13 Best WordPress Plugins to Install on a Fresh WP Blog

WordPress plugins are one of the best parts of the WordPress blogging platform. Plugins, as we all know, add more functions to the WordPress site. With plugins, you can easily add any feature or function to your website or blog without having to write a single line of code.

As a beginner or a newbie in the blogging arena, you will be encountered with a lot of plugins. But the thing is you cannot install a plugin without knowing its function or how it affects your site. Some plugins when installed on a site can either improve or slow your site performance.

When I started blogging using this platform some months back, I was faced with a lot of challenges choosing the best plugins to use on my blog.

I read a lot of blogs with different views and ideologies. But after some months, I was able to choose the right plugins that work for me best. If you are also on the lookout for the best WordPress plugins, then below are the lists.

Yoast SEO (Free & Premium)

This is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins that one can ever think of so far as SEO is concerned. Yoast SEO plugin can increase your search engine appearance on Google and other popular search engine sites on the internet. The plugin has an easy to use interface.

There are no any complications in setting up this plugin. You can get a lot of tutorials on the internet that will teach you how to configure this plugin correctly. If you are really serious about your site SEO then, the Yoast SEO plugin should be the first plugin to install on your new WordPress installation.

Contact Form 7 (Free)

Contact form 7, As the name indicates! This plugin is an excellent plugin that can help you to implement a beautiful contact us form to your blog. Over 1,000,000+ bloggers use it. Contact form 7 has the entire feature that one is looking for to create a contact page. It does not require much effort to set it up.

You only need to install it from the WordPress repo in your blog dashboard, and you are set to go. This plugin is used by most of the pro bloggers you can think of.

 Akismet (Free)

Akismet plugin will automatically stop any comment that it suspects to be spam from appearing on your comments page. It always filters any comment coming to your blog and will be able to know whether is spam or genuine. Install Akismet now to protect your blog from any spam messages.

SEO Smart Links (free and premium)

SEO Smart Links plugin can help you to automatically link your keywords and phrases of your posts with corresponding posts, pages, categories, and tags on your blog. It is an additional WordPress SEO on-page plugin that can easily help your site to rank higher in the search engines.

SumoMe (Free & Premium)

This plugin helps you to add a floating sharing button on your blog. Social share buttons as stated by most of the content marketing experts are one of the main drivers of traffic to a website. A site with a social share button can easily trigger someone to share the content he/she read to any of the social media. This can bring about tons of traffic back to the blog. SumoMe plugin does not only allow you to add a social share to your blog but also you can implement a subscribe form which has the tendency of growing your email list for free.

Jetpack plugin (Free)

Jetpack plugin is an all in one plugin! By saying all in one I mean it has multiple features and functions embedded in it. This plugin is packed with a lot of functions that one can use at a time. Thus, you can check your site stats through this plugin add a related post, search engine optimization, social sharing site protection, backup, speed, and email list management. The plugin also protects your site from hackers and any malicious activities that can easily have a negative impact on your website or blog. What I like most about this plugin is its ability to monitor your site downtime and uptime. If you choose not to use the contact form 7 plugin, you can get its alternative from this plugin.

W3 total cache plugin (free and premium)

This plugin help reduces your website page load time and increasing site user experience, especially on a mobile phone. A  W3 total cache plugin is so far the most widely use cache plugin by WordPress users. The plugin can increase your site SEO and site overall user experience. It also improves your site conversion rates, which will have a positive impact on your site rank on Google.

Google analytics dashboard for WP (Free)

This plugin allows you to view your site stats right from your WordPress dashboard quickly. With this plugin, you can tell who visit your blog, where is he coming from, what source of traffic are you getting, and what browser or device are your visitors using to view your site. This will help you to focus on some key things that can contribute to improving your blog plans.

Smush image compression ((Free & Premium)

Images are always part of our daily blog post. We use larger images each and every day on our sites which may be slowing down the site without knowing it. A Well optimize images can give you an upper hand on most of the search engines when it comes to blog rank. This is where this plugin comes in. Compress and optimize your image files, improve performance and boost your website SEO rank using this plugin.

WP database backup (Free)

It is always a very good idea for every blogger to take a backup of his or her blog/website database. WP database backup helps you to manage your WordPress database. It also allows you to optimize, repair database, backup, restore, delete and backup database, queries. It supports automatic scheduling of backing up, optimizing and repairing of database.

SEO Friendly Images

Automatically adds ALT and title attribute to all your images.

Inline Related Posts

This plugin helps you to automatically insert a related post based on categories and tags without having to do it the manual way.

Wordfence

Add extra protection to your website/blog with wordfence by blocking people/hackers who try to access your site.

Redirection

Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors on your site/blog with the redirection plugin.

final words

So far the above listed are some of the best plugins we have for you. If you have any helpful plugins that you know is good for a fresh wp blog but are not listed here, you can drop them in the comment.