For those of you who are running your blogs on WordPress, this is a must read post. With thousands of plugins available for download, how do you know which ones are not only right for your blog, but safe to download? We’re rounding up the best WordPress plugins for lifestyle bloggers that will help keep you organized, increase pageviews and more.
BEST WORDPRESS PLUGINS FOR LIFESTYLE BLOGGERS
WordPress Editorial Calendar
A personal preference but one we think is great to staying organized and seeing your next few weeks of content in a calendar view; insert WordPress Editorial Calendar. Easily add new posts as place holders and move scheduled posts around with a simple drag and drop. If you’re a fan of using an agenda, this plugin will be your new personal favorite.
WP Open Comments In New Windows
If you ever click on a link in a comment, the default is to open that URL up in the same window. That means, if your reader clicks on someone’s blog URL, they then are no longer on YOUR blog. Besides the annoyance, first and foremost, this reduces the average time on your site, increases bounce rate, and also can decrease your pageviews. ALL bad things.
By installing this plugin, any link someone leaves in your comments will open in a brand new window. This way your readers still have your site open when they close out of that commenters opened webpage and can return to visiting your site. It’s a win, win folks.
NoFollow For External Link
For SEO purposes, many brands will request that you put a nofollow link on any of their links. It’s also ideal for any affiliate links. You see, in a nutshell, Google may penalize you for using too many outbound links, affiliate links OR linking to low ranking sites. This tells Google NOT to notice that you’re linking to these urls.
There’s a ton more to it, but for us lifestyle bloggers, this plugin is highly recommended by just about everyone in the industry. What was once a manual and time consuming task is fixed with the simple activation of a plugin.
Wp Recipe Maker
If you do any recipe posts, this is your plugin! It’s super simple to customize to match your design and it’s a great way to showcase a recipe. Easily create a very clean, simple recipe card that pops into your post. Readers can easily print the recipes or save it for later.
Plus if you already have a recipe plugin and want to switch over, this has a great import option that will help cut down on time transferring your content over.
Yoast SEO
An absolute must for anyone with a site. This plugin walks you through all the steps to make your post SEO friendly with getting the green light. It’s very user friendly and provides suggestions and feedback on how to go from red to green to know you’re ready to publish an SEO friendly post.
We recommend upgrading to the Premium version as the paid features help to boost your SEO even more. From suggesting internal links to use, to adding additional focus keywords and finding any orphaned content (content without internal links to them from your own site).
Jetpack
Another must regardless of the topic you blog about. Jetpack helps to do so many things from providing easy to read stats of your traffic, related posts, spam protection and more.
Google Analytics
First, if you are not using Google Analytics to track your site traffic, start this today. It’s the standard in website reporting and should be the only statistics you go by and provide in your media kit. However, installing the code can be a bit tricky and overwhelming if you aren’t super familiar with the backend of WordPress.
This plugin takes all the guess work out of it. Download the plugin and pop in your Google Analytics user ID and you’ll get reporting not only in your WordPress backend, but your Google Analytics will be accurately reporting your sites traffic and behavior.
Shop The Post
This is a plugin from EmPress Themes who creates themes and plugins for lifestyle bloggers. The Shop The Post plugin is hands down our favorite for a few reasons.
This plugin allows you to add a pretty “shop the post” section under your blog posts. But it also integrates with their grid plugin (which we also love!) that then shows the shopping widget in your grid on categories or tags. Below is an example of both plugins in action!
Plus, if you’re on an affiliate platform that doesn’t have a widget option (like LTK and Collective Voice do), they now have the ability to upload your own images and links to create a shopping widget. This is great for using Amazon links, or any other affiliate platform besides LTK and Collective Voice.
