I’ve been using WordPress and WordPress plugins for 7 years. After countless installations, imports and/or upgrades, I have finally compiled a list of of my top 12 favorite WordPress plugins for 2012 for you to install on your blog:
- Broken Link Checker / This is a plugin that will scan all of your blog posts and pages for URL’s that result in a 404 or other error. You can mass-fix broken URL’s in a few clicks.
- Yoast SEO / Yoast is one of the more remarkable WordPress plugins of 2012. Many people suggest the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin, but I made the switch to Yoast this year and I’m glad I did. From an SEO perspective, this plugin is immaculate. I highly recommend Yoast SEO to optimize your WordPress blog.
- Google Analytics for WordPress / This plugin is pretty self-explanatory, but should not be overlooked. The plugin allows you to authenticate your Google Analytics account through your website directly from your blog’s Admin dashboard.
- Akismet / This is an anti-spam plugin installed by default with every WordPress installation. You need to register for an API key in order to use Akismet.
- Google XML Sitemaps / Having an XML sitemap is paramount to creating a successful website or blog. You need them to communicate to the search engines and have your website cached and follow by their robots.
- Feedburner Feedsmith / If you have a Feedburner account (and I recommend you should), then this plugin helps integrate an e-mail subscription form. This should help increase the number of RSS subscribers.
- WordPress to Twitter / Simply put, this plugin will automatically tweet your WordPress post on your twitter account. This comes in handy if you rely on traffic from social media sites like Twitter.
- JetPack
- Simple Facebook Connect / Another social media plugin, this will elegantly integrate your Facebook account into your WordPress. If you have a Facebook page, this especially comes in handy.
- YARPP / Yet Another Related Post Plugin is self-explanatory. For the most part, this plugin uses an algorithm that calculates, ranks and decides which posts are relevant to the page currently being viewed. This is a great SEO technique to use by interlinking between related posts.
- WordPress Social Ring / This plugin adds a sharebar to your posts that will allow your visitors to easily share your post via Google Plus, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Digg and Twitter.
- WordPress Mobile Pack / If you have any mobile traffic, this plugin will create a mobile version of your WordPress blog. It even allows you to manage the layout and theme of your mobile site. This is great if you’re looking to monetize your mobile traffic.
These made my top 12 for a reason. If you don’t have these plugins and you have a WordPress blog, you should seriously reconsider how serious you are about having the best plugins.