Improve Your WordPress Blog With the Right Plugins

The fact that there are so many WordPress plugins available is both a blessing and a curse at the same time. You have a catalogue of no less than 30,000 to browse through and given the fact that they’re all somewhat ‘homemade’ and competing for the same attention, knowing which to side with can be tricky. You want to improve your blog and you know the tools for the job are right there in front of you – all you have to do is identify them and put them to use.Now, it’s worth pointing out that said ‘right’ tools for the job will vary in accordance with the job…as in the blog and its purpose. However, there are certain plugins that are universally helpful and cannot fail to make a solid difference to your blog’s performance if implemented sooner rather than later.    Here’s a quick introduction to just a few of the WordPress plugins you should be using:WordPress Related PostsOne of the best tools for reducing bounce rates and making sure your readers stay on your site and read more than one page. WordPress Related Posts places a series of suggestions at the end of each post, highlighting other posts that are in some way related to this one for your readers to click on. The plugin technically does the hard work of choosing the related posts and placing the links and thumbnails there on your behalf.Google Analytics for WordPressAnalytics aren’t going to automatically revolutionise your site…actually they won’t do a damn thing on their own. What they will do however is grant you a seriously important and valuable look at your site in terms of who pays a visit, where from, why, for how long and so on and so forth. So if you want to know what’s working and what isn’t, this is how you’ll find out.404 to StartYou know those annoying 404 Error pages that drive you mad? Well, you can get rid of them altogether…sort of…by installing the 404 to Start plugin. As the name suggests, it’s a simple case of making sure that if and when a 404 Error occurs, your site’s visitor is taken straight back to the page of your choosing rather than just seeing the error message.Contact Form 7There are tons of contact form plugins out there but Contact Form 7 is one of the securest and easiest to use of the bunch…so use it.WordPress SEO by YoastThe installation of this particular plugin will not propel your site to the top of the rankings…let’s just get that out of the way first. What it will do however is give you a solid introduction to SEO and help you begin implementing the changes that might eventually see you climb the ladder with Google and Co.Subscribe2And last for this list at least, Subscribe2 is a great tool for setting up a subscription service and building a fanbase, to which you can send out regular emails, promotional materials or anything else you like.