8 WordPress Plugins Your Blog Should Have

1. YOAST SEO

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

WordPress SEO is the most complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users. It incorporates everything from a snippet preview and page analysis functionality that helps you optimize your pages content, images titles, meta descriptions and more to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between.

 

2. Google Analytics for WordPress

https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

The Google Analytics by Yoast plugin for WordPress allows you to track your blog easily and always stays up to date with the newest features in Google Analytics.

 

3. WP Socializer

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-socializer/

Super Cool Plugin for inserting all kinds of Social Bookmarking & Sharing buttons. Has customizable Floating Share Bar, Widgets, Shortcodes also.

 

4. WP Social SEO Booster

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-social-seo-booster/

WP Social SEO Booster adds Facebook Open Graph, Twitter Card and Google Rich Snippets (Microdata / schema.org) to your site to boost your sites search engine visibility. It is the only plugin which does include ALL the different types of microdata which are supported by Google.

 

5. AKISMET

https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet Web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog's "Comments" admin screen.

Major features in Akismet include:

• Automatically checks all comments and filters out the ones that look like spam.
• Each comment has a status history, so you can easily see which comments were caught or cleared by Akismet and which were spammed or unspammed by a moderator.
• URLs are shown in the comment body to reveal hidden or misleading links.
• Moderators can see the number of approved comments for each user.
• A discard feature that outright blocks the worst spam, saving you disk space and speeding up your site.

6. iTHEMES SECURITY

https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/

iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) gives you over 30+ ways to secure and protect your WordPress site. On average, 30,000 new websites are hacked each day. WordPress sites can be an easy target for attacks because of plugin vulnerabilities, weak passwords and obsolete software.
Most WordPress admins don't even know they’re vulnerable, but iThemes Security works to fix common holes, stop automated attacks and strengthen user credentials. With one-click activation for most features, as well as advanced features for experienced users, iThemes Security can help protect any WordPress site.

 

7. Login LockDown

https://wordpress.org/plugins/login-lockdown/

Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery. Currently the plugin defaults to a 1 hour lock out of an IP block after 3 failed login attempts within 5 minutes. This can be modified via the Options panel. Admisitrators can release locked out IP ranges manually from the panel.

 

 8. W3 Total Cache

https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

WordPress Performance Optimization (WPO) framework; designed to improve user experience and page speed. Easy WPO using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.