WordPress is awesome because of the thousands of plugins that you can download and install on your WordPress site. The bad news is that you have to sort through a lot of junk plugins to find the real diamonds. This is my short list of 5 must-have plugins that I use on all my blogs after a lot of trial and error. Trust me, these have all been used by me and they all do exactly what they say they do and the best thing of all is that they are free!

1. Akismet. Uggh, we hate SPAM!  No one needs spammy comments on their blog and this is absolutely the best plugin to use to get rid of it.  Best thing is that it is free and is usually already installed by default with WordPress.  You will need an Akismet key to activate, but those are free as well.  This is the first plugin I install on a new blog if it doesn’t come pre-installed.  Just use it!

2. WordPress SEO by YOAST – This plugin is easy to use and and allows you to set your title and description tags which are so important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  It also provides the ability to analyze your post for your focus keyword and provides suggestions on how to better optimize your content.  Best of all, it is Free!  I have paid plugins for this type of work, but I usually fall back on this because it is just better.

3. Wordfence Security – Like it or not, there are bad people on the internet who just love taking down WordPress sites.  Due to the popularity of WordPress it is a huge target.  This plugin is one of the best I have used for securing your WordPress blog. It even has a Google XML sitemap built in so no separate plugin is required for this feature.  The plugin is very easy to use and of course it is free!

4. SEO Friendly Images – Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images.

5. Ad Injection – I have used numerous plugins to put Adsense and other banner ads on my websites.  One of them in particular was a premium (not free) plugin but tended to crash my site.  Then I found Ad Injection which I have fallen in love with. It is free (Yeah!) but does everything that paid plugins do.  I’ll admit that the admin interface isn’t the friendliest, but if you want to fine-tune your adsense or banner ad placements, then you should try Ad Injection!