8 awesome plugins that add value to my blog

What are plugins? And how can they add value to your blog? Ever wonder how they get that pin it text over an image or those social sharing icons on the page? Beyond having a fabulous theme, plugins are your best friend.

A theme is the framework that provides the layout and design of your website. Plugins partner with your theme to add additional functions and features to your site.

Use plugins in WordPress to take your blog from basic to standout.

Installing key plugins for additional blog features

Here’s a list of my favorite plugins and what I use them for:

• Rank Math SEO – I recently switched from using Yoast to RankMath as my SEO plugin. You’ll come to find that SEO is an extremely important component of blogging. This plugin acts as a guide to optimizing your post for search engines. Which is key when it comes to being found when people are searching for content.
• Feed Them Social – if you scroll to the bottom of my website you’ll find my instagram feed beautifully housed on my site thanks to this plugin.
• Grow Social by Mediavine – This places social sharing buttons on your individual posts. You can set up which social platforms you want people to share your posts to and determine the placement of the buttons either at the top, bottom or side of the post.
• GDPR Cookie Compliance – Being aware of governing laws such as GDPR is essential as a blogger (hobby or for profit) and this plugin adds a cookie notification at the top of my site, informing a visiter that my site uses cookies. A notification you’ve probably grown used to seeing on every website you visit now.
• Jetpack – One of my favorite plugins, Jetpack delivers analytics and insights on my blog traffic. I can easily check my site stats to know how many visits my site or a specific post is receiving. It also shows me where my traffic is coming from so I know if people are finding my site via social media like Pinterest, direct links or search engines.
• LuckyWP Table of Contents – Having a table of contents in your post is great for SEO! This plugin makes it super simple since it creates a TOC with links to each headline in your post.
• Weblizar Pin It – This is the plugin that I use to get that pin it button on the images in my post. This is helpful if my readers want to pin a specific image in the post.
• W3 Total Cache – This plugin is a WordPress performance plugin. Use it to improve the speed and user experience of your site. With this plugin you can add browser, page, object and database caching. As well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress.

I recommend doing your research on plugins and using reliable ones. One of the number one reasons websites crash is due to bad plugins. I look for plugins that have been updated recently and have high ratings.

Using Plugins in Widgets

Widgets can also partner with plugins. For example I have a plugin to import my Instagram feed to my blog. The code from the plugin is in a widget. That’s how I get it on my blog. To add widgets to your site go to Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress dashboard.

When it comes to customizing the look of your site widgets play an important role. They house blocks of content on your WordPress website. Widgets have different functions depending on the type of content.

Common widget locations are at the top, sides and bottom of your site. Widgets support the framework out side of a page or post. So they do not go inside the page or post content.

You can add text, html, newsletter forms, menus and more to a page or post with a widget. If you look to the right side of this post you will find a search bar, image, body of text, newsletter sign up form, and Instagram feed. Each of these is contained in a widget and show up on all my blog post pages.

These are the 8 awesome plugins that add value to my blog! Do you have a favorite plugin? I’d love to check it out. Share it in the comments below.

xoxo Naomi