19 Top WordPress plugins for bloggers must have in 2020.

Hi, I am Praneeth.

In this blog, you will learn 19 best and top wordpress plugins for bloggers.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Here is a 30000-foot view of the blog.

What are wordpress plugins?

A wordpress plugin is a piece of code which gets attached to your self hosted wordpress website.

Every new plugin is a different set of code which helps in adding new features and functionality to the wordpress website.

With that said,

Here are 19 top wordpress plugins for bloggers you should try in 2020 and beyond in your wordpress website.

19 Top WordPress plugins for bloggers.

Here is the list of the 19 top wordpress plugins for bloggers

Updraft plus.
Akismet anti-spam protection.
Optimonster.
Smush.
Classic editor.
Rank math.
Easy table of contents.
Elementor.
Sassy social share.
Contact form 7.
Memberpress.
Asset cleanUp.
Woo-commerce.
Wordfence.
Editorial calendar.
Wp rocket.
Simple author box.
PushEngage.
Thirsty affiliate links.

Let’s learn about each plugin and its top features in detail.

1. Updraft plus.

Prevention is always better than cure.

Though your hosting company will take the backup of your website and content every day if you are using some of the best hosting companies like Bluehost.

But,

It is always advised to keep a backup with you all the time,

You never know what might happen to your website like,

Your web server might get crash.
Your website might get hacked.
Some of your themes or plugins might get crash which can hurt your content.
You might delete your content or some blogposts.
Or your website data is affected due to the latest wordpress version upgrade.

There are many possibilities where you can screw up your website.

So it is always recommended to have your backup ready.

Talking about backup,

Updraft is the best one,

The updraft plus backup plugin is the most complete and highly trusted backup plugin for wordpress users.

It has more than 3 million installations and you can see the ratings in the screenshot above.

Here is the list of some top features which you have with updraft over other famous backup plugins in the wordpress directory.

Automatic backups.
It takes fewer server resources and a lightweight plugin.
Always updated with the highest positive ratings and reviews with millions of downloads.
Store your backup to google cloud, drive, dropbox, one drive, Microsoft azure.
The direct site to site backup and cloning.

All of them for FREE.

Click here to check the detailed comparison of the updraft plugin with other backup plugins in wordpress.

2. Akismet.

Akismet spam protection.

This is another plugin you need for your wordpress website.

You see, as a blogger you want people to react to your post by leaving a comment.

There are a few problems here with comments on the website.

People might use it for building backlinks for their website.

People might do spam on your website which is going to hurt the user experience of other users.

To combat this problem,

You have this, Plugin.

It is almost impossible to manually find and delete spam comments by yourself all the time in all of your blog posts.

This plugin helps you in removing all the spam comments by itself before it goes for moderation and you give your approval for the comment to be published on your website.

This plugin identifies spam comments from the global spam database, finds the spam, and removes the spam from your website automatically.

This plugin is the best and must-have solution for bloggers who want to save their time and effort in manually finding and removing spam comments and focus on better things.

This plugin has a paid plan which is only recommended if you have a commercial site where you get hundreds and thousands of traffic and comments and you need higher support and stats of your website other than spam protection.

Watch this video to learn how to install the plugin on your wordpress blog.

3. Optimonster.

Optimonster is the best email subscription popup plugin.

There is nothing much to talk about this plugin as,

This plugin is used by thousands of big brands and millions of websites across the internet.

Email marketing and list building are the most important types of marketing as it is highly targeted and it’s ROI is way better.

As a matter of fact, for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can expect 42 dollars in return which is 42x times more ROI.

Here is a quick overview of the features of this plugin tool.

Many different opt-in forms popups and boxes.
It is all drag and drops editing and customization of the forms like Elementor.
Built-in A/B testing.
Multiple form types other than popups like floating bars, fullscreen overlays, slide-ins, etc.
Both enter and exit popups functionality.
Page-level forms restricted to specific pages.
Advanced traffic redirection to important pages of the website like landing pages in a click of a button.
Highly responsive and customized mobile popups.
Better built-in analytics just like google analytics.
Easy integration with other email service providers like Mailchimp.

But it is a premium plugin, check out the prices here.

4. Smush.

This is another big and most important plugin of all in this list.

This plugin helps you by automatically compressing the images you upload to your wordpress library.

This is how compression looks like when you upload images,

When you have large image sizes it is going to seriously affect the site loading speed.

And loading speed is one of the biggest ranking factors in google because it is a huge factor in user experience.

No user wants to visit a website that loads in 10 seconds, no one has that much time and patience to wait for that long.

Because loading speed is going to affect user experience so it is going to affect your rankings in google.

This plugin helps you in both compressing images and lazy load images which means the content of the website will load faster than the images and other multimedia will load only when the user interacts with them.

5. Classic editor.

This is another big plugin you should install and active on your wordpress website.

This plugin helps you with a better editor for writing posts with all the settings in one place.

If you don’t feel comfortable working on the Gutenberg block editor of wordpress then you can get this plugin which is the old-school plugin that works best for people who write more.

You can edit to all pieces of content at a time instead of a single block at a time which can be frustrating.

6. Rankmath.

This is another big plugin you should use as a blogger on your wordpress website.

This SEO plugin is much better and advanced than many other SEO plugins like Yoast.

This plugin works on a number system out of 100, where even if you get above 80 you are fine with the SEO of your blog post.

This plugin will not just take care of the Onpage SEO of your blog posts.

Some important features of the rank math plugin worth mentioning.

Track broken links on your website.
Do an instant SEO audit on your website.
Can easily redirect URLs into 301,302,410,307,451 and different other
Improved and better-structured data markup.
Target 5 keywords as a focus keyword in the blog posts.
WordPress breadcrumbs for better site navigation.
Automatic image optimizer by adding alt text to images automatically.
Integrate with google search console and analytics.
Check keyword rankings and other SEO metrics without investing in an SEO tool.
Almost all of these features are free of cost.

Learn about the complete review of the plugin here and how to activate the plugin.

7. Easy table of contents.

This plugin helps you add a table of contents button on top of every blog post.

It looks like this,

You can see this thing in each and every blog post.

This plugin helps in improving the user experience on the website or blog.

This helps users to skim the content better.

And if in case, if you write a long-form of content like a 2000 words blog post and you include lots of subheaders, then readers and users can quickly read that part of the blog instead of reading the entire blog.

This plugin really helps in improving the user experience on the website.

8. Elementor.

This is another important plugin you should consider having on your wordpress website.

This is the website builder plugin.

With this plugin, you can build and customize your website homepage and different pages of your website using just the drag and drop feature.

Here is a quick list of the features of this plugin.

1. You can create your favorite website the way you want it to look like with 90 different elements in drag and drop feature.
2. All the pages are SEO friendly and mobile responsive.
3. There are 150 free and 300 plus pro templates you can use for pages to design for your website.
4. You can design amazing entry and exit popups with this website builder for your email campaign.
5. And the best part is it can integrate with any theme without your need for any coding knowledge.

Click here to see the complete review of the plugin.

9. Sassy social share.

This is another great social sharing plugin.

This plugin helps you enable social share buttons on your wordpress website.

There are many awesome features with this plugin.

Some of the best features are,

There are unlimited social media platforms you can add for sharing.
You can choose whether the share button to be square or circular.
The buttons are attractive and responsive.

This I feel to be one of the best wordpress sharing button plugins.

10. Contact form 7.

This is another plugin you need on your wordpress website.

As the name sounds the plugin is all about contact forms.

And one of the most important pages every website needs to have is the contact form along with about and privacy policy or disclaimer.

With this plugin, you just copy and paste a simple code on a new page in wordpress and publish it and there you have the contact form published on the website.

Here is a quick overview of some of the features of this plugin.

This plugin helps you manage multiple contact forms.
You can easily customize the contact form with simple codes.
The plugin also supports the Akismet plugin to remove spam forms.
And it is totally a free plugin.

11. Memberpress.

This is a complete membership plugin.

If you ever thought of creating a membership website and give access to your content and resources to your audience for some charge,

This is the plugin you should go after.

There are many awesome features of this plugin including some of the features like,

Easy to setup.
Gives you complete control of the website creating your own custom rules and access to your members of the website.
Easily build and sell courses and digital products.
You can build a premium community protected with a password.
Works with any theme.

Click here to see all the features of this amazing membership plugin.

If you are thinking of starting your own membership website then 130 dollars investment to this plugin is not a big deal.

12. Asset cleanup.

This plugin helps boost website loading speed.

What this plugin does is that,

This plugin scans and detects all the assets that are loaded on the web page.

In simple terms, this plugin helps in scanning and detecting all the assets and plugins that are loading on the webpage and help you do the job of removing unnecessary assets from loading on the webpage to decrease loading speed.

All you need to do is to check the not to load button so that the particular asset will not load on the page where it is not required.

For example, you have a contact form 7 plugin and the CSS files of that plugin are actually loading on every page of your website including the contact form page of your website.

You can use this plugin not to load that files on other pages where it is not necessary.

Here are the quick benefits of unloading assets from your web pages.

HTTP requests are reduced which is one of the major factors in the loading speed of the website because higher HTTP requests mean larger server response time and server resources.
Reduced and minified CSS and java files.
The HTML code of your website is reduced.
And it is a free plugin.

All of these factors together contribute to the faster loading speed of the website.

13. Woo-commerce.

I think you are familiar with this plugin.

This is an eCommerce plugin where you can sell anything and everything you want to sell on your blog creating an online store.

Selling digital and physical products is another good monetization strategy which you have complete control of, learn more monetization strategies here.

Here is a quick overview of the features of this plugin.

Built on wordpress which is the largest cms.
You can sell anything and everything in no limits.
Complete customization of the online store.
A large worldwide community.
Countless themes.
Show product ratings and reviews as feedback for more sales of products.
Unlimited types and forms of products.
Easy order and refund management.
Helps customers to create a separate account.
All things can be managed like a piece of cake from the dashboard.

Click here to see more of the features of this plugin and pricing.

14. Wordfence.

Wordfence is a wordpress security plugin.

There are both free and paid plans for this plugin.

It has an amazing firewall protection system for the website which can help you save your website from any sort of hack and attack on your website.

Here are some quick features of this plugin.

Monitors traffic and blocks traffic that might cause harm.
2-factor authentication.
Login security and limit login attempts.
Attack notifications to your email.
Advanced manual blocking of networks and IP addresses which might cause any harm considering the patterns.

It is the best security plugin for wordpress websites.

15. Editorial calendar.

This is another productivity plugin you should consider using on your wordpress website.

This plugin helps you manage and schedule the publishing time of your blog posts.

Some of the top features of this plugin are,

View posts that are scheduled to be published so that you can create content on large scale and leave it there to be published on regular intervals.
Tools to manage multiple authors.
Drag and drop feature.

Anyhow this is another good plugin you should consider using to keep track of your blog posts and publish awesome content at regular intervals of time.

16. Wp rocket.

This is a wordpress caching and performance booster plugin which can help your website load faster.

Here are a few important features of this plugin,

Quick setup.
CDN support.
DNS prefetching.
Multisite compatibility.
Minify CSS and java files.
Lazy load elements.
Page caching and browser level caching.
Image optimizer.
Proxy caching.

In order to get access to this plugin, you need to pay 49 dollars a year subscription plan.

Click here to see all the features of this amazing performance booster plugin.

17. Simple author box.

You know this is an important plugin you should be using on your wordpress website.

This is the author box plugin that lets people know who has written the content and the man behind the blog.

Google not just wants to show the highly relevant answer in the search results but also wants the information present in the blog to be trustworthy.

If you are blogging on sensitive topics like health and money then the author’s reputation matters a lot.

Learn more about how you can establish the author’s reputation and google’s guidelines here.

With this plugin, people can trust the information present in the blog as the real human being has written the blog, not a bot or a robot.

If you as the author have expertise and credentials to prove it then you can connect the author box with your social media handles where people can see your expertise on the topic to trust your information way better.

You should be using this tool as this tool helps increase google to trust the information in the blog and build that human to human connection with your audience.

So it is a must-use plugin for bloggers and mainly for those whose blog is managed by many people having different author boxes for each author.

18. Push engage.

This is a web push notification plugin.

You see whenever you visit a website, you get a notification option where you get a choice of yes or no.

This is a push notification platform both for desktop and mobile.

Here are some quick features of this plugin.

Notifications to the target audience.
Customized notification to increase ctr.
Multiple users and websites support giving different roles.
Multiple browser support.
Multiple languages and emoji support.
It works fine with both mobile and desktop browsers.
Price drop alert which sends notifications of the drop in the price of your product.
Trigger notification which depends on the action users takes like growing download etc.
A/B testing enabled you to figure out which one works best for your blog.
Inventory alert to send notification whether the products are there or out of stock.
Dynamic segmentation divides audiences based on your different parameters.
Excellent transparency and analytics of data.
Opt-in reminder to increase the chance of getting visitors into subscribers.

There are many awesome features of this plugin,

Ultimately this plugin helps you drive more traffic to your blog.

Click here to see the features and pricing of this plugin.

19. Thirsty affiliate links.

This is a plugin that is a must-have for bloggers whose primary monetization strategy is affiliate marketing.

Of course, there are many other ways to monetize a website or blog other than affiliate marketing.

But,

For those who use affiliate marketing,

This plugin helps shorten the affiliate link and make it look better.

Here is how the affiliate link looks like.

yourdomainname.com/rel=6845ergsrbjuhaeg546515aff684151ragernb

Here is how the thirsty affiliate link after shortened looks like

yourdomainname.com/recommends/product name.

Here is a quick overview of the features of this plugin.

This plugin helps shorten the affiliate link making it more brandable, memorable,
It boosts ctr because it looks way better.
Add images to affiliate links to increase CTR.
Group different affiliate links to different categories.
It protects from getting your commission hijacked

Learn more about the plugin here.

With that said let’s conclude the blog.

Ending remarks.

There you go, here are the best and top 19 wordpress plugins for bloggers must have in 2020 and beyond.

Do comment on what you think about this blog,

Share the blog with your friends and family members who want to start their blog online.

You know sharing is caring.

Read my other blogs,

I will catch you next time, till then,

Keep learning and keep growing.