While blogging is fun and fulfilling, it does not come without difficulties. From issues with editing and proofreading to a lack of engagement with your content, blogging sees its fair share of challenges.
However, there are things you can do to try and alleviate these challenges. For example, investing in plugins.
There are many plugins out there that can be used with WordPress that will help elevate your blog to new heights.
In this article, we will be detailing the 2o best WordPress plugins for blogs to help with effective blogging. So, if this is of interest to you, read on for more!
20 Best WordPress Plugins For Blogs For Effective Blogging
Let’s check out the 20 best WordPress plugins that will help boost your blog.
First on our list is MonsterInsights! This is a WordPress plugin for Google Analytics. This plugin helps with connecting Google Analytics and your website properly.
Therefore, you will be able to analyze how exactly people on the internet discover and use your blog.
After you gain this knowledge, you will be able to optimize your website to your advantage. You will be able to increase both your traffic and your subscribers.
There are two versions of MonsterInsights. The first is the free version, which works very well. However, there is also a Pro version that offers many more advantageous features.
If you want to upgrade to the pro version then there are three plans:
Agency
Pro
Plus
All of these start at $199 a year.
If you want to learn more about MonsterInsights, click here!
Next, we have the WP Super Cache plugin! It can get extremely frustrating for both you and potential traffic if your site doesn’t load quick enough or experiences frequent crashes.
This is where the WP Super Cache plugin comes in! This cache plugin is effective while being simple, and works excellently on shared hosting!
Cache plugins are necessary for shared hosting, as well as VPS. This is because WordPress needs to collect your blog post from its database whenever anyone goes into your site for that post. This needs a lot of PHP calls, sometimes too many.
If you want to learn more about the WP Super Cache plugin, click here!
If you want to optimize your blog and rank highly in the search engines, then you will need a great SEO plugin. When it comes to SEO plugins, then we recommend the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.
This SEO plugin is extremely effective and powerful.
With this plugin, you will be able to gain access to meta description and title templates to help with your branding, receive meta tags and canonical URLs to help with SEO improvements, and gain XML sitemaps which makes it easier for Google to understand the structure of your site.
There is both a free and a pro version of this WordPress plugin.
If you would like to learn more about the Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin, click here!
Jetpack is one of the most multi-functional plugins on this list. It is one of the most powerful WordPress plugins and is made by those behind WordPress itself.
Here are just some of the features you will have access to via jetpack:
Access to social sharing buttons to allow readers to share your blog posts themselves
You will be able to make a sitemap
See related posts to lower the rate of bounce down and increase engagement with your blog
Stop hackers from getting through the login page for your blog
Track views on your page and use powerful analytics to search queries
Use of VaultPress to backup your blog daily
And so much more! Jetpack encompasses a lot of the functions of other plugins, which means that you need fewer plugins overall if you invest in this one.
There are different payment plans for the different Jetpack packages.
Next on our list is the Akismet WordPress plugin. This plugin comes from WordPress officially and will prevent your blog from being filled with bots and spam comments.
Spam comments can stop a lot of people from interacting with your blog and reduce its quality overall.
Spam comments often disguise themselves as compliments, such as:
This article is so informative!
I love your blog!
Your writing skills are excellent, you’ve got yourself a new subscriber!
Once you look at the URL you will soon see that these comments are not genuine and actually lead to an affiliate site. More spam.
So, in order to prevent this, you should check out the Akismet plugin!
Akismet will:
Block spam and allow you to save disk space
Filters out spam after automatically checking the comments
See the number of user’s approved comments
And more!
Click here to learn more about the Akismet plugin!
Next on our list is a WordPress plugin called OneSignal. OneSignal is designed to bring your blog more traffic. It will create a new way for people to be able to subscribe to your blog.
OneSignal works by adding web push technology so any individual that accesses your blog via FireFox, Safari, or Chrome will receive a notification encouraging them to subscribe to your blog.
OneSignal will provide support like:
Sending push notifications to subscribers letting them know when you upload a new blog post.
Allows you to send push notifications manually to allow specific blog posts to gain more traffic. You can also send push notifications for an advertiser’s site or a landing page.
Social Warfare is another excellent WordPress plugin worth investing in. This plugin allows you to add sharing buttons on your blog’s mobile site as well as the desktop. This includes:
Whatsapp
Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Telegram
Tumblr
LinkedIn
And so much more!
There are a few different payment and package options for Social Warfare.
They are:
Single Site ($29)
2-5 Sites ($89)
5-10 Sites ($139)
Unlimited Sites ($349)
Click here to learn more about Social Warfare and how it can be used to help with effective blogging.
Next on our list is Contact Form 7! Contact Form 7 is a great WordPress plugin because it highlights referral sources.
It is useful to have details on referral sources because you will be able to understand how a visitor to your site navigates through before being able to use the contact form.
This plugin will be able to customize your site as you like it. Multiple forms can be created with tables, and these entries will be sent directly to your email.
Affiliate links are not always easy to manage, especially when you are trying to do so without a link management system to help you.
However, WordPress has a solution for this. There are many plugins for WordPress that make managing affiliate links a lot easier. Amongst them is ThirstyAffiliates, which is excellent!
ThirstyAffiliates helps with a variety of different things, including:
Both cloaking and adding affiliate links
Organizing affiliate links into categories
Inserting links into pages and posts
Changing keywords into affiliate links
Manages affiliate links in a more effective and efficient manner
There are different payment and package plans, such as:
Basic: $49 +
Plus: $99 +
Advanced: $149 +
If you would like to learn more about ThirstyAffiliates, click here!
This plugin focuses on the safety and security of your site. While there are many plugins that focus on the same thing, WordFence is definitely at the top of the list!
This plugin offers plenty of features, such as:
Limits login attempts to protect your site from brute force attacks
Malicious traffic is blocked by the web application firewall
Malware scanner that has been integrated and blocks requests that have malicious content or code
Scans file content, comments, and posts for anything suspicious, like a dangerous URL.
Checks site to ensure it does not have any vulnerabilities to its security and will send you an alert if it finds any issues
Overwrites changed files to repair them and will delete files that do not easily fit into the WordFence interface.
And so much more!
Not only that, but WordFence actually regularly updates itself to keep up to date with the latest hack techniques, so you are always one step ahead!
Sometimes there will be broken links on your blog, and the Broken Link Checker plugin can easily find them and inform you, so you can deal with them accordingly.
Let’s check out some of the amazing features of the Broken Link Checker Plugin:
Configurable
Will detect redirects and missing images as well as broken links
Stops search engines from being able to follow broken links
Allows links to be edited via the plugin page
Allows broken links to be displayed differently in posts
And much more!
If you would like to learn more about the broken link checker, click here for more!
If you’re looking for a software for conversion rate optimization, then look no further than OptinMonster! OptinMonster is one of the most popular types of software in its specific market.
It will permit you to convert those who stop visiting your website into customers and email subscribers.
This is an excellent solution not just for bloggers, but for those who own eCommerce and business websites.
With OptinMonster, you will have access to high-converting, pre-made forms for opting-in that are easily customizable thanks to their drag and drop functionality.
Not only that, but the excellent targeting features display permits you to personalize your campaigns for every user, so the correct message will be shown at the correct time.
There are many different package plans available for OptinMonster, such as:
Next, we have the WordPress plugin WP-Optimize. This plugin is designed to keep up the optimization of your database to ensure its performance is always at its peak. It does this by ensuring the database is cleaned up.
WP-Optimize will remove any unnecessary data automatically. Some of the other features include:
Mobile-friendly, which helps with ease of use
Will show potential savings and database statistics
Will carry out a weekly clean up automatically
Will trigger a pre-optimized backup automatically
Uses a button-press to de-fragment/compact MySQL tables
And so much more!
If you want to learn more about the WP-Optimize WordPress plugin, click here!
As one of WordPress’s most popular redirect manager plugins, the Redirection plugin is definitely one to consider. This WordPress plugin will help you to keep on top of 404 errors and manage all of the 301 redirections you may face on your blog.
Additionally, all of the URLs can be redirected and will have complete logs for when they are redirected.
Here are some examples of the redirects you will find with the Redirection plugin:
Referrer
Custom filter
Page type
Server
Login status
WordPress capability
Cookies
IP addresses
HTTP headers
And much more!
If you would like to learn more about the Redirect plugin, click here for more!
So far, MailChimp is used everyday on almost two million WordPress websites, and has extremely high ratings! It is one of the most popular plugins on this list, and it is not hard to see why.
With this plugin, you will be able to create excellent opt-in forms that allow you to increase the subscribers to your email list. If you have a low budget, then this plugin does not isolate you, it truly works for everyone.
Here are some of the features that MailChimp has to offer:
User-friendly, mobile-optimized sign-up forms
Integration with other plugins, like BuddyPress, Contact form 7, Ninja Forms 3, MemberPress, and more!
As well as the free version of this plugin, there are also pro versions.
SEMRush is a great WordPress plugin, it allows you to see if there are any errors or warnings and where they are on your blog. Not only that, but it will inform you how to fix them.
Additionally, SEMRush will show you how you are performing in terms of keywords in comparison to your competitors.
There are three different payment plans for SEMRush. They are:
Pro: $199.95 per month
Guru: $229.95 per month
Business: $449.95 per month
If you would like to learn more about this WordPress plugin, click here for more!
Next on our list is Grammarly! If you want to have an excellent blog with a lot of engagement, then you will need to invest in Grammarly. Writing is made so much easier with this WordPress plugin.
It will check over your spelling and grammar and offer suggestions as you write. It will provide knowledge as to how your writing will be perceived by readers, whether it lacks clarity, correctness, engagement, or if your delivery is off.
Additionally, the premium version offers even more! It will suggest different words or sentence structures to use to improve the overall readability of your blog. Not only that, but it will detect plagiarism, and much more!
If you want to learn more about Grammarly and download it for yourself, click here!
If you do not want to hire a developer to help you design your WordPress site, then you can use Elementor instead! This plugin has an exclusive set of tools that allow you to create inventive and responsive websites.
It includes a variety of different font sizes, margin per device, padding, reverse column ordering, and more!
Elementor includes both a free and a pro version, and you can click here to find out more!
The WP Coupons And Deals plugin will help you to increase your affiliate sales. It will help you to manage any affiliate coupons you obtain in order to make extra money from them.
With this WordPress plugin, you will be able to hide your coupon codes from readers of your blog which results in more traffic, and therefore more affiliate sales.
They also have a feature that allows you to import coupon codes to your WordPress site from a CSV file, and so much more!
There are different payment plans for this plugin, such as:
Running an effective blog can be difficult, but the vast array of plugins featured in this article will make it easier! So, what are you waiting for? Invest in these plugins and improve your blogging skills today!
Hi, my name is Ollie Wilson and I have been a keen blogger since I was a young teen. I was growing up with the rise of YouTube and bloggers, and the people I followed influenced me to start blogging. They were making a lot of money from their blogs, and I wanted that too!
I’ve now had this blog for almost a decade. In that time, I’ve learned how to monetize it to start earning money, which servers are the best for each blog type, and how to optimize your domains.
Now it’s time to share my knowledge and help others create their own successful blogs, just like I wish I had when I was creating my first blog. It can be daunting when you first set up your site, but with my advice, you’ll have a great looking blog in no time. Let’s get started!
