10 Plugins Your WordPress Site Needs
Posted on 19. Feb, 2010 in SEO
Plug-ins provide the real power behind WordPress, often providing complex functionality in a matter of clicks. If you have a stand-alone WordPress installation, you can install these in minutes and add significant functionality to your site. If you don’t yet have a WordPress site, we recommend BlueHost by the way.
To install, log into your WordPress dashboard, click Plugins –> Add New and enter the name of the plugin. After finding a match, click ‘Install’.
So here are the 10 WordPress plugins that every WordPress site should have…
1. All-in-One SEO WordPress Plugin
Possibly the most popular WordPress plugin ever written, this handles 9o% of the basic mechanics of on-page SEO. There is a Pro version available, but the free version is fine for most sites. If there’s one single move that will improve your site’s ranking, it’s installing this plug-in.
2. XML Sitemaps Generator WordPress Plugin
This automatically creates a standards-compliant XML sitemap every time the content on your site changes, and alerts Google, Yahoo! and Bing. XML sitemaps are considerably underused on sites and offer an excellent way to ping the search engines when you want to be re-indexed. The beauty of this plugin is that it works automatically in the background and doesn’t require any additional work.
3. Easy Privacy Policy WordPress Plugin
Every site should have a privacy policy – there are many lawsuits landing on sites without them, due to the fact that your server collects personal data every time a visitor arrives. Additionally, if you are using Google Analytics or Google AdSense, a privacy policy is essential to ensure compliance with these programs. While this could be a headache to set-up, the Easy Privacy Policy plugin creates your policy in one-click. If you want to see the results, see the privacy policy for One Uproar.
4. WP-reCAPTCHA WordPress Plugin
If your site allows visitor comments (and it should), you are probably drowning in spam. Bots scour the web looking for sites where it’s easy to leave spam, and the only consistent way to beat them is to use a test to separate humans and computer programs. reCAPTCHA not only provides this visual recognition test, but the user interaction helps digitize words from books that computers could not read with OCR. This has the twin effect of beating most bots’ attempts at OCR (thus clearing out the spam), but also helping the digital library projects.
5. Exclude Pages WordPress Plugin
By default, every WordPress page appears in the navigation menu. But frequently there are pages that you don’t want in this menu (such as terms of use, privacy policies and landing pages from AdWords), and this plugin adds a check-box to the ‘Edit Posts’ page that enables exclusion. Very simple, but I have used it on every site I manage.
6. Google Analytics for WordPress
All websites should be using Google’s free Analytics software, which needs a short section of Javascript added to every page on your site in order to collect usage data. Rather than actually editing every page, this plugin automatically adds the necessary code. There are some advanced features for Analytics power users, but the basic mode provides immediate integration with no effort.
7. WPtouch iPhone WordPress Plugin
Serving different versions of your site for different user agents isn’t easy but this plugin generates a version of your site specifically formatted for users on iPhones, Androids and Blackberry phones. The surfing experience is extremely fast using this plugin, and instantly makes your site 3G-friendly (which those users really appreciate).
8. Cute Profiles WordPress Plugin
If you have social media accounts (and you should), then you also need to show the standard icons on every page linking visitors to those profiles. Cute Profiles provides a floating set of icons that doesn’t interfere with your template and ensures they remain in the same place on the screen regardless of scrolling. Simple, elegant and amazingly effective at boosting click-thrus to your social profiles.
9. Digg This Button Plugin
Who doesn’t dream of being on the first page of Digg? This plugin gives your pages a chance by allow the user to submit to Digg in a single click.
10. Constant Contact WordPress Widget
I really like the G-Lock Double Opt-In plugin for managing email lists, but if you have a Constant Contact account then this widget will connect your site directly to the mailing list. It’s simple to set up, easy to customize, and automates another important task on your site. Remember, when visitors don’t make purchases on your site, you should at the very least be collecting their emails.
If you need any advice in creating, configuring or managing your WordPress site, drop us an email at wordpress@oneuproar.com.
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