It’s time to get your blog ready for business by installing Plugins for Profit!
In a recent blog we talked about the plugins that would be important for the security of your blog…your main business asset. Today we want to talk about plugins that will increase traffic to your blog, monitor the traffic, fix issues that cause you to lose sales, make your site look better to keep readers on the site longer, etc… Thus they are plugins for profit! After all, you are in business to help people and get paid for the products and/or services you offer.
The plugins you decide to use will depend a lot on what your goal is for your blog. Pick and choose those which fit your needs best. You can use the list below or login to your admin panel of your site and go to the tab marked plugins and select add new. You will have a choice of thousands listed as… Featured…Popular…Recommended…Favorites. Of course you can go directly to WordPress.com or do a simple google search and come up with even more choices!
We would recommend you look at the star rating, the number of installs and if the plugin is compatible with your version of WordPress. If the plugin is not compatible with your version of WordPress it may really slow down your site. If you click the link for more details you will find out more about the plugin, including going to the developer’s site, where you can get reviews and FAQ’s. Installing, activating and deactivating is usually one click. Some plugins will have additional settings–just read the instructions included.
Here’s a great video from YouTube with general instructions for installing plugins in various ways…
Add plugins as you need them. Always update when you receive a notice to update. One final caution, back up your site before adding a lot of new plugins…just in case something goes crazy!
Ok…here’s a few of my recommendations with a brief description. You can type in the name of the plugin in the search bar under add new plugin and read more about it.
Yoast SEO – This plugin is the easiest all-in-one SEO solution for your blog. It has an on-page content analysis, guides you through tags, keywords and meta description plus it gives you a little red-yellow-green light indicator of how good the SEO is on your site.
Google Analytics (by Yoast) – This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress site. Analytics are important for tracking on your site. The plugin adds lots of features to help with the tracking, e.g. error page, search result and automatic outgoing links and download tracking.
Jetpack by wordpress – The Jetpack plugin enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account giving you use of powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users.
Simple Share buttons adder / Shareaholic – either of these plugins make it easy to add share buttons to all of your posts and/or pages of your blog.
CommentLuv – This plugin encourages more comments and builds a community by rewarding your readers by automatically placing a link to their last blog post at the end of their comment.
Customer Facebook Feed – This plugin allows you to display completely customizable Facebook feeds of any public Facebook page or group on your website.
Mojo Marketplace – This plugin adds shortcodes, widgets and themes to your WordPress site.
Contact Form 7/ Form Maker – These plugins create contact forms and other forms for your site. A contact form is essential for your site so potential customers and customers can reach you.
Pretty Link Light – With pretty link you can shrink, beautify, track, manage and share any URL on or off of your WordPress website. Create links that look how you want using your own domain name.
Broken Link Checker – This is especially good for blogs as often broken links pop up in comments left by your readers. Google is not happy when your site has broken links!
W3 Total Cache – Easy Web Performance Optimization (WPO) using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support. Designed to improve user experience and page speed.
Compress jpeg & PNG images – Speed up your website. Optimize your JPEG and PNG images automatically with TinyPNG.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer – Fast, easy-to-use and lightweight plugin that optimizes images & PDFs. Preserve a high visual quality of images and make your website load faster.
Those should be enough to get you started! If you have a plugin you like, please comment below and let us know about it! Like this post? Feel free to share and also join our list so you never miss an update!
Hi Barbara,
I want to thank you for putting this post together! Lately I have been gathering information about plugins that are good to use on your site! You have saved my time! Now I don’t need to look anywhere else, just made notes of the ones you have mentioned 🙂 . I love your blog! So easy to navigate, so much good information! I’m looking forward to come here again soon! 🙂
Hi Desana, Thanks for stopping by and I’m glad you are finding the information useful! Do want to mention, Carlos Cortez suggested some alternatives that you might want to look at also and decide which would be best for you! Wish you success on your site!
Hi Barb, 🙂
Great post with useful information. I don’t however use Yoast, or Mojo, or W3. I do use xml sitemaps, get my code from google for analytics, and I know I don’t need mojo.
For cacheing purposes, I use Wp Super Cache, as it’s on the fly, and W3 eliminates some of my content and or blocks pages…
Pretty links, I use, because it’s a great plugin to provide cloaked links, Contact Form 7, and sometimes I use Ninja Forms, and for images, I give the specifics, I figure, why not do the extra step.
For this, I go and resize images in picmonkey dot com, or in pixler, and then access the .htaccess on the account for more speed.
And I like installing the addtoany plugin for my client sites…
I know Jetpress is so easy for people, but they should go to webmaster tools and sign their site on there, that way, the plugin will not bog down the site…
Thank you for the great post!
Carlos
Carlos Cortez would like you to read…Do Know What Your Customers Are Saying?
Hi Carlos…thanks for all the details on additional plugins. I will definitely check them out. I like to take recommendations from people that are having success with what they recommend, which is how I ended up with some of the plugins I mentioned. Speaking of success, you certainly have a great understanding of reputation management as explained in your recent posting, Do You Know What Your Customers Are Saying? Important topic for any business! Again, thanks for stopping by and commenting Carlos.
Hello, Barbara
Very valuable content here, and just what I need. I have installed the absolute bare minimum plug-ins required, but will be cross-checking now with your recommendations here.
Appreciate this!
Susette would like you to read…Pre-WMN vs: Post-WMN
Hi Sue, Take a look at some of the recommendations by Carlos Cortez also. You may make comparisons and decide which plugins are best for you!
Hi Barbara,
Thanks you for this amazing blog post. These info will surely help many of those starting online. Great job. Thanks.
Fawzi would like you to read…Thе Imроrtаnсе оf SEO Marketing Skіllѕ
Thanks for stopping by Fawzi! Since I personally struggled to get started online I decided the best thing I could do would be to help other people build an online business and by giving them instructions and motivation to keep going… It takes a lot of learning and persistence initially. I see you are tackling a difficult subject…SEO! Again, thanks for stopping by and hope you will visit again!