Plugins are designed to fill very specific functionality niches in WordPress. Image: Rennett Stowe / Flickr / CC-BY
WordPress is an incredibly powerful content management system and blogging software. It’s search engine friendly, easily editable and even open-source. We’ve sung the praises of using WordPress for your affiliate website in the past and think it’s a great program for affiliate marketing.
There are reasons, though, that you may need to expand or improve on the built-in functionality within WordPress, and there are some plugins that we recommend on a regular basis. If you are setting up your own WordPress blog, you should check out these plugins to make it even more useful. Adworkz has not created any of these plugins and does not offer support for them; they are simply third-party resources we have found useful.
Content plugins for WordPress
Trying to keep fresh, relevant content on your website can be tough, even on the best days. There are plugins that will help you receive content feeds or even post from your smartphone.
- Postie helps you receive and post content to your WordPress blog via e-mail. It’s a powerful, supported plugin that is compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Feed WordPress automatically creates posts on your WordPress blog using an RSS feed.
- Akismet SPAM checker will check comments posted on your website against the Akismet spam service.
- Contextually related posts Will help display posts that are related to the one on-screen. This will not only help direct your viewers to more information on your website, it will help search engines index your site as relevant.
Traffic plugins for WordPress
These are WordPress plugins that will help you monitor, track and make the most of the traffic that comes to your website.
- Google Analyticator Integrates your WordPress blog with Google Analytics, including the tracking methods that give real-time feedback.
- Download Monitor provides tools for uploading and managing links, documents and information.
- ShareThis social sharing plugin gives your visitors a way to immediately share your website on just about any social networking service.
Functionality and SEO plugins for WordPress
These WordPress plugins will help your site run faster for customers, get indexed by more search engines and perform all-around better.
- WP Super Cache must be used carefully, but if your website begins receiving a lot of traffic, this plugin can reduce the server load of your website. Just be certain to disable caching on any page that includes application information or personal user data. By helping your site load faster, you will improve your page rank.
- All in One SEO Pack does all the heavy lifting of optimizing your website for search engines. The pack automatically rewrites your meta data, headers and even link titles to help search engines find and index your site just as you want them to.
- Wapple Architect is a plugin that will make your website mobile-friendly for people trying to access it on their smartphones. With a mobile-friendly website, mobile visitors are more likely to stay on your site and convert.
- XML Sitemap Generator creates a Google-friendly XML sitemap in moments, helping search engine crawlers find their way around your site quickly and easily.
