WordPress plugins: top 5 for new bloggers

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Plugins are very essential for the functioning of a blog and if your blog is a WordPress blog. Then here are some of the must-have WordPress plugins. Don’t forget my aim is to make sure you find blogging as cheap and affordable as possible. Therefore these are the best WordPress plugins  are free and very useful.

My NO1 is SEO plugins

The number one aim of having a blog is creating useful content.  How would you be sure what you are writing is useful even if you love the topic. The most efficient way is through SEO and there are plugins for it. I recommend yoast SEO, it’s what I’m using and its free. Yoast scores your content, letting you know when your title is good or needs improvement. It futures includes keywords and readability. If your keyword is OK this plugin tells you exactly what needs improvement. But focus more on your keyword because that is what search engines are more interested in. I have done enough talking for yoast SEO. If you want to try it for yourself just click here . Remember from the word go you need SEO on your blog to be sure your contents are useful and worth reading.

My NO2 is SHARE plugins

Once your content is ready, you won’t keep it to yourself for admiration. Rather you want to share it let everybody know the next top blogger have arrived. This is were our share buttons come in handy The share buttons are there to make it easy for you. Not every theme comes with the type of share buttons you want. Shareaholic is not the best because I use it, but because it keeps count of the number of shares your post get. Yes, on every social media not just one. When visitors come to your site, this buttons also make it easy for them to share your content. There are a lot of plugins that can do this no doubt, but if you want shareaholic get it here . Up next is……

My NO3 Plugin is ANALYTICS plugins

Is analytics my favorite? Yes. Like who won’t want to know how their blog is doing. Whether you are a hot cake on search engines, if you’ve made ranking or the tons of visitors on you blog daily. With analytics, you know who your audience are and what they like. Mehn! there’s so much analytics has to offer. But wait a minute, do search engines know you? Let me be direct. Does google know you? If they do good for you, you are half way on the right track for analytics. If you don’t know or you are not sure head over to search console or webmasters to list your site on google. However Webmaster gives you better understanding of search console with other tools to improve your blogging. Have you done that? good job now google knows you exist. Next step is singing up for google analytics , it’s as easy as what you just did with your search console.

Google Analytics for WordPress by monsterInsights is the plugin that connect your google analytics with your blog. Don’t worry about the the how, the plugins tells you how to go about it. Every plugin I’m recommending is a WordPress plugin so don’t worry about the compatibility.

My NO4 is ANTI-SPAM plugins

Nothing much to say about anti-spam because the simple thing is nobody loves spam. As a blogger you wouldn’t want to be spammed. The good news about anti-spam plugins is, they can protect you from other things that could be a threat to your blog. Some themes comes with inbuilt anti-spam, but there is no harm in exploring other options. WordPress comes with a lot of options to pick from. Click on plugins on the left side of your dashboard, click add new, type anti-spam in the search area and choose from the many plugins available.

My NO5 is MONETIZING plugins

Monetizing your blog comes in different ways, through affiliate marketing, placing adverts on your blog or creating courses. I will focus on affiliate marketing and adverts. You’ve signed up for over twenty affiliate programs which means you have over twenty links to work with. There is a need to put these links where you could easily reach for them and insert them in your contents. The plugin I know that makes this achievable is the Thirsty Affiliates  plugin. It shrinks and manage your affiliate links for you. It gives you room to save all your links in one place for easy access. When it comes to adverts, the ad company you get approved for will be the plugin you install. Plugins for ads are necessary to help you track how your ads are doing directly from your dashboard.

My NO6 is INSERT HEADERS AND FOOTERS plugins 

I will go direct to the point with this plugin. For you to make NO3 work, you need the insert headers and footers plugin. As time goes on to improve your blog functionality, inserting HTML codes becomes necessary this plugin make it super simple for you. Where do I find this plugin? It’s not far from you, just go to your plugins, click add new, search for INSERT HEADERS AND FOOTERS when found click install. once your installation is done, you activate. Wondering where to find it? Simply click settings on the left side of your dashboard and there it is. Yipee! You made it to number six,  seven which is our last plugin is by the corner so don’t go anywhere yet.

My NO7 WordPress Plugin is DISCLOSURE plugins

If you never consider this as important, start from this moment. I received an email two days ago from one of the affiliate programs I work with. Asking me to do this and that about my disclosure and disclaimer about earning commissions from them. I can’t give you the full details of all they expect me to do because I haven’t figured it all out yet. However it is very important and there is a need to fix it  ASAP. There are laws already put in place that requires bloggers to disclose that they earn commissions from some of the product they recommend for their audience. Therefore if you already have affiliate links in your content or you are working towards that, then you need to put an affiliate disclosure. A whole page could be dedicated to this or you could just install a plugin. I use FMCT affiliate disclosure , you can give it a try.

So here are my top 7 WordPress plugins for new bloggers. Along the line there will be need for more plugins because you never know what will become a necessity. Also take note, I arranged them according to importance and necessity. I don’t want you to be like me who installed a lot of plugins I didn’t need and had to create time to get rid of them.

A quick out of the box question for you.

Have you spent a little over on blogging than you thought you would? You can read this post  cheap ways to run a blog with a very low budget to help you blog the cheapest way possible.