These plugins will help boost the performance of your WordPress powered website, a vital step now that PageSpeed is an important ranking factor. Speed up your WordPress with these top plugins.
WP Super Cache
WP-Super-Cache This plugin generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After an HTML file is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
99% of your visitors will be served static HTML files. One cached file can be served thousands of times. Other visitors will be served custom cached files tailored to their visit. If they are logged in or have left comments those details will be displayed and cached for them.
W3 Total Cache W3 Total Cache improves the SEO and user experience of your site by increasing website performance, reducing download times via features like content delivery network (CDN) integration.
The only web host agnostic WordPress Performance Optimization (WPO) framework recommended by countless web developers and web hosts. Trusted by numerous companies such as AT&T, mattcutts.com, mashable.com, smashingmagazine.com, makeuseof.com and tens of thousands of others.
In a world where social media marketing dominates the web, not everyone can be a social media genius. But don't worry - you don't need to be an expert on social media with these top social sharing plugins for WordPress!
Search engines are a major source of traffic for most websites and having a correctly optimised site can mean the difference between a successful website and a site lost to page 900 on the search listings. These plugins all aim to optimise your content and markup but adding in the specific meta tags for search engines, XML sitemaps, compressing and minifying content for performance as well as offering useful tips while you write.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin
Yoast SEO is the original WordPress SEO plugin since 2008. It is the favourite tool of millions of users, ranging from the bakery around the corner to some of the most popular sites on the planet. With Yoast SEO, you get a solid toolset that helps you aim for that number one spot in the search results. Yoast: SEO for everyone.
All in One SEO Pack The All in One SEO Pack optimises your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimisation) including automatically optimising your titles for search engines, generate META tags automatically and it avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs.
The Google Sitemap Generator is another Essential Wordpress plugins which generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.
SEO Friendly Images SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress SEO plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes for SEO purposes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according to the options you set. Additionally, this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.
The ALT attribute is an important part of search engine optimization. It describes your images to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.
TITLE attribute plays a lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when the mouse is over the image.
WP SmushIt WP Smush scans every image you upload - or have already added to your site - and cuts all the unnecessary data and scales it for you before adding it to your media library. Unnecessary data includes bulky colour profiles and metadata, and the resize, optimise and compress of all of your images can lead to significantly smaller image file sizes. Smaller file size = quicker to download.
Smush has been benchmarked and tested number one for speed and quality and is the award-winning, proven crowd favourite image optimization plugin for WordPress.
SEO Quake SEOquake is an SEO toolbar available as a browser add-on for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari web browsers. It provides SEO information for any website. These information parameters include page rank, age, last updated, Alexa rank, and many other parameters. It is one of the most downloaded browser add-ons by SEO professionals.
SEOquake toolbar can show you all these parameters for all the search results on the Google search listings. This information can be extremely useful if you are gauging competition for different keywords. You can even download search results in CSV format and prepare your own excel sheets of search data.
Helps readers share, save, and bookmark your posts and pages using any service, such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, and all the rest. The button comes with Add to Any's customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor's browsing history.
Shareaholic Shareaholic is the world's leading all-in-one Content Amplification Platform, which includes related content recommendations, social sharing, following, social analytics and site monetization apps such as promoted content, native ads and affiliate links. This module makes it a snap for any website - big or small - to engage and grow their traffic, market their content, gain insights, and monetize their audience, all from one powerful but easy-to-use dashboard.
Get more social shares which can lead to more website traffic with the best WordPress social sharing plugin! Built by a group of social media marketing experts and world class developers who are obsessed with performance.
Social Sharing Plugin – Social Warfare
Most WordPress social sharing plugins slow down your site, are not attractive, and don't work the way you would hope. Social Warfare share buttons are both lightning fast and beautiful.
Not only will it never slow down your website like other sharing plugins, we give you the most attractive share buttons available that look great no matter what screen size or resolution.
Instagram Feed WordPress Plugin If you utilise the Instagram platform then the Instagram Feed plugin is a must. With the plugin, you can display Instagram photos from any non-private Instagram accounts, either in the same single feed or in multiple different ones.
Increase engagement between you and your Instagram followers. Increase your number of followers by displaying your Instagram content directly on your site.
All-In-One Security (AIOS) - Security and Firewall
All-in-One Security (AIOS) is a security plugin designed especially for WordPress, now brought to you from the team at UpdraftPlus. Customers love All-In-One Security because it's easy to use, and it does a whole lot for free. All-In-One Security gives you Login Security Tools, to keep bots at bay and protect your website from brute force attacks. Our Web Application Firewall gives you automatic protection from security threats. Content Protection Features protect what you've worked so hard to build; All-In-One Security eliminates comment spam and prevents other websites from stealing your content with features like iFrame prevention and copywriting protection.
WordPress security, performance, marketing, and design tools — Jetpack is made by WordPress experts to make WP sites safer and faster, and help you grow your traffic.
These plugins will enhance content or navigation, both of which will improve your users experience using your site.
Breadcrumb NavXT WordPress Breadcrumbs
This plugin generates breadcrumb navigation bars for your WordPress blog. These breadcrumbs are highly customizable to suit the needs of just about any blog. The Administrative interface makes setting options easy, while a direct class access is available for theme developers and more adventurous users.
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded is a robust plugin that enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to unsubscribe to certain posts or suspend all notifications. It solves most of the issues that affect Mark Jaquith's version, using the latest WordPress features and functionality. Plus, allows administrators to enable a double opt-in mechanism, requiring users to confirm their subscription clicking on a link they will receive via email or even One Click Unsubscribe.
Related Posts for WordPress offers you the ability to link related posts to each other with just 1 click!
Our installation wizard will do all the hard work for you, simply activate the plugin, set the amount of posts that should relate and press the button. Related Posts for WordPress will do the rest. Relating posts in WordPress has never been this easy!
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AZULIA DESIGNSWeb design that taps into the Harmony and Vision of your Dreams
Tim Trott is a freelance software developer and web designer based in Glasgow, Edinburgh & the Lothians, Scotland
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