The Power of Plugins: Six Power WordPress Plugins to Give your Blog Superpowers

Plugins are basically components which add a special functionality to your blog. Because WordPress is open source, meaning it’s functionality can be modified or improved by anyone for the good of the platform, there are tens of thousands of plugins available, many of which are free, and some of which are specialised enough to require a payment. Having used WordPress to build hundreds of websites, I’ve become very familiar with the power of plugins to make or break a blog. Here are some of my favourites:

WordPress SEO
Joost De Valk’s SEO plugin has become the stuff of legend! Free to use it allows to you to specifc a focus keyword for a blog post, then shows you exactly what you need to change in the post title, title and meta descriptions to keep Google happy. Added to this it can take care of your titles and descriptions for the site at large, prevent duplicates, generate site maps, sort out your permalinks and heaps more. This is always the first plugin I add to a new site and it just keeps getting better. A classic.

W3 Total Cache
Another superb and necessary plugin, the W3 Total Cache improves your user experience and page load time, by reducing CPU consumption and bandwidth consumption. With Google now taking page load speed into consideration for its SERP results, there’s yet another reason to use the plugin. Supplement your FastWebHost wordpress web hosting plan with this one to speed up.

Zemanta
Zemanta delivers two birds with one stone. Add this plugin and receive targeted recommendations for related articles, both from other Zemanta users and from a master list you can add. With Google looking for sites which link out to relevant, authority sites this is a superb addition to any blog, further improved by its suggestions of contextual links, too, from Wikipedia pages. After your write your article, a few swift clicks will take your post several notches up, with the only downside being the slightly annoying Zemanta icon that adds itself to your post.

Broken Link Checker
This handy gizmo scans your blog for you at agreed intervals, searching for broken links. When it finds something it emails you at the address of your choice with the information, allowing for a speedy fix. This is an incredibly useful tool, especially on larger sizes where old links will inevitably fail after a while.

Better WP Security
If there’s one criticism WordPress seems to receive more often than not, it’s the lack of security. This plugin makes that a thing of the past by doing a whole host of clever things to the backend of your site. Having had numerous issues with WordPress hackers over the years, this plugin has reliably fixed all problems and remains a must for any new WordPress set up.

WordPress Back up to Dropbox
Set this baby up and you worries about losing data are well and truly over. Once it’s in motion, regular backups will be sent straight to your Dropbox account, helping your put your mind at ease and get on with running an awesome blog.