Building the very best blog possible is essential in attracting new followers and making good impressions. When choosing exactly how to develop and maintain any website, a lot of considerations come into play. The format and design are of course very important, but so is the functionality and features provided.

With WordPress specifically, any configuration imaginable is possible. For bloggers in particular, thousands of high-quality plugins are available to assist in developing the best experience for your visitors. To help you improve your blog, we’re going to discuss a few essential WordPress plugins that all blogs should have going into 2019.

Contact Form 7

Being able to collect information from your visitors is a crucial component in building a powerful blog brand. Whether you are sharing thoughts or selling products, building lists of subscribers is a sure-fire way to leverage that traffic into greater benefits. However, ensuring that you’re not pinging noise at visitors with complicated subscription forms is crucial to maximizing conversions.

There are many options out there for collecting information, but the Contact Form 7 plugin for WordPress is hands-down the best solution for blogs. Its simple yet flexible interface allows you to make it easy for visitors to subscribe, and its back end ensures that you aren’t having to sort through mounds of data to organize things effectively.

WooCommerce

Every blog has the opportunity to monetize: whether it be ads or products, each blogger has something unique to offer the world. In the past, setting up shops online was difficult. With the WooCommerce WordPress plugin, it couldn’t be easier.

Easily configured within minutes, the functionality of this plugins allows for everything from standard store-fronts to online donation hubs. With both a free and a premium version available, you can pick which marketplace solution best fits your blog’s needs.

Yoast SEO

Any blog worth maintaining needs to be concerned with how visible it is to the public. A huge component of boosting visibility revolves around search engine optimization. There are many SEO plugins out there for bloggers to consider, but Yoast SEO is by far the most popular and recommended.

Yoast SEO provides full integration with your WordPress blog and helps you optimize both blog posts and pages. Whether it be recommendations for titles, keyword targeting, meta data or reliable site maps, Yoast SEO will ensure that you’re not pinging noise at search engines when trying to boost your visibility.

Google Analytics

Knowing who is coming to your website can be a very useful piece of information. As you learn more about who is visiting your blog, you can better optimize your web presence to grow that traffic. Google Analytics has long been known as one of the best free analytics solutions available. Now, you can fully integrate it with WordPress!

The Google Analytics plugin is built by the same people who provide Yoast SEO, and guarantees that your website is being monitored properly. Rather than heading to Google to monitor your stats, you can see them in real time from your WordPress admin panel.

There are many plugins to consider when running a blog, but a few stand out in anticipation of the new year. By ensuring you have a SEO solution, an analytics offering, a marketplace option and a conversion tool, you can conquer many of the primary hurdles bloggers face when growing their brands.