This is a guest post by Michael Scott
WordPress is easily one of the most popular and user-friendly content management and blog publishing tools available online today. Hundreds of thousands of websites utilize this publishing tool to submit blog postings and for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. Some popular blogs that operate on WordPress include The Wall Street Journal Blogs, Time Magazine Blogs, CNN Blogs and Forbes Blogs.
As you can see, WordPress boasts an impressive clientele of leading companies and organizations. The easy-to-use blog sharing tool also features an impressive array of elegant and stylish themes, as well as powerful plugins that extend the features of WordPress. Let’s take a look at the top 5 must-have WordPress plugins that will enhance your overall experience with this powerful blogging platform.
WPtouch
The world now has an astounding 6 billion mobile phone users. So many of these users are using their sophisticated smartphones to browse the web. This is why it is so important that your blog is optimized for smartphone users. The WPtouch plugin will help you accomplish this. This plugin will help transform your website into a sleek, stylish and user-friendly destination for mobile users. The best part about this plugin is that it will not modify any bit of coding or alter your regular desktop theme and appearance.
Social Media Widget
The Social Media Widget is a simple, yet stylish, sidebar widget that displays your different social media profiles, which may include Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Pinterest, for example. This is a highly customizable widget that you can use to even create your own icons.
Social Metrics
As a blogger, you will absolutely want to understand how well your posts perform on the various social networking sites that you should be using for promotional purposes. Social Metrics is a highly regarded analytics tool you can use to track and monitor your WordPress blog performance on popular social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg and LinkedIn. As you observe and understand which networking site seems to deliver the best results for you, you can adjust and tweak your promotional strategies.
FontPress
FontPress is a must-have WordPress plugin that will allow you to incorporate customized fonts within your website. This plugin boasts an impressive variety of font styles that you can preview before using. You can play around with different font sizes, colors and shadows with FontPress. The best part about this plugin is that you get to avoid having to deal with any coding when customizing your fonts.
All in One SEO Pack
SEO is so incredibly important to the success of your blog, as it is a tool that must be implemented to improve the ranking of your site on major search engines, including Google, Yahoo and Bing. The All in One SEO Pack plugin automatically generates Meta tags, optimizes your post titles for search engines and helps you detect and avoid using duplicate content. If you have limited experience with SEO, this plugin will help you with the basics.
WordPress is an incredibly user-friendly blog publishing tool that hundreds of thousands of websites use today. You can create a sleek, stylish and elegant website in minutes with WordPress. Be sure to utilize these 5 plugins that will really help optimize your blog.
Michael Scott is an online instructor and coordinator for College City. Michael also manages several niche blogs through WordPress and uses these plugins and more to optimize his content.