5 Best and Free Plugins to Install When You Start your Blog

Adding a plugin to your website will allow you to get special features that will improve your blog. 

On WordPress, there are so many available plugins that knowing which ones are essential for your blog is tough. 

Which is why I am listing below 5 plugins (with a bonus) that you need to have on your website. 

Disclaimer: All the plugins below are plugins I am personally using or that I used and would be beneficial to your blog. They are not affiliate links and if there were any, it would mean that I am recommending the product.

N°1 A Plugin to work on your SEO

If you are not already familiar with SEO, I am inviting you to read this article: basics of SEO. 

But basically, you need SEO to make your blog posts first in search results so that you can get traffic on your website.

And to verify that you are doing SEO correctly, you can install this plugin:

Install Yoast SEO.

It is probably one of the most-used plugins on WordPress: Already Millions of Active Installations. 

The plugin will help you improve your blog’s articles SEO. Assessing your blog post and giving you tips on how to write better and optimize it.

Yoast SEO creates a block at the end of your post where you can easily work on your SEO.

Allowing you to modify your SEO title (how the title appears on Google), the URL of your blog post, or your meta description, which is the short description of your article that you can read below any blog title on Google.

Plus, it scores your readability analysis and the focus keyphrase of your article. Aim for green scores for both and you’ll be on the right track to improving your SEO, see below:

The plugin is free but there are addons features that you can get with its premium version (freemium plugin).

The free version is enough.

In this blog, I won’t go into too much details on how to use Yoast SEO here as  it is only a list of the best and free plugins to install on your blog. However, I’ll write about it so if you want to stay updated about it subscribe or join this FB page.

I recommend you working on your SEO right from the beginning, then you’ll have the habit of optimizing all your articles.

Some of the very first articles I wrote are still bringing me traffic.

N°2 A Plugin to ensure your Security

Even if you have installed the latest version of WordPress thanks to your hosting service plan, it is important to add some security levels to your website and conduct routine website safety checks.

To ensure the security of your website without using a dedicated plugin first:

• Make sure your plugins, your core theme and WordPress version are always up to date.
• Use strong passwords for every admin account and change them often.
• Limit the number of accounts that have access to your website. 
• Install a SSL certificate on your website. The little lock that you can see next to my URL. If you are using a professional hosting service like Bluehost, you should have it on your website.

There are many plugins about security for your WordPress blog.

I personally use Wordfence Security, it’s a freemium, and I’m only using the free version.

It helps the security of your website by taking care of your anti-virus, firewall and malware scan.

In addition to that, I also use an Anti-spam plugin that will avoid spams in comments.

Don’t want to jinx it, but so far, I had no issue in terms of security with my blog.

Plus, I use Bluehost as a hosting service, and the basic plan I use, comes with a free SSL certificate. You know the little lock next to my website URL that gives an additional security to my website and for my visitors.

N°3 A Plugin to Backup and Restore your Files

If you’re a bit curious, and love making mistakes. You might end up like me: Modifying things that should have not been modified and changing codes that you were not supposed to. 

I did break my site several times by adding some codes and trying to tweak it. Which is why I always use a backup plugin. So that if I’m trying to make a major change and the site breaks, I can still go back to when the website was working fine.

Plus, having a backup ensures that I still have an old working version of my website. It is like saving your data on a hard drive to make sure that if your computer fails, you still have your data.

So, I use UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore.

How does it work? I schedule the backup or manually ask to back my website now and UpdraftPlus does it. 

A compressed folder of my files is created and I can freely download it. I also linked the plugin to my google drive so that my backups are also available from there.

N°4 A Plugin to Share on Social Media

If you are just starting out, you will need to increase your traffic on your website by any means possible.

Usually it is not with SEO because it takes some time before search engines promote your content. 

Which is why one of the most popular ways to do so is by increasing your traffic with your social media profiles.

So, make sure your blog posts are shareable on the different social media you are targeting (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc..). 

To do so, you can download a free plugin that allows social media sharing. 

I personally use Social Warfare. I actually have the pro version because I wanted a special feature (the floating bar that you can see on my website now when you want to share an article).

There are many available plugins and social warfare is maybe not the best one in the market, but for no one it does the job.

I tried others but I did not really like the designs or the features offered. So, I will let you assess by yourself. 

N°5 A Plugin to get Analytics of your Site

Pay attention here.

Instead of installing a specific plugin here, I am much more recommending to set up Google Analytics for your website.

It is a tool that will allow you to easily check the number of visitors you have in a day, week, month or even year. 

Other important statistics, like the bounce rate, which indicates if your visitor came to your website but exited it without requesting anything else; are displayed through different dashboard.

The number of views per page is also available. And something else great to know is the session duration: how long does a visitor stay on your website on an average.

Just to say, that you should set up your Google Analytics as soon as possible if you have not done it. Go here: Google Analytics, create your account and link it to your website.

If you want the plugin to see your analytics right from your WordPress dashboard, you can install a plugin called Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP). 

I prefer going to GA platform directly instead of having a plugin so that one is not very necessary.

But if you really want to see your stats from your WordPress CMS, the above plugin GADWP is the right one.

As you arrived here, I’ll give you a bonus tip. 

If you want to have a profitable and professional blog, there is one essential thing that you need to do.

Create an email list.

It will help you connect your audience in a better way, and it will be easier in the future to sell your own products. To do so, set up an account on an Email Marketing Service such as Convertkit, Aweber, Mailchimp, Active Campaign, etc.

I personally use Mailchimp but I might transition to something else soon. Mailchimp helps you to create a list of emails for free until 2000 subscribers, and their platform is user-friendly. But after more than 2000 subscribers, it becomes very pricy that is why I’ll potentially transition to another platform.

So that’s it, you now know what to install on your blog if you haven’t done it yet. And if you have any questions, let me know in the comment.