WordPress is a leading content management system and one of the most seamless tools I’ve ever worked with. With beautiful themes, great usability for both website visitors and managers, and an ultra-customizable platform, it’s my go-to choice for websites of any kind. Here are some of the plugins I recommend installing for security, functionality, and content marketing.
All In One WP Security & Firewall – A comprehensive, user-friendly, all in one WordPress security and firewall plugin for your site.
WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam – An exceptionally powerful WordPress anti-spam plugin that eliminates comment spam, trackback spam, contact form spam and registration spam.
WP-Optimize – This effective plugin allows you to extensively clean up your WordPress database and optimize it without doing manual queries.
W3 Total Cache – Easy Web Performance Optimization (WPO) using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support. (Don’t cache an unfinished website.)
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP – This plugin displays Google Analytics reports right in your dashboard. It inserts the latest GA tracking code into your pages, and gives you a good overview of how your content is doing.
Yoast SEO – I love using this to optimize my content. It’s easy to use, provides actionable tips, and updates in real-time so you can check your content against SEO best practices.
Broken Link Checker – This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found.
Extra tip: Check My Links isn’t a WordPress tool, but it’s a great Chrome extension that allows you to check for broken links on your website.
Title Experiments Free – Split (A/B) test multiple titles for a post and discover which gets more page views. Great way to increase click through rates.
Editorial Calendar – This plugin allows you to view all your posts and drag and drop them to manage your blog schedule.
Better Click to Tweet – Insert beautiful, customizable click to Tweet boxes into your posts to encourage social shares.
Learn more: Content marketing + Blogging in WP
CoSchedule has an awesome post on basic HTML lessons for WordPress users and content marketers. I consider this a must-read for content marketers and bloggers starting out, since they go over the basic skills and formatting.
It’s all about the processes for these blogs. Here’s a blog writing process from CoSchedule, a writing workflow from Hubstaff, and a process to review web content from GatherContent.
Have any plugins to add? Share them in the comments below.