I know a lot of brands out there are operating their sites with WordPress (myself included). For those of you that are, you probably know all about the Plugins that are available to you. There are seriously hundreds of them out there created to make running and promoting your site as easy as possible. I’ve put together a list of the top 5 plugins I’ve found to be most useful and that I think will benefit you and your brand.
1. Akismet
This is the number one plugin I would recommend to everyone. It’s basically an anti-spam set up that should come with your WordPress, all you have to do is activate it. This bad boy will save you sitting there and deleting all those annoying spam comments you get on a daily basis.
2. All in One SEO Pack
Unless you’re familiar with coding and web design and all that technical stuff, this is a plugin that will make your life a lot easier. SEO is complicated and you could spend hours a day trying to research the right ways to go about it for your site. One of the easiest ways to get your website up to date with SEO is to install this plugin. It’ll take you painlessly through your keywords, page titles and descriptions for all your pages and posts.
3. Google Analyticator
Most of you probably have Google Analytics set up for your site – if you don’t, I recommend you set it up. This plugin makes tracking your site even easier. Basically, it lets you enter your Google tracking code right there and takes care of inserting the code into your template and all that technical stuff.
4. Google XML Sitemap
Having a sitemap for your site that regularly updates is crucial for decent SEO. Basically your sitemap alerts Google to say your page has been updated and that there’s fresh content. This plugin creates a sitemap for you and then updates it periodically to ensure Google is downloading the latest version of your sitemap. An excellent tool.
5. WP Super Cache
If your site hits heavy traffic, this plugin will keeps things running fast by creating static html files for your server. If you don’t want to let your readers/customers down with a slow, clogged site, then this plugin is probably the best answer.
