Essential WordPress Plugins for Bloggers in 2023

In this Blog Post, we will look at essential WordPress plugins that you should install on your WordPress Blog or website while starting

Doesn’t matter if you are just going to start a successful blog or looking to upgrade your website, these essential WordPress plugins will help you deliver a great user experience to your visitors.

1. Rank Math – For WordPress SEO

Rank Math is a search engine optimization(SEO) plugin used in WordPress websites that makes it easy to SEO-optimize your content for better Google Rankings. 

Rank math plugin is free with a wide range of features like  Schema generator, SEO Analytics Module, Google Analytics Integration, Rank Tracking, and Position History Tracking

Rank math plugin helps you improve SERP positions of your website as it optimizes your content from various ON Page SEO perspectives like Keyword Density, URL Structure, Canonical URLs, Internal linking, and much more. 

Setting up Rank Math and Connecting websites with Google Search Console and Google Analytics is very easy and can be done quickly. 

Rank Math offers a Forever Free and a Pro plan.

Pro plan starts at $59 and is suitable to individuals and solopreneurs while Business Plan starts at $199, suitable for Business and Agency owners

2. Optinmonster for Popups in WordPress Blog

Opinmonster is a WordPress plugin that lets you create beautiful pop-ups, and email subscription forms that help you to capture leads and increase your subscribers. This in turn helps you increase sales, and grow business in a very small amount of time. 

These pop-up forms can be easily designed with Drag and Drop editor.

With Optinmonster, you can convert your abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers through various tools like pop-ups, floating bars, scroll boxes, Game wheels, to personalize your campaigns.

Optinmonster is a pop-up WordPress plugin that is used for page-level targeting and increases your click-through rates ( CTRs).

Paid plans Allows A/B testing to select the best converting layout

Optinmonster Pricing

Optinmoster pricing plans are as follows-

• Plus – Starts from $29 which includes essential tools for beginners
• Pro – Starts from $79 which is great for businesses and publishers
• Growth – starts from $179  which is excellent for business owners who want fast results

3. MonsterInsights for Analytics

Monsterinsights is a WordPress analytics plugin that helps you to track metrics like 

• People visiting your website with demographic info
• User behavior of website visitors like Purchase and click events
• Real-Time stats into user behavior and Event Tracking
• SEO Ranking Reports, Top Pages
• Device breakdown information – i.e Mobile vs Desktop analysis for various KPIs
• Demographic analysis

After you connect MonsterInsights with Google Analytics, you will be able to look at metrics and data that will help you make decisions to improve conversion rates and increase transactions

Though you may get these simple insights from Google Analytics, MonsterInsights takes data from the Google Analytics plugin and help you make informed decisions by presenting them in a more readable and easy format.

MonsterInsights is a paid plugin suitable for large websites or eCommerce websites for event tracking and taking decisions for your website and generates real-time stats

MonsterInsights Pricing

MonsterInsights Pricing Plans are as follows-

•   Plus – Starts from $99/Year for 1 Site
•  Pro – Starts from $199/Year for 5 sites
•  Agency – Starts from $399/Year for 25 Sites

4. WP Rocket – WordPress Plugin to Speed Up Site

WP Rocket is a WordPress caching plugin that helps in increasing website loading speed.

The loading Speed of a Website is a Google ranking factor and also an SEO Signal. A fast website means a better SEO ranking.

WP Rocket makes the website fast with features like Page caching, Cache preloading, and Browser caching. It caches web pages and creates static HTML files and serves these static HTML files to visitors without putting any load on your servers. 

With the WP Rocket plugin, there is a feature of automatic optimization that allows you to minify and combine the CSS and JS files of your site.

It eliminates render-blocking resources and improves load time with the Lazy Loading feature

WP Rocket Pricing

WP Rocket Pricing Plans are

• Single – starts from $49/ Year for 1 Website
• Plus – starts from $99/Year for 3 Websites
• Infinite – starts from $249 /year for unlimited websites

5. Updraft Plus to backup the WordPress site

Updraft Plus is a backup WordPress Plugin that allows you to set up automatic backups and safely store them in a secure place like Google Drive or Dropbox. 

Updraft Plus allows easy backups and super easy single-click restoration. Updraft backup plugin is secure as it uses one VPS(Virtual Private Server) per clone which means it shared with nobody.

With 3Mn+ active installations, Updraft Plus is a popular choice for WordPress website backups. It comes with a both free and paid option

Updraft Plus Pricing

Updraft Plus plans are as follows-

• Personal(2 License) –  starts from $70/Year which supports premium features like 1 updraft clone
• Business(10 License) – starts from $95/Year which supports premium features like 2 updraft clone
• Agency (35 Licenses) – starts from $145/Year which supports premium features like 5 updraft clone token
• Enterprise (Unlimited License) – starts from $195/Year with 10 updraft clone

6. RafflePress – For Conducting Giveaways

Rafflepress is a giveaway WordPress plugin that is used for hosting contests and giveaways. You can use a drag-and-drop feature for creating mobile responsive campaigns in just a few minutes.

There are multiple ready-made templates to choose from. People can easily enter in Giveaway without any fraud in just one click to keep your contest easy and fair.

Rafflepress giveaways are 100 percent mobile responsive and can be used on any device whether it’s a tab, mobile, or desktop. 

RafflePress Pricing

Rafflepress plans are as follow-

• Plus – Starts from $39.20/Year for 1 Site
• Pro – Starts from $79.20/year for 3 Sites and is excellent for businesses and publishers
• Growth – starts from $159.20/Year for 20 SItes and suitable for business owners who want fast results
• Ultimate – One-time payment of $359 for lifetime access and unlimited websites!

7. Pretty Links – Manage Affiliate Links

Pretty Links is a WordPress plugin to shorten long affiliate links into shareable links and helps you better monetize your affiliate earnings. 

With pretty links, you can add your affiliate links once and then add them in different content automatically. It creates short links for your domains that are easy to remember and pretty to look at!

With Pretty links, you can easily add redirections and track the details like IP address and the number of clicks. You can also switch on or switch off the tracking on each link.

Using pretty links, you can easily update redirected links to the new URLs.

Pretty links Pricing

Pretty link’s pricing plan is as follows –

• Beginner – starts from $49/Year for 1 Website

• Marketers – starts from $99/Year for 3 Websites

• Super Affiliate – starts from $149/Year for 5 Websites

8. Amalinks Pro – Essential for Amazon Affiliates

Amalinks pro is an Amazon Affiliate WordPress plugin used to add beautiful Amazon product displays and amazon links to WordPress websites.

Amalinks Pro is used by Amazon Affiliates to maximize their affiliate commission from amazon by inserting Amazon-compliant image or text links and add CTAs-like buttons to improve the CTRs

Amalinks pro allows you to –

• Create beautiful product show boxes,
• Responsive product comparison tables
• Create product showcases
• Create Buttons for better CTRs

With this Amazon Affiliate WordPress plugin, you can easily switch between the API and Non API mode at any point in time -this is a great benefit as it does not requires you to have Amazon API active.

Pricing of Amalinks Pro

• Blogger – starts from $67/Year, 1 WP installation

• Basic – starts from $127/Year, 3 WP installation

• Premium – starts from $197/Year, 25 WP installation

• Platinum – starts from $797/Year, unlimited WP installation

9. AAWP – Best for Amazon Affiliates

AAWP stands for Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin which is specially built for amazon affiliates and amazon influencers. 

AAWP helps its users to maximize clicks and increase their sales with less effort. This amazon WordPress plugin automatically creates a product description box link with your ID in it with which you can receive the commission for your sales.

With this plugin, you can also create a comparison table in which you can distinguish between the features of the products.

AAWP also allows the feature of bestselling products on amazon on your blog using shortcodes which will show a bestseller for a keyword to enter.

However, please note that Amazon API Access is mandatory to use AAWP

AAWP Pricing

AAWP pricing plans are as follows- 

• Personal – Starts from €49/Year for 1 Website
• Plus – Starts from €129/Year for 3 Website
• Pro – Starts from €249/Year for 10 Website
• Ultimate – Starts from €399/Year for 25 Website

10. Wp Forms

WP Forms is a WordPress plugin that is used for creating beautiful contact forms, subscription forms, payment forms, and other types of forms with just a few clicks.  You can easily integrate WP Forms with email marketing software to generate more traffic on your website.

This form WordPress Form Plugin has a drag-and-drop builder for creating subscription forms and contact forms using the pre-built templates.

WP Forms is 100% mobile responsive and can be used on any device whether it’s a phone or desktop. This WordPress plugin for pop-ups and Forms is really easy to use and can be used by beginners also. 

The basic Paid plan starts from $39/Year. 

11. Insert Header and Footer

Insert header and Footer is a WordPress plugin that is used for inserting code like Custom CSS and Google analytics code to your website’s header and footer.  

This simple interface gives you the advantage of adding scripts like HTML, CSS, and Javascript. 

This WordPress plugin is very easy to set up and use and lets a user insert all types of scripts and styles to your website header files without the indeed for coding knowledge

12. Akismet Anti Spam 

Akismet anti-spam is a  WordPress plugin for blocking spam comments. This plugin removes irrelevant and malicious content from your website and makes it spam-free.

This free WordPress plugin keeps you safe from penalties and gives you a spam-free website. 

The Akismet anti-spam algorithm uses the technique of learning from its mistakes and from the action taken by participating websites. 

There is a forever free plan for personal use and paid plan of Askimet anti-spam starts from $8.33 per month. 

13. Social Snap 

Social Snap is a paid WordPress plugin that is used for increasing social media engagement on your website and drives more traffic to your website.

With this plugin, you can easily integrate with different tools like  bitly link shortener through which you can easily track your link performance

This plugin gives you the feature of adding beautiful and highly customizable social media buttons to your website. This button includes Facebook share buttons, Twitter share buttons, and LinkedIn share buttons, Click to tweet, etc.

The Social Snap pricing starts from $39 for its plus version

14. Add to Any

Add to Any is a Free Social media WordPress plugin that is used to add social media buttons on the WordPress website. 

With more than 500,000 WP installations, this free social media WordPress plugin gets regular updates and is loved by many – which is also visible from the reviews. 

Add to Any provides responsive share buttons that are mobile responsive by default. 

Also, users can easily share content through social media buttons to any web application or any other application.

Its pricing starts from $99 for the regular version.

15. CookieYes – GDPR Cookie Consent & Compliance Notice Plugin

If complying with your WordPress website with various cookie laws is hard for you, you can opt for the CookieYes GDPR Cookie Consent & Compliance Notice Plugin.

The plugin makes the compliance process effortless by helping you manage both first and third-party cookies on your website as per the GDPR guidelines. 

In addition to the GDPR, the plugin assists in compliance with the CCPA, CNIL, DSGVO, RGPD, and LGPD regulations as well. In terms of CCPA, you can add a ‘DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION’ control to the cookie notice. 

This cookie consent plugin provides you with some of the top-notch features including customizable cookie notice, auto cookie scanning, auto script-blocking of third-party cookies, etc. You can also enable cookie consent log, Geo IP-based cookie notice exclusion, and avail a privacy policy generator with the plugin. 

CookieYes GDPR Pricing is as below :

Single site – $69 per year |  Upto 5 sites – $199 per year |   Upto 25 sites – $399 per year

Bonus Tools for Bloggers 

Here is a list of some bonus digital marketing tools for bloggers that will help you to create quality content for your blog. 

These tools help you to create, edit and analyze your content in a better way. With these tools, you can drive traffic and increase the visibility of your website through an online marketing strategy

1. Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a creative cloud offering and it is graphic designing tool that is used for photo editing, digital animations, and graphic designing. This AI-based tool gives you the options of changing colors, zooming images, and Changing expressions or poses in any image.

You can also invite people to edit the image on your cloud document which increases the efficiency of your work.

2. Adobe Premiere Rush

Adobe Premiere Rush is a video editing application that is used by freelancers, YouTubers, and bloggers. This video editing tool has all the basic editing features which are required for small and mid-size businesses

The interface of this tool is easy to use and everyone can start editing their video within seconds. Adobe premiere rush starts at  very reasonable prices and starts at $9.99 per month

3. Grammarly for Chrome

Grammarly For Chrome is an online grammar checker tool that is used for writing clear and error-free content that increases the readability of your blogs.

With Grammarly, you can correct English on various apps like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

There is also a Google Doc Add-on for content writers, a Grammarly Keyboard app for mobile users, and Grammarly Business for corporate users that one can use.

4. Adobe premier Pro 

Adobe premiere pro is one of the best video editing applications which is specially designed for professionals in filmmaking. 

This video editor tool offers features like control over texting, constant updates, customizable workflows, and many more. Adobe premiere pro pricing starts from $20.99 per month

FAQs on Essential WordPress Plugins