Plugins empower site owners to extend and modify the features available in WordPress. People can install any combination of plugins to help manage the content on their site, but it can be tricky figuring out what plugins you need. You always want to keep the essential plugins installed so your site continues to run smoothly.
Here are our top two essential plugins that most WordPress sites need in order to stay optimized.
Jetpack
Jetpack is a popular WordPress plugin created by Automattic—the people who run WordPress.com. The plugin provides self-hosted WordPress websites with many of the most powerful features available on WordPress.com.
Jetpack contributes to the improvement of WordPress powered blogs and websites through stats, related posts, search engine optimization, social sharing, protection, backups, and much more.
Once you’ve installed the Jetpack plugin, you’ll find a new menu item pop open on your sidebar called “Jetpack.”
Some Jetpack statistics are available on a mini table right within your main WordPress dashboard. While it’s nice to have quick access to your data when you enter WordPress, it’s not the most comprehensive of tables.
You can also access this information from the “Site Stats,” page in the Jetpack menu.
From this initial page, you can see information on:
The number of views per day, week, or month
Top posts and pages
Site referrers
Organic search terms
Links clicked
Number of subscribers
Number of comments
Yoast
Yoast SEO is the highest ranking WordPress SEO plugin. It is the favorite tool of millions of users who are looking to add value to their content through SEO.
Using Yoast, site authors can control how content is seen on search engines, social networks and optimize their content with suggested keywords.
This plugin is highly recommended for WordPress users because it helps them easily control titles, set targeted keywords, and manage sitemaps.
Yoast is incredibly easy to use and can help you optimize multiple aspects of your WordPress site including:
Your URL
Meta description
Tags
Keyword density
Internal and external links
The readability of your content
To start using Yoast SEO, select a “Focus keyphrase,” that you want to analyze.
Yoast will then analyze your content and provide one of three analyses.
• Green means good and no further action is required. • Orange means your page needs some work. • Red means there’s a problem.
Yoast will then offer specific actions you can take to move from red or orange to green.
How to Edit Meta and Title Tags in Bulk
The Yoast SEO plugin allows you to update all page/post descriptions and titles in one place and at one time which can save you time while editing.
You’ll log into your WordPress admin dashboard and select the “SEO,”
You’ll then click on “Tools,” in the navigation menu.
3. Click the “Bulk Editor,” link on the Tools-Yoast SEO page.
Now you can go in and add all the pages or post titles in the “New Yoast SEO Title,” section and then click “Save all,” to save your new site titles.
As you can tell, plugins can help you add robust functionality to your website. Be sure to always confirm a plugin is compatible with your version of WordPress before installing, deactivating and uninstalling any plugins you no longer want to use.
How has your experience been with Jetpack and Yoast SEO? Let us know in the comments below!
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