5 Plugins to Install on Your Blog for Beginners

You’ve finally set up your blog and now you’re excited to begin publishing blog posts.

However, you stumbled upon plugins on your WordPress dashboard and perhaps you’re wondering what it’s all about. 

Plugins are special software that can be added to a WordPress blog to provide special features to it. 

Depending on your blogging needs, there’s almost a plugin for anything under the sun – whether that’s if you want to see how many people visited your site to SEO,.

You can decide what plugin you want on your site provided that it serves a purpose.

For those who are new to blogging, you’ll discover that there are over 60,000+ plugins to choose from.

It can be extremely difficult to decide which plugin is the right fit for you. 

We understand your plight and that’s why we recommend 5 plugins to install on your blog that you can get started with to further enhance your blogging experience. 

1. Get Your Blog Found on SERPS with Yoast SEO

SERPS in other words search result pages are web pages that are shown to users when they search for something on the internet using search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and more.

In order for your blog to get found on the first page of SERPS, you need a plugin that will help you with SEO. 

Why is SEO so important in blogging? 

If you think SEO is not important in blogging, please think twice. SEO (Search engine optimization) are steps you take for optimizing your online content such that it appears more often on top of search results. 

SEO is vital for creating blog posts that will stand out, especially because there are millions of blog posts that are published daily. It is a sure way to get your content noticed. 

Although it may take some time for Google or any other search engine to rank your content, it’s best to start early. 

I created an article that will help you learn the basics of SEO. Feel free to check it out. 

Features of Yoast SEO

The reason I recommend Yoast SEO is because it’s one of the most popular SEO plugins on WordPress with over a million downloads.

And I am definitely using it each time I am posting a new blog article.

It became so popular because it helped many bloggers achieve their SEO goals and it is easy to work with.

These are some of the SEO features you’ll get when you install it on your blog. 

• Focus keyphrase – Your focus keyphrase is the word you use when you want your content to rank on Google for a certain keyword. This feature will make sure that your content not only contains that keyword but also ensures that it’s well distributed.   
• Title and meta description – Another important feature on Yoast SEO is the title and meta description. Your title and meta description should contain your focus keyphrase. This feature will help you achieve that. On top of that, it will tell you the limit of words to use when creating them.  
• Readability – Another important feature is the readability. If the emoji on this feature turns green then that means that your content is easy to read through. 

2. Social Media Sharing Plugin – Social Warfare

When you’re first starting out, you might use SEO to gain traffic for your blog.

But like we said earlier it will take you some time to see your content rank on Google. 

We obviously don’t want to wait that long to start getting results from our blog.

As we wait for the magic of SEO to favor our content, we might as well find some alternative sources of blog traffic.

And trust me, there are many out there if you try to look for them. 

One great source of traffic and the most common one you can find is social media.

The reason we like social media is because you or someone you know has at least a profile on one of the leading social media platforms i.e Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even WhatsApp. 

Having a plugin that allows readers to share your content is vital to the success of your blog.

Social warfare, a plugin that I personally use provides all these benefits and more.

This plugin allows you to select a sharing button from one of the top social media networks.

You can also choose to show a floating sharing button that follows your reader as they scroll through your site. 

3. Block Spam with Akismet Anti-Spam 

We all have experienced receiving unsolicited emails from advertisers once in a while.

Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean you’re exempted from it. 

The fact that you display a contact form on your site or that your blog’s email address is searchable will make you prone to spam.

It’s really annoying to check your email and find thousands of messages that aren’t coming from your readers. 

A way to prevent this is by downloading an anti-spam plugin.

The Akismet Anti-Spam is the most popular plugin that can help block emails coming from advertisers, scammers, or any other person that gets a hold of your blog’s contact information. 

Note that Akismet is not the only anti-spam plugin on WordPress, you can find many others that provide the similar features as Akismet or even more. Be the judge and see what works best for your blogging needs. 

4. Monitor your Visitors with Google Analytics 

When you start getting traffic on your blog, a plugin that I recommend to check your blog stats is Google Analytics.

The reason I recommend this is because as professional bloggers we are all using this tool.

Also, it provides details about your visitors such as their bounce rate, the devices they use, what pages they visit on your site, and more. 

The plugin below is not a must-have but it is a good way to check your dashboard quickly from WordPress.

If you’re planning to scale your blog and most likely start earning from it, you need an advanced plugin that can monitor your visitors.

The data you could also assist you in planning your next content or even help you develop strategies for your marketing goals.  

You can start by setting up an account on Google.

5. Start an Email list with MailChimp for free

I think every blogger should have an email list that they keep when they want to share a newsletter, a new blog post, or even when they want to offer a service or sell products to their subscribers. 

It’s important to have one because people from your email list will continue to visit your site when your blog no longer ranks on the first page of SERPS or even when you have few visitors on social media. 

There are many email marketing plugins you can find, but MailChimp is the most popular one.

It’s ideal for newbie bloggers because it’s free if you have less that 1,000 emails.

Most new bloggers are starting out and have few subscribers. It would also be unreasonable to pay a monthly subscription when you have few people on your email list. 

Why You need Plugins:

Hosting alone won’t provide you all the features you need to manage your self-hosted blog.

You need to invest in plugins or even use the free ones.

Not just any plugins but quality plugins that would help you achieve your blogging goals.

We’ve recommended 5 plugins to install on your blog, but I believe as your blog grows, you’ll need better or even premium plugins that provide lots of customizations. 

For those that are just starting out, you could start with these.

And as you start to get a feel of your blog, you’ll eventually know what you’ll need. 

We would really like to see you start your own blog.

Here at John Fisalbon, we provide tips and guides to help you get started. If you want to keep updated with this blog, feel free to subscribe and get updates once we post a new article.