WordPress has become one of the most preferred website and blog platforms for business owners, publishers and authors when it comes to building their own slice of cyberspace.
One of the main reasons WordPress is so popular, is the ease with which you can build and update your website or blog, so that it plays nicely with others without you needing a lot of technical “know how”.
Over the recent holiday break, I rebuilt one of my websites using the WordPress platform. This enabled me to have a real look “under the covers” and discover some really cool plugins that make the whole experience much more enjoyable – both on the front end for visitors and also, behind the scenes for the website or blog owner.
Plugins are functionality created by innovative people and are yet one more reason why WordPress continues to improve. There are literally thousands of plugins available these days to enhance the functionality and look of your website or blog. Most of them are automated making them super easy and very convenient for authors, bloggers and webmasters.
Having just built a brand new site, I thought I’d share my favourite plugins that I have personally installed and am currently using on my main website.
Over the next few articles, I’ll share with you WordPress plugins you should consider adding to your website or blog and why.
Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin’s job is to generate XML sitemaps for search engines to easily find your blog. The search engine then records your sitemap in their databases. The result is faster search results for your blog and articles.
Facebook Like
With this plugin, readers can just click on the Facebook like button on your post and share that action on Facebook. You can add this on top of your post or after the post. And since this is hosted by Facebook itself, people visiting your blog need not log into their Facebook account.
WP Greet Box
There’s nothing like visiting a blog or website and being greeted by the owner or publisher. The good news is you can create a personal greeting on your site using the WP Greet Box plugin. It lets you create and show a greeting message on top or bottom of every post. Providing a personalized greeting or suggestion is a good way to establish rapport with your readers and improves your exposure.
All in 1 SEO Pack
This one is search-engine friendly. It allows you to optimise your site so search engines can easily find your blog or website. To use this to your advantage, you need to provide a Meta Title and Meta Description for your posts and pages. You may also use its advanced settings if you wish.
Yet Another Related Post
This plugin gives a list of posts related to the one displayed on the blog page where the reader is currently at. This is a good way of encouraging them to click on other posts on your site that might interest them. You can find this list at the bottom of each article.
Digg Digg
This is the plugin that will allow you to post social icons on each of your blog posts. Being a floating style, it lets your readers easily share your post with social media sites such as Twitter without having to scroll up back to the top of your write up.
WP Stats
This plugin lets you have simple and accurate stats without putting more load on the server. With this plugin, you can gather information on your page views, the most popular posts and pages, where traffic is coming from and what people click through when they leave your site. What makes this easy to use is it adds a link to your dashboard so you can see the stats is just one page.
These are only the first seven plugins that work wonders for any WordPress blog. I’ll be sharing more in another article so bookmark this page to find out when our next WordPress plugin article will be shared.
