For many new bloggers, WordPress plugins can be intimidating. However, the right use of plugins can enhance your WordPress site to bring in more traffic, keep it secure and make edits much easier.

I’ve got a list of 5 plugins that are a must whenever I create a new site.

If you’re wondering what a WordPress plugin is – no fear. Plugins are pieces of software that can add functionality to your site. If your website is your home, think of your plug-ins as the appliances that go in it.

Because WordPress is an open-source platform, meaning that anyone can design plugins for it, you have to be cautious with what you put on your site. Oftentimes, heavy plugins can cause long loading times for WordPress sites. Or, if a plugin is not updated properly or secure, it can take a site down.

Needless to say, choosing what plugins you install into your site should be done with some research. Here are the plugins I trust and use daily!

Optimize Your Blog SEO Using One of My Favorite WordPress Plugins

Yoast SEO is one of the highest ranking SEO plugins, and for good reason. I recommend the paid version because you can go uber in depth with your website’s search analytics..

Insert Code Seamlessly – Insert Headers and Footers

Sometimes you may need to insert a general code, like Google Analytics, Facebook pixels, or CSS into your site. This one is very easily and lets you avoid messing with the Editor.

Resize and Optimize Images

Resize, optimize and compress all of your images. After plugins, large images are one of the main things that slows down your site. This preserves image quality while cutting all the unnecessary data and scales your images for you before adding it to your media library.

Add Videos to your Blog Posts

If you are a Youtuber or wanting to share a video in your blog post, ARVE is a great option. This is SEO friendly and lets you specify title, description, upload date to provide search engines with the schema.org data they like to have for better indexing. All you need is the URL to add the video.

Domain Redirects

The Force Domain Redirect plugin is perfect when your domain has changed and you want to force redirects to the new domain using the same url path.