I love wordpress CMS.
My reason: I can access thousands of useful plugins that can enhance my blog.
Don’t forget that 87% of these plugins were developed by Bloggers who knows what they’re doing.
Those entrepreneurial bloggers understands the challenges in the blogosphere. And their products are here to address them, one by one.
As a rule of thumb, you should limit the number of plugins you’ve installed.
But it doesn’t hurt to have the best that could make blogging a lot fun.
Let’s quickly look at the 2 Must-Have wordpress plugins I personally researched for you.
1. Wordpress Online Backup Plugin
No blog is exempted from external attacks. It doesn’t matter the level of security you’ve employed to protect your blog.
You MUST continue to harden your database, against bruteforce attack and other threats, so as to prevent hackers from penetrating.
Nevertheless, don’t forget to backup your files. It was a sad experience when I started blogging. My blog was hacked twice and all I could see was a ‘dark background’ with some ugly inscription.
I was about giving up on blogging, but thank God I didn’t eventually. The wordpress online backup plugin is simple but very effective. Use it.
As a rule of thumb, learn how to restore backups. Bear in mind that free backup plugins are not as effective as paying a team (company) that can secure your blog database.
With a tiny budget of $15 – $45/month, you can get a good backup system from codegarage, vaultpress, backup buddy etc.
But if you can’t afford the monthly subscription fee, download the WordPress online backup plugin here.
2. Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin
I believe in organic traffic because it’s the most targeted.
Prospects and blog readers who visit your blog through the search engine can easily take action. Because they actually typed strings of words (key phrases) to locate your webpage. In other words, they’re pre-sold on what your blog is about.
The Yoast SEO plugin works excellently well, because it analyses keywords to check if they’re well optimized for the content itself.
A lot of bloggers’ focus is on the title alone. But the URL is equally important and that’s what the Yoast SEO plugin supports.
All in one SEO pack is the #1, but I prefer Yoast’s. When you install it, you’d discover how flexible it is – it has a feature that lets you track your post length.
If your post is too short, this plugin can help you increase its counts. And consequently, make the content SEO friendly. Download Yoast wordpress SEO plugin here.
Extra tip for you
Did you know that having too many plugins can actually slow down your blog’s speed? Here’s a simple homework: Log into your wordpress dashboard > plugins > installed plugins.
Check if there is any plugin you’ve installed, but didn’t activate. Or even if you activated it, do you think it’s “that” useful? Does it help your content, navigation and promotion in any way?
I see a lot of bloggers downloading and installing any new plugin they could find. Most of the time, the new plugins are just a replica of the old ones, except with few tweaks.
Keep your database clean. This single homework could increase your blog’s load time by 57%.
Did you recently discover a useful wordpress plugin? Please share the name below, not the direct link. Because I’d use the name to search for it. See you at the top!
Maybe, I would learn English, tranlase very hard
John:
I wouldn’t download any WordPress Blog which did not accomodate the Yost SEO Plugin. There are only two others I could name this is true for. That is, of course, after trying out over 40 of them! 🙂
Backup is like putting a lock on your front door. The determined will break in, but most are simply not that determined. They are opportunistic. Most are source-seeking bots. They will not stop to attempt to unlock anything. There are just too many other, readily available hosts. As you say so well, don’t be one of those victims.
Hey Bud,
Personally i don’t use Yoast seo, instead of that i use “All in seo” it works well for me. For backing up entire website, i copy the entire folder where all my web files are into my local hard drive once a week. I know it takes time but its worth it. My site is too precious to me 🙂
I forgot to mention, i use “Filezilla” to transfer files to hard drive. It doesn’t take that long.
Both of them are surely two of the *must have* plugins and I am using them since long.
I’d recommend to have “Google XML Sitemaps” and “W3 Total Cache” along with them.
I personally have the “W3 Total Cache” because is speeds up my blog’s load time.
Another good WP plugin – TheSlide – Simple reach
,strong>AFRICASIAEURO WP
“tiny budget of $15 – $45/month” – for a newbie is not so tiny in my opinion.
Best regards fro I. C. Daniel – Romania
Believe me, it’s costing you way more than $15 – $45 a month by not having it.
You’re 100% correct, John.
Hi John:
Thanks for your sharing about how to protect my blog and promote my blog in SEO direction. I downloaded and installed the plugins which you recommend to me from this post. I also have some plugins to share with you. A amazon gold box slide plugin for amazon affiliate marketing and a wonderful pop up plugin for wordpress. you can download them in my website. Thanks again, John, have a very nice day.
Edward Tian
Thanks for the tips John. I have Yoast SEO on my blog already but not the back up plugin.
I kinda doing the back up by exporting the data manually as I don’t have that budget yet.
Gonna delete my non active plugins now!
Chetz
very useful plugins. I’ve employed all plugins you named here. I also recommend using authentic themes to prevent hacking
Yoast is just amazing and I am using this, its just the best seo plugin in wordpress directory 😀
You can say that again. Yoast is my favorite SEO plugin.
Hi John, bloggers.
Today after your post I went through my plugins. These are 3 of the best plugins for your use:
1) DB Manager – keep your DB in top shape and back up
2) Jetpack by wordpress
3) SEO Autolinker
Art Page
I think sitemaps plugin is also equally important.
My best plug-in so far:Jetpack & CommentLuv
Hello sir,
I love to read your blog from long time and whatever plugins you have told here is very useful But Here I am little bit confused to choose between
All-in-one SEO plugin or SEO Yoast. Will you Please clarify me…
If you’ve not installed all-in-one-seo pack already, please use Yoast. Any of the SEO plugins work perfectly.
Thanks Buddy
For those who can’t afford $15-$45 a month for a backup, I would recommend to use BackupBuddy. It’s very powerful and costs one time $75, including free support and updates for 1 year.
Best features are definitely that you can create automatic backups and send them to your ftp server, email, dropbox or amazon servers.
Hi John, All Bloggers
I have some questions, What is the most google friendly theme for wordpress ( free wordpress) , Cause my blogs never shown ( till right now, but i’ll get better serp soon) at page 1- 4 for my targetted keyword. Please give me suggestions. Thanks All.
Even though you need a professional theme, it’s more important that you focus on quality content. Gradually, your blog would start to show on Google and you’ll generate free traffic.
But if you need a free theme that works, go to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ and search for a good one. Thank you.
Hey John
So you think it’s better to use Yoast instead of All In One SEO Pack?
I’ve installed all In One cause that’s what you recomended on Blogging with John Chow.
If you’ve installed all in one seo pack, don’t bother with yoast. Both of them works perfectly, except with few differences. John’s decision for you to use “all in one” is fantastic. Please don’t install both, use ONLY one of the plugins Raul. Thank you.
Thanks, I just downloaded YOAST.
Thank for your sharing about important plugin. I can know what plugin is useful for our blog after reading your article.
WordPress SEO by Yoast is such a good plugin.
Yoast plugin can be really helpful. Please tell me any plugin (if any) which can count the no of visitors on my site.
I would say a wordpress captcha plugin should be added to that list, as it helps with dealing with spammy comments that add no value to your blog.
yes I agree, I love the Woredpress Seo by Yoast Plugin. It’s helps bring traffic to my blog for sure.
Also recommend running a minimum amount of plugins. Not only does it keep your site loading quickly — but it reduces the chance of a plugin or theme conflict.
I absolutely love Yoast as it puts me in my place if I forget to do certain SEO tricks. And yeah… always backup everything. omg.
Another Yoast user here, two years and counting. The Online Backup for WordPress plugin looks intriguing, so I’ll give that a try and see how it goes.
From over 20 plugins, I’ve since whittled down to about 13. In that period when I gradually let go of the other plugins, my blog’s loading speed considerably improved.
It improved even more when I finally used CloudFlare. Non-techie users, however, will have difficulty with that unless they take time to learn and understand how it works.
Problem solution : Page loading speed –>> should be under 5 seconds
Plugins to improve speed :
– DB WP dbmanager
– BWP minify
WP super cache – do not use as this plugin was named recently as being insecure.
<a href="http://goo.gl/N6oFv" title="africasiaeuro blog"AFRICASIAEURO WP
A helpful post and one that has been “kingged” in the IM social site – Kingged.com. However, below is a comment with questions I have left based on the details of this post:
I have heard so much about the WordPress Online Backup Plugin but I would want to know what really makes this plugin different from other backup tool out there like VaultPress?
More so, how reliable are free WordPress online backup plugins?
Sunday – Kingged.com contributor
http://www.kingged.com/2-musthave-wordpress-plugins-researched/
I have been using Yoast’s SEO plugin for a few months and have seen a nice rise in traffic from Google. How many plugins would you say was too many? I currently use 20.
My two cents… move to the Genesis Framework and host your blog on a Synthesis server. It’s not cheap but if you want a site that is screaming fast and optimized for WordPress this is, in my opinion, the best way to go.
I learned this the hard way.
When I first started using wordpress I went plugin-crazy. I guess that’s what I get for being ADHD and discovering wordpress’ plugin and theme repository, haha.
My favorite of this list is WordPress SEO by yoast. That thing is a life saver
I’ve always used the Genesis framework and it seems to do the trick for me. What extra does SEO by yoast bring to the table?
Yoast SEO is like a goldmine at a price of nothing….One of the best free SEO plugin one can find… I use Managewp + amazon S3 for the backup at this time..
Thanks John,
I was using All-in-one seo for a long time, then i switched to Yoast after i heard how good it is. I was a little confused about which one i should use for all my sites, i can hardly tell which one has the better impact on SEO, but i think both plugins will do the job.
Great tip, thanks
WordPress SEO by Yoast is useful and helpful plugin.