The Best 10 Free WordPress Plugins You Need Today

10 Free WordPress Plugins You Need on Your Blog

Whether you just set up your brand spanking new blog or are looking to add those plugins you are missing out on, this post sums up the 10 plugins that I install on every WordPress site I’ve ever created. They cover your needs from SEO, site speed, and social media. Let’s get into the best free WordPress plugins.

Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin

You need this plugin on your blog! Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins, as it’s the most comprehensive tool to ensure that your website is search engine friendly as possible. Beginners and experts alike. It essentially reminds you of best practices before you hit that publish button. Let’s dive into some of its features

• • Page Analysis SEO– Yoast allows you to select one (free) or multiple (paid) keywords and provides you feedback on how to maximize the keyword for SEO. Please keep in mind that these are suggestions and even though you might follow all of the suggestions it may not lead your page to be ranked by Google. For more SEO tips visit my 30 Days SEO Challenge.
  • Page Analysis Readability – Yoast also provides a readability analysis that they claim makes the text more readable. Some of the checks include transition words, sentence beginnings, paragraph length, and passive voice (ugh.. my personal nemesis)
  • XML Site Maps– One of my favorite things about the Yoast Plugin is it makes it super easy to manage site maps.The plugin automatically generates your site map, updates it as you like your site changes and pings search engines when it’s updated.
  • Yoast Pinterest Verification – Leave it to Yoast to make the somehow super frustrating Pinterest Verification process simple as 1,2,3! To claim your site visit your profile Info and select claim. Take the metadata provided and insert it into the Yoast Social àPinterest section.

2. Google Analytics WordPress Plugin 

This plugin quickly and easily helps set up your Google Analytics. It’s also super helpful as it interests the tracking code on every page of your website.

3. Hello Bar WordPress Plugin

The Hello Bar plugin and website easily and quickly help you set up email sign-ups on your WordPress site. It offers tons of options for customization and also include pop-ups on exit intents and many different pop-ups and static options – all for free! There are more premium options that the plugin offers as well.

4. Pin It WordPress Plugin

The Pin it plugin does just that, adds the Pin it button to your website images. By adding the pin it button to your website images it makes easy for visitors to share your content to your Pinterest. This really is amplified if you are already using Pinterest friendly (sized and with text) images in your blog posts or throughout your website.

5. Social Pug / Grow by Mediavine WordPress Plugin

The free version of this social sharing plugin allows you to customize the four biggest social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. A great way to display social proof of your content being shared and provide a one-click (okay maybe two) option to share your article. This one is free as well and easy to setup.

6. Click to Tweet WordPress Plugin

Click to tweet is a one-button option to share a short “tweetable” sentence. It allows you to select the text you want visitors to tweet and make it a one-click action to share it. I think it’s pretty sweet! 😉

7. WP-Rocket WordPress Plugin

WP Rocket is a fantastic tool because it increases your website speed and overall performance. It is a caching plugin and It is one of the on the market. It allows you to instantly improve your WordPress website speed and performance with no technical skills needed.

8. Askimet Anti WordPress Plugin

Spam plugin. It keeps spammers soundless and maintains the integrity of your site. It evaluates and filters all comments submitted on your blog, and provides you a status history for each so you can decide which comments are spammy and which are legit.

9. Smush Image Compression and Optimization WordPress Plugin

Page speed is one of the top factors when it comes to page rank. The size of your images is one of the largest contributors to your page load times. With the Smush plugin, you can easily optimize your images by providing lossless compression, resizing images on the fly and turning on lazy load. It is 100% free which makes it a no brainer to have in your WordPress toolbox. It’s one of my favorite free WordPress plugins.

10. Vault Press WordPress Plugin

There is nothing worse than losing all of your hard work and it amazes me how many people do not back up their websites. Vaultpress WordPress plugin provides real-time automated backups for your website. If you have multiple WordPress sites it also gives you the option to monitor, back up and manage multiple websites through one cohesive dashboard.

What are your favorite free WordPress plugins?

In conclusion, while there are tons of plugins in WordPress these are my top 10 must-have free WordPress Plugins. If you have any other suggestions for any that you feel should be included on this list, I would love to hear them! Leave a comment down below! If you are looking for ideas for viral blog posts check out my article here.