Essential WordPress Plugins

If you use WordPress for your website, chances are you’ve probably added some plugins to make it even better. What’s great about WordPress is that it allows you to add the plugins you need and to pass on the ones you don’t. While it does depend on what you’re using your website for, we’ve compiled a list of some plugins we think are essential for many different types of sites:

SEO friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images, optimizing search engine traffic. Alt attributes are a key determining factor for a match with user search terms. Title attributes are important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image. If your images do not have Alt and Title set already, this plugin will add them according the options you set.

Broken Link Checker

The Broken Link Checker checks your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and will notify you if any turn up through the WordPress dashboard or email. You can set broken links to display differently in your posts, and optionally prevent search engines from following broken links.

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a simple and flexible contact form plugin for your website. The form is customizable and allows you to easily edit mail templates.

Editorial Calendar

The Editorial Calendar Plugin allows you to easily manage your content and view upcoming scheduled posts. You can see exactly what days you have posts scheduled and what days you may need to consider adding a couple. What’s awesome is you can reschedule a post by simply dragging and dropping it to another date.

Google Site Verification Plugin

This plugin automates the entire Google site verification process. Once your site is verified, you can then view search statistics and diagnostic information for your blog in Google Webmaster Tools.

Jetpack

We’ve discussed how much we love Jetpack here on the Hover Blog. We consider this an essential WordPress plugin for many reasons, but the main one being that it combines a bunch of awesome features into one. If you’re mainly interested in the stats portion of the plugin, consider ‘Jetpack Lite’.

Disqus

Disqus is a great comment platform. It allows better engagement of visitors on your site. Everything is built into the system so that your visitors never have to leave your website. The real-time aspect of Disqus is perfect for live events, breaking news and popular posts.