing platform like Coobis. A place where can you get the extra income you need. And, most interesting of all, you don’t need to take on any fixed cost to have a presence on Coobis. And there’s no commitment to stay with us or exclusivity either.