What WordPress Plugins are Vital to the Success Of Your Blog?

If you have a WordPress blog, then you definitely use some plugins. There are so many plugins available for different uses, so it can become really difficult to find out which ones are the most needed for your site. Because of the benefits that plugins offer, webmasters and blog owners often tend to use too many plugins. Too many plug-ins cause several problems.

SEE ALSO: Top WordPress Plugins for the Smart Blogger

If you have used too many plugins for your blog or website, then it will load slowly. Slow-loading sites are not good for visitors — and especially not good for conversion of prospects to customers. Google recently announced they were going to start using page load times in their algorithm, which means now load time will also affect your search engine rankings.

So…how many WordPress plugins should you use? The answer to this question is: the fewer, the better.

Basically, use those plugins which are absolutely necessary for managing and running your blog like a professional one. A plugin is necessary for your blog if:

It increases the loading speed of your blog;It helps you to add a new feature that is important for your blog and business;The plugin increases safety and security of your blog by eliminating viruses, malware, spam and other such problems;It helps you to improve the search engine ranking of your blog;If it benefits you and your blog in any other way.

There aren’t many that I fully recommend, but here’s my small list:

Google XML Sitemaps – Google Sitemaps is very important from the point of view of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you have a sitemap for your blog, the search engines find it easier to crawl your blog and index it. That alone makes it a vital plugin for your blog.Akismet – This is an important plugin because it saves your blog from spam. It filters the comment spam and saves your time wasted in going through and deleting the spam manually. W3 Total Cache – This plugin can help you to speed up your blog. It caches your site so your blog can load faster for your readers.An advertising management plugin -  There are several plugins available that can help you to manage the advertising on your blog. If you have a blog and you use different types of advertising for generating revenue, then you need this plugin to control your advertisement placement and other vital factors for generating more revenue. The plugin makes it easier for you to manage the placement, frequency, customization of the ads you place in the blog. Several are available by using the search term “Advertising” from within the plugin administration end of your WordPress blog.A plugin for forms – You  need a plugin for creating forms to use in your blog. Using forms you can allow people to contact you without showing your email ID, which saves you from the “spam masters”. There are different plugins available for the creation of forms. Ones to try include Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms.

My final piece of advice? Never use more than 10 plugins for your blog.

What WordPress plugins (if any) do you use and why? Let me know in the comments below.

(Photo credit: Plugged In via Shutterstock)

Bikash Kalita is a Content Manager for the technology blog Take A Plunge. He also manages Nirvana Sutra, the complete Content Management Agency. He is a netpreneur and help people to write, create and publish eBooks.

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