WordPress Plugins I Love and Use (some paid, some free)
AKISMET PLUGIN – THE plugin (used by millions) to help protect against comment spam on your site. Must have. Free.
REDIRECTION PLUGIN – This is a free plugin that is essential for cloaking affiliate links if you do any affiliate marketing, or link out to offers on your site. It’s essential to keep your affiliate links from getting hijacked and losing commissions from your links.
BROKEN LINK CHECKER PLUGIN – A free plugin to check all your links to make sure they’re all working. Don’t compromise commissions, signups, or even SEO integrity by having links that go to an error page.
UPDRAFT PLUS BACKUP AND RESTORATION PLUGIN – It’s essential to have a backup program in place that does automatic backups. Updraft supports many third-party backup sites for your files. There are lots of plugins out there to accomplish this – Updraft is the one I’ve currently settled on that works the best for me. At the time of this post it is the highest ranking backup plugin on WordPress – for a reason.
YOAST SEO PLUGIN – While there are many SEO plugins out there, the Yoast SEO Plugin does the job. If you want to optimize your posts, pages, entire WordPress site, this plugin walks you through it. A must have to search engine juice. Free.
CONTACT FORM 7 PLUGIN – There are tons of contact form plugins. This is the one I use – simple, free, and used on over a million sites. Works for me.
These are just a few of my essential plugins. It’s always a good idea for both load speed and to cut down on security leaks through plugins, not to use more than necessary and ALWAYS delete those that you aren’t using. Oh, and ALWAYS keep them up to date.
This list will probably continue to grow as I add more of my favorites.
I’d love to know what some of your favorite are.