WordPress has thousands of plugins to choose from. But which ones are the best? Which plugins are going to provide you real tangible benefits to help improve your sites web presence and ultimately increase traffic and business? The following top 10 plugins are a ‘must have’ for your business web presence.
1. Akismet. It comes with your WordPress installation. You just need to activate it. Akismet helps reduce comment spam by reviewing submitted comments via their web server and screens potential spam. It really helps, and all you have to do is click ‘activate’. You will need an API code. You can either pay for one, or just get a wordpress.com account and one will be generated for you.
2. AddToAny. Share/Bookmark/Email Button. AddToAny helps you share your pages and posts on social sites like twitter, myspace, and facebook. Share via email or add to your browser’s bookmarks. This is a great plugin to help promote content. If your not using social platforms to promote your website, you should be. Not only does AddToAny let YOU share your content elsewhere, but ANYONE visiting your site can share your content as well creating a self driven machine. More traffic you get, then the more traffic you can potential get from this simple plugin.
3. Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin generates both a .xml and a .xml.gz sitemap file automatically anytime you update or add content to your site. Easy customization allows you to set priorities, include categories, tags, and other page tiers. Google XML sitemaps plugin not only generates the sitemap, but notifies the major web crawlers when you make the changes. It’s a must have for inclusion in search engines.
4. Contact Form 7. A simple and easy to use contact form plugin. If you don’t have a way for visitors to contact you online, then you need this now. Simple, flexible and quick plugin.
5. CFormsII. From Delicious Days, this unique plugin is an excellent expandable contact form for your WordPress site. If Contact Form 7 is an easy to drive automobile, then CFormsII is the airplane. More controls and components, but a very manageable control panel. CFormsII gives you more power, including easily customizable fields, notifications, and CSS. Supports multi-page, multi-response forms, and increased administration controls including Captcha, multi-receipt, and ajax support. It comes with a selection of built in CSS templates to choose from, or you can create and add your own. Inforats’ form of choice!
6. Google Analytics For WordPress. This plugin ties your google anlaytics into your WordPress blog by generating the tracking code. Specifically designed for WP, it monitors outbound and inbound links, links within comments, and links per author. This is a great way to track your adsense click-throughs and monitor metrics to improve ad placement on your WordPress site.
7. WordPress.com Stats. They say simple is better. I have always loved and still use the simple and effective WordPress.com built-in statistics plugin. Simple little hit graph by day, week, or month. Shows referrers, hits per page/post, and search terms used. Specifically, it’s a great plugin for real-time traffic monitoring. Again, you will need the wordpress.com API to set it up.
8. Subscribe2. Another simple but necessary plugin. Subscribe2 allows visitors to subscribe to your blog and receive emails of your latest posts. Perfect promotion tool if used right. Not only do subscribers receive subscription emails, but it integrates well with your WP Control Panel and allows you to manually add subscribers, or send customized, group messages to them. Use it to provide incentives to customers who are listening by offering promotional discounts, specials, and more importantly to remain in touch and add a personal touch to the business/client relationship.
9. All in One SEO Pack. SEO made easy for WordPress, and its automated. This plugin automatically adjusts and optimizes your sites SEO architecture to improve website placement. Of specific quality and necessity is the attention to duplicate content and canonical placement within your domain. It also generates meta tags for your site. Much easier than entering manually.
10. WP PageNavi. Simple but useful. This plugin adds quicker, more efficient page navigation to your WordPress site. Rather than ‘next’ or ‘previous’, it provides page hopping format like ‘pages (34), …2, 3, 4, [5], 6, 7….[last]‘. Perfect for photoblogs or for sites with a lot of content.
Need assistance with your WordPress site?
I have many of them installed. It works. Thanks for the list.
I have a couple of more to get I see
Thanks