20 of the BEST Free WordPress Plugins for Newbie Bloggers
WordPress is possibly the most popular blogging platform amongst newbie bloggers. If you are looking for some of the best free WordPress plugins on the market today, we’ve got you covered.
This is for a number of reasons which include; it is easy to set up and use, comes with beautifully designed, ready-to-use themes, is search engine friendly, is free, flexible and easily customizable, and has many handy plugins that increase the functionality of your blog.
What is a WordPress Plugin?
WordPress plugins are simply little pieces of code that add tons of functionality to WordPress blogs. There are plugins available for backing up your blog, adding social media icons to your blog, images, portfolio’s and more.
The availability of WordPress plugins means that you do not have to hire a web designer or programmers. Plugins make your blog easier to maintain and easier for your readers to use.
Below is a list of 20 of the BEST free WordPress plugins Available on the Market Today:
1. Google Analytics – this is arguably the most important of the 20 awesome WordPress plugins for Newbie Bloggers. This plugin allows you to know exactly who the visitors to your blog are and from where they are coming from. This information is useful so that you can tailor your content to suit their needs.
2. BackupBuddy – this plugin ensures that you do not customer information should your experience a hardware malfunction.
3. Buffer – this allows you to put in place a regular content update so that you can keep your readers engaged and updated on your news.
4. Yoast SEO – A rather popular plugin on WordPress. It is useful for optimizing your blog and also shows you how well optimized your blog is. With this plugin on your blog, you do not need to have an XML sitemap plugin as it also creates sitemaps. Sitemaps are important as they make it easier for search engines to find and retrieve important posts on your blog.
5. W3 Total Cache – This is also a very useful plugin as it allows you to cache and compress your files resulting into less load on your internet sever. This means that you will have higher speeds on your blog which is good as it means you can be ranked higher on search engines and that your readers don’t have to wait to read your content.
6. BJ lazy Load – this is another plugin in that aids in faster loading of your blog. It does this by scaling images down and having them load slower to avoid using too much bandwidth.
7. Contact Form – Every blog needs a contact form to let readers provide much needed feedback on your offerings. So this is one of the more important of the 20 awesome WordPress plugins for Newbie Bloggers.
8. Defender – This plugin will prevent hackers from attacking your blog. It works by looking out for weak spots and sorting out the mess after you have been hacked. You can also set it up to carry out regular scans
9. Akismet – This is a spam blocking plugin that comes in very handy in protecting you from unwanted comments on your blog.
10. Wordfence – Don’t want suspicious IPs visiting your blog? This particular plugin will let you know who visits your blog and any fishy activity such as an attempt to replace admin.
11. JetPack – This is also a very necessary plugin for your blog. It really is a package of plugins that have the features necessary to make your blog as functional as possible.
12. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This is also a very useful plugin. It simply gives your readers access to related posts on you blog. You can also use the plugin to show related posts from other blogs.
13. Broken Link Checker – This is a nifty plugin that will check for any broken links in your posts and comments and let you know where they are so that you can fix them.
14. Click to Tweet – This allows your readers to share your content on their own twitter feeds. You simply add a link next to the text you would like your readers to tweet. You can also track your content whenever it is tweeted with this plugin.
15. Download Monitor – This plugin allows you to keep an eye on downloads on your blog so that you can be aware of the more popular ones. It also allows you to know who is downloading your content.
16. OptinMonster – This is an optimization plugin and it allows you to increase your conversion rate of readers therefore growing your email list.
17. ShareThis – This WordPress plugin provides you with the tools to aid you in bringing traffic to your blog. It includes attractive designs for your social media buttons and interesting animations. It also includes Like, follow and subscribe buttons.
18. MailPoet – A plugin that allows you to send out newsletters to your subscribers. It includes features like automatic sending of newsletters, how many people who actually open your newsletters as well as the number of people who unsubscribe from your newsletter.
19. NextGen Gallery – An easy to use photo gallery plugin. It allows you to upload pictures in batches, sort images, edit them, create albums, create slideshows, edit thumbnails and many other functionalities required for such a plugin. It is very popular due to its flexibility and it can work with almost all WordPress themes.
20. Monarch – This plugin allows you to include social media sharing buttons on your blog. Social media share buttons are useful if you want to increase the number of times your blog post is shared which potentially increases the number of visitors to your blog. The plugin allows you to choose the design of your share buttons as well as the positioning on the blog of the share buttons.
The above list of the 20 awesome WordPress plugins for Newbie Bloggers is certainly not a complete list of all the plugins available on WordPress as there are thousands of plugins.
As a beginner blogger it can be overwhelming to sift through all of them to decide which ones will suit you most.
Some WordPress themes will however come with a list of recommended plugins which should take off some of the pressure of choosing plugins.
One major advantage of WordPress plugins is that you can disable any plugin update that you do not want, but it is doubtful that anyone would want to do that.
