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Some of the Best WordPress Plugins to Optimize Your Blog

 

Screen Capture from Neville Hobson’s cool WordpPress Plugin Page

 

 

One of the best things about the WordPress community is that they have developed thousands of awesome plugins that can help to customize your blog. Here are some really great WordPress plugins that we often recommend for clients. We have listed some of the features we like, as well as the drawbacks of some of them.

 

We would love to hear your favorites and why you like them in the comments section below.

 

Blog Backup

Backup Buddy, http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/
This plug in allows you to back up your blog on a regular basis, thus making sure that you don’t lose everything if a WordPress update goes wrong or if you get hacked. It is not free, but it is only $75/year for up to two sites. You can also use it to transfer a site to a new host.

Spam Killer

Akismet, http://akismet.com/
A free plugin which identifies and blocks comment and trackback spam on blogs with integration to various blogging systems. This is a free, must-have plugin to reduce spam.

 

RSS Management

Feedblitz, http://www.feedblitz.com

We used to recommend Feedburner as a  replacement RSS service, but with Google’s diminished support of the service in October 2012, we now recommend Feedblitz for those who want more control over their feed and a good delivery service. With Feedblitz you can even send your blog via email to your subscribers that chose to get it that way. Feedblitz charges for email subscribers based on volume, starting at about $1.50 per month and going up from there. RSS subscribers are free.

 

Also see JetPack below

 

SEO Helpers

All in One SEO, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all‐in‐one‐seo‐pack/ This is a very easy‐to‐use plug‐in to allow you to have basic SEO standards right out of the box so you can easily add title tags to posts and other keywords. This plug‐in is free.

 

Scribe SEO, (http://scribeseo.com/) costs anywhere from $17‐$48/month and helps give you phrase and word suggestions to drive search engine traffic.

 

Inbound Writer, http://www.inboundwriter.com/ The basic plan is free and allows you to customize four documents, with topic research and content optimization. You can have it for up to 15 documents for $40 a month. It is the priciest of the three, and I have used the basic plan. You can reserve the research of some of the most important posts that month.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet‐another‐related‐posts‐plugin/
This adds a list of posts at the end of each article that are related. This keeps people on your site longer and digging deeper into the content. It is great for virility.

Share Buttons

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter‐facebook‐google‐plusone‐share/
At minimum you need: Facebook Share, Google +1, Twitter, and LinkedIn InShare buttons. In addition, you can use either the ShareThis or AddThis plug‐in, but you should provide the boxes, as mentioned, though the plug‐in above has all of the basics.  Also see JetPack below.

 

Also see JetPack below

Commenting Systems

LiveFyre, http://www.livefyre.com/:

Livefyre is a popular plug‐in that replaces static comment sections with dynamic, real‐time conversations. It integrates well with Twitter and facebook and allows easy sharing on these networks. It is free up to 20 million views a month. we like the promise of LiveFyre to help spread the word virally

Disqus, http://disqus.com: Disqus is a popular commenting system that puts the focus on ease of use. It has the ability to connect with Facebook and Twitter, but is not as aggressive as LiveFyre. It has an elegant way to reply and moderate from email that is not yet available in LiveFyre. Comments continue to synch with the native WordPress client, making it easier to switch later. It is also a free plug‐in.

 

Also see JetPack below

 

Mobile Compatibility

WPTouch Pro, http://www.bravenewcode.com/store/plugins/wptouch‐pro/ a WordPress plug‐in, is not free (a license is $39), but it makes stunning mobile versions of websites. We recommend this as many people are using mobile smartphones and now tablets to consume content.

 

JetPack, http://jetpack.me. This free plugin actually does a lot more than just making your blog mobile compatible, it also can replace your commenting system and handle email subscriptions, among other things. You can activate as many parts of the system as you want and omit the ones you don’t need. It can be used as pretty complete solution and replace some of the suggestions above. The only things that concern me right now about using it is that you can’t transfer subscribers from an established blog unless it was hosted on Wordpress.org, and I am really not sure how you would transfer OUT of their subscription system, should the need ever arise. Otherwise, it looks like a pretty great plugin, and I learned about it from Neville Hobson, who is using parts of it on his own blog.