Since starting my blog, I have spent many long hours and late nights researching the perfect plugins. I knew that I didn’t want to waste time switching to different ones, nor did I want the hassle of buggy plugins that would only give me headaches in the long run.

If you’re a brand new blogger (or even a seasoned one), I’ve listed all the plugins you’ll need in order to set your WordPress blog up for success – from the start. Whether they’re plugins for SEO, site speed, online stores, site builders/theme designers, contact forms, backups, analytics or more, I’ve got you covered.

With just a few clicks, you’ll be weeks ahead of other bloggers that don’t even know where to start, or are still procrastinating when they could already be launching or bringing in juicy traffic to their new blog!

The technical, admin aspects of your blog should not be complicated. Just focus on the essentials, set them up, and then start writing amazing content! Now, let’s dive in…

SEO: SmartCrawl & more

If you don’t know what SEO means, don’t worry, I gotchu. It stands for Search Engine Optimisation and essentially comprises all the many strategies that help your website be more juicy to search engines. This can be done in several ways, to name a few:

• increasing the speed of your website’s loading time
• optimizing photos (forget about .png formats, use optimised .jpg formats instead) by lowering their resolution size (ex. from 3000×3000 pixels to 700×700 for instance) and/or their file size (ex. from 10mb to 0.60mb)
• using tags, titles and descriptions efficiently on your blog posts and images
• having a beautiful and effective schema set up (the photo, title and description people see – when searching for your website in search engines or when your link is posted on social media)
• sitemaps
• and more.

For SEO, I use a collection of plugins by the same developer, which ensures their compatibility and running smoothly without hiccups. I find them speedy, bug-free and efficient. Other plugins I’ve tried ended up causing incompatibility issues with other plugins and they were also not user friendly. I find that a user friendly interface for a plugin or app is a great reflection on the product’s quality as a whole. A plugin that gives a great experience to users will also be a highly effective one, from my experience.

The first SEO plugin is SmartCrawl, where you have options like SEO checkup, which shows you a score on your entire website’s SEO rating and where you need improvement; you can configure your website’s schema, upload your sitemap for search engines to crawl, and more. Most importantly, on each post you can add focus keywords so search engines will know what the article is about, and you also get an instant score on the post’s SEO rating and what aspects require improving (ie. you need to add more internal or external links, or your images are missing ALT titles, etc).

Hummingbird helps with caching and page load speed.

Smush helps with optimising images by decreasing their file size while maintaining quality, and it also gives you visibility in what photos require optimising.

Backups: Updraft Plus – Backup/Restore

Plugins for backing up your blog data may not have been the first thing you thought of when setting up your blog’s plugins. You never know what might happen with your webhost provider, their server, hacking or anything else. It’s better to err on the safe side and make sure you have a backup plugin in place and backing up every week at least, especially if you post new articles frequently. You’ve come so far with your blog, it’s your responsibility to protect your baby.

For backups, I recommend Updraft Plus – Backup/Restore, it’s easy to use, shows you when the last automatic backup was done, you can delete backups or restore accordingly. For a beginner blog, it gets the job done, no questions asked.

Website Builder & Theme Designer: ElementorPro

Instead of browsing through hundreds or thousands of themes with limited functionalities, I recommend investing in ElementorPro and setting up your blog with the design of your dreams. From my experience, it is the best plugin on the market for building your WordPress site and customizing the theme.

It’s easy to use, affordable (there’s a free version for basic widgets and templates, and 49$/year for all the full, professional functionalities which is what I use). You set it up by installing the WordPress plugin, then selecting to upgrade to ElementorPro. You’ll be directed to create an account and select your plan, and with a few clicks you’re done.

It was admittedly one of the best investments for my website. Nothing compares to a professional, luxurious and glossy interface for your website. And if you’re not yet ready to invest, you can still use the free plan (you only need the WordPress plugin) and customise your new blog more than you could with a limited-functionality, ready-made WordPress theme.

Let’s be honest, having a professional looking blog instantly changes your WordPress game from 1 to 10.

Stock Photos: Pexels

For free stock photos, I rotate between Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash, with Pexels as my favorite. You don’t have to use only original photos on your blog. You can take advantage of free photos from stock photography platforms, as long as you check their license and usage policy and they’re safe to be used as such.

Note that choosing the right photos for your blog is important, because your blog represents you, your name, and your brand. The aesthetics, tone, fashion etc. contained in the photos should emulate the energy of your brand and be in alignment with it.

Pro tip: If you install JetPack plugin instead of the self-standing Pexels plugin, you can use Pexels photos more easily, straight from your WordPress post editing page.

Contact Forms: Forminator

Courtesy of the same developers as my SEO plugins, Forminator uses the same clear, informative interface and efficiently gets the job done.

Story time – the first contact form (or second, or third, I went through quite a few as none were efficient) I installed ended up causing my website to crash. Not only that, but I couldn’t deactivate or delete the plugin without having the site crash again. Besides, their interface was not user friendly either – I found it clunky and unsatisfying. In comparison, I’ve never had any issues with Forminator and it has a smooth UI.

GDPR: GDPR Cookie Compliance (CCPA, PIPEDA ready)

Another plugin that wouldn’t cross your mind as an essential plugin. I know it didn’t for me! But making sure your new blog is GDPR compliant is a must. What is this plugin for exactly? It’s that troublesome popup you see on every website regarding cookies.

Don’t worry, the process is straightforward. A quick setup of this plugin will make sure you’re good to go and protected from a legal point of view. You just need to configure how the popup will look like (the text will be something along the lines of “we use cookies on our website the provide the best experience, here is our policy page for more info”) or leave it standard without extra customising.

Online Store: WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the most popular as well as the best ecommerce plugin on the market for WordPress. There are so many additional plugins to help your ecommerce experience, it will feel like a breeze. If you prefer WordPress over other platforms like I do, WooCommerce is the go-to plugin for this.

You can even link other accounts like your mailing list provider (Mailchimp for example) for marketing purposes over your store, customise the store’s interface using ElementorPro (they’re all compatible), see reports, configure any settings, and just about administrate your shop straight from your WordPress admin panel. You can also use the mobile app version for WooCommerce, so you can manage everything from your phone on the go.

Analytics: SiteKit by Google

Another type of plugin that is essential for success is one geared towards analytics. Using Google Analytics can be a game changer. Seeing how many pageviews your website has, which articles rank most popular, what search keywords are most coveted and other such analytics can help you adjust your blog content strategy to attract more views, more traffic, and ultimately grow your brand as well.

I recommend using Google’s official plugin, SiteKit by Google, as it’s a combo package where you can use Google Analytics, AdSense and Search Console all in one. If you’re committed to becoming a professional blogger and monetising your blog, using Google Analytics to your advantage is a must. You’ll rank higher on Google – and combined with good SEO and quality content, that’s how your blog grows at an incredible rate.

Tips on How To Find The Right Plugin for You

If and when you’re on the scout for extra plugins, you can follow these tips for finding the right plugin:

• Before installing the plugin, make sure to cross-check compatibility across your WordPress version, your WP’s PHP version, as well as research via reviews whether that plugin causes any issues, crashes, etc.
• Always check reviews and rating of the plugin on WordPress or otherwise. If there are 8,000 mediocre reviews, it’s telling of the plugin’s quality of service.
• Research, research, research. Google best plugins for (insert scope), you’re guaranteed to find countless recommendations. Use them as guideline and choose which one is best suited for your blog.
• Remember that you can always deactivate the plugin and replace it with something better. You don’t have the find the absolute perfect plugin ASAP. Just do your due research as per the above steps, and go with what seems like the smartest decision at the moment.

Conclusion

The point here is that you need your blog to be efficient and ready to go. You can always improve things along the way instead of achieving perfection on the spot. Now you know which plugins are most efficient, and you also know the smart way to find new plugins for your blog, while avoiding decision fatigue or wasting too much time on the details.

Don’t do the same mistakes I did – I went overboard with research to the point that I became frustrated with the amount of options available and not being sure what to choose. Instead of focusing on progress and the bigger picture, I got stuck on finding ‘the perfect plugin’, and lost a lot of valuable time that I could have better used writing new articles, or strategising my blog calendar, to name a few.

I hope this article helps you kickstart your blog from the beginning – quick, efficient & hassle-free, as it should be! See you in the next Blogger Series article, my darlings.

Note: some of the links in this post contain affiliate links, which means I may get a commission for recommending them. This is of no extra cost to you. This way I get to help you find quality products which I know will bring you value.