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Being an owner of WordPress self hosted blog, you may know well about the importance of taking regular backups to maximizes the security of your WordPress blog and to have an extra copy of your blog in case if something goes wrong. Have a backup copy gives you sense of security and peace of mind as you know that you can easily recover you blog to its previous glory after an incident.

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Read: Best Security plugins 2015

In this article, we are not going to discuss about what the backup are and what they do as they are and their functions are self explanatory but we here we are going to explore and review some of the best WordPress Backup plugins to make backup of your site and save your work.

Hundreds of free and paid backup plugins are there in WordPress plugin directory out of which we choose 0 5 best and reliable WordPress backup plugins each with its unique feature and pros & cons. Pick one of these Backup plugins and take backup of your WordPress site now.

01. VaultPress

If you are really serious about your blog security and ready to pay for the best Back-up plugin, VaultPress is the option. This plugin is come with all the features that are required for the backup of WordPress blog. All these option are of premium nature and easy to control through an elegant simple Dashboard.

The installation of VaultPress is just a matter of few clicks and once install, the plugin not only backup your WordPress blog’s files but also scan the files for any malicious code to give your site extra protection. VaultPress allows you to store the copy of your blog on cloud storage. You can set it to perform the backup of your blog and store it on the cloud storage each day

Now, for the credibility of this plugin, it is better to know that the plugin is developed by the founder of WordPress platform, Matt Mullenweg along with his team at Automattic.

Regarding the price, it is not just merely the plugin but it’s rather WordPress Backup service which is subscription based and you can start with VaultPress at the cost of $5 / month.

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02. BackWPup

If you can’t afford the above mention Backup plugin, here is the best alternative, the BackWPup want to pay. BackWPup is the free plugin with the premium like features allows you to Backup your WordPress blog and store a copy at cloud storage, Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP or on your computer.

Well for most of the bloggers and small online business, the basic features of this plugin are enough to take the backups. You can schedule the plugin to take regular backups automatically depending upon the update frequency of your blog.

From installation to use, the plugin has a pretty simple user interface make it perfect choice for novice bloggers. Restoring the Backup copy of your blog is also simple and just a matter of clicks.

The above stated features are free but there is a paid upgraded version of the plugin available with lots of more tools to take extra care of your blog.

03. BackupBuddy

Developed by iTheme, a big name in WordPress security solution, BackupBuddy is the premium plugin of the choice for those who don’t want to pay regularly i.e. monthly base subscription.

Similar to the above stated WordPress backup plugins, BackupBuddy has the same features to take regular backups of your blog on daily, weekly or monthly basis and to store the backup files at cloud storage. It has too, very simple user interface allows both the novice and pro blogger to operate and maintain the backups.

So what’s different in this plugin? Why should you go for it? The feature which is unique to BackupBuddy plugin and love by most of the bloggers is it allows you to move your WordPress blog from your current hosting to the new one with no downtime meanwhile. The pages will be served by the backup copy of your blog. Moreover the plugin offers 1 GB free cloud storage to store copy of your backup file there.

BackupBuddy is a popular plugin come with real-time support and has discussion forum where the users of this plugin share their opinion, reviews and to help out each other

04. WordPress Backup To Dropbox

WordPress Backup to Dropbox, as the name suggests, is a free plugin that allows the bloggers to create backup of their WordPress blog and store it on the online cloud storage system Dropbox. You may know well about the Dropbox and probably have an account on this free leading and secure cloud storage service. The plugin being discussing here able the bloggers to take backup of the whole WordPress files including the database and store them online on the Dropbox. There is no any limit for how much time your files will be store there.

The plugins let you to take backups manually or schedule the backup process to take automatic backups of WordPress files on timely basis. The plugin gives you choice to create backup of specific files or directories and leave the other which you don’t want to be the part of the backup.

Regarding the price, WordPress Backup to Dropbox has comes in both free version and the paid one. Download the plugin from here and start using this plugin for free and decide later to have the premium version of this plugin.

05. Duplicator

Officially this plugin is not for the backup of your WordPress blog but creating backup is one if its feature. Duplicator is actually site migrating plugin used to shift the WordPress blog from current domain or hosting to another one, creating backup of WordPress blog is a bonus.

This 2 in 1 plugin is although not an ideal plugin to takes backup as it has many flaws like it would not let you take automatic backup schedule at specific time and is not easy to understand but still a good option to have this plugin for backup.

Conclusion

As you know the importance of taking backups of your WordPress blog, you may not ignore this part of your site security. The above discussed plugins, whether free or paid are best tools to save your time and work. Now what you have to do is to install one of them which best suits your requirement from the provided link and take initial backup of your site now or schedule them for later.

Well all of these plugins are on our experience and preferences, if you are using one with more features, please share it with us in comments, or let your fiends known about these backup plugins by sharing it with them.

Thousands of WordPress sites got hacked daily as they are constantly attacked by hackers. Larger firms and corporate companies pay a large amount of money for their site security audit but what should the average blogger do to make his/her WordPress blog secure? Don’t worry; in our previous post, we have discussed 10 easy tips make your WordPress blog Secure, but some steps were difficult enough to perform by an average WordPress blogger or novice user. Here we’ve come up with some best WordPress security plugins to take care of your blog security with ease.

These handy WordPress plugins offers an array of features to make your blog secure against any malicious activity, malware and threats. If you’re serious about your WordPress blog security, you’re at right place.

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01. WordFence Security Plugin

In the list of Top 5 security plugins for WordPress, WordFence is on the top of our list because of its ultimate features which not only make your WordPress blog secure but also make it fast up to 50 time (as claim by the developers of this plugin) by using Falcon Caching engine.

WordFence make your site secure by doing a deep scan of your blog’s source code of all the files, plugins & themes and match it with the WordPress Official code for themes, core and plugins to know if there is any malicious code there. In case if the plugin found any malicious code or malware in the source code or in the server, it will notify the webmaster immediately you via email notification.

The plugin also let you to set 2-factor authentication through SMS. This prevents your blog from Bruteforce attack. Both free and paid premium version of the plugin are available.

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Some handy features of this plugin include:

1. Improved Login security using 2-Factor Authentication
2. Let you block traffic from specific IP, Region or Country
3. Let you block fake traffic and bots with its firewall
4. Scan the hosting server as well for any malware
5. Instant Email Notification in case of any Threat.
6. Make your Site faster using Falcon Caching System.
7. Scan and repair any damaged file
8. Multi-site support let you monitor and manage multiple sites from on Dashboard.
   Download WordFence Security Plugin

02. Sucuri Security Plugin

Developed by Sucuri Inc, a trusted name in web security, Sucuri Security is the plugin of choice for WordPress used by many bloggers not only to make their blog safe and secure but to track all the activities either safe or malicious by users or visitors. The plugin keep the record of logins and changes to your blog so you can easily identified that what happened in case if something go wrong.

When installed, this plugin is actively scans and protect websites from malicious attacks like bruteforce attacks, DOS attacks, Zero Day Disclosures attacks and many more. In addition to this, the plugin also keep a record of all the activities on your site in a log file stored in Sucuri cloud. The plugin scan your site against various blacklist incorporated from Sucuri Labs, Google Safe Browsing, McAfee Site Advisor and Norton.

Other useful features of Sucuri Security plugin include

1. Track users / visitors activities and keep them in a log at Secure Cloud
2. Scan Core WordPress files for integrity and abnormalities.
3. Website firewall
4. Malware scanning
5. Blacklist monitoring
6. Security activity auditing
7. Instant Email notification

Note: Not all of the features listed above are free; some availed only on premium version. Download Sucuri Security Plugin

03. iThemes Security Plugin

Formerly known as Better WP Security, iTheme is the most robust WordPress security plugins that make your site safe by protecting it from 30+ different angles. The plugin has many small but unique features to keep your site secure such as hiding the username that the hackers can use in bruteforce attack, hiding login page, 2-step authentication, password expiration and Google reCAPTCHA, all to keep your blog safe and secure from hackers and spammers. Both free and premium versions of this plugin are available; here are some robust features of iTheme WordPress Security plugin:

1. Easy user interface make it easy to use for Novice bloggers
2. Two-Factor Authentication Using Authy or Google Authenticator
3. Monitor and record the activity of users to track the changes in WordPress files
4. Import / Exports Security Setting to save time if you’re using iTheme on multiple WordPress blog
5. Helps you generate strong Password and to set expiration for existing password
6. Uses Google reCAPTCHA to protect your site from spam comments
7. Hide the login and admin pages
8. Remove user or any other information that hackers can use in bruteforce attack
9. Scan your site for any malware and vulnerabilities
10. Helps you to take regular backups of your database
11. Prevents Brutforce attacks and ban the IP which try brutforce attack on your blog
    Download iTheme Security Plugin

04. All In One WP Security & Firewall Plugin

As the Name suggests, All in One WP Security & Firewall is not only the plugin but a firewall to protect your site from malicious activities and malwares. All in One WP Security Plugin and Firewall has many unique features to check and inform you for any actual or potential vulnerability in your WordPress blog security.

Most of the features of All in One WP Security and Firewall are same as offered by iTheme WP Security but the feature which I most like about All in One WP Security & Firewall plugin is the its site security score meter that is added to the WordPress dashboard. The meter gives a score to your blog based on how secure your site is, so you can take some measurable action to further improve your blog security.

Some unique features of All In One WP Security & Firewall includes:

1. Add Security score meter to your dashboard.
2. Protect against bruteforce attacks
3. Lockdown IPs which tries bruteforce attacks
4. Instant email notification in case of brutforce attacks
5. Forces Strong password generation
6. Allows schedule automatic backup of your database.
7. Adds a firewall to prevent various attacks and security threats like SQL injection, Malicious bots attacks, Bad query strings, prevent CSRF, XSS and many other security threats.
   Download All in One WP Security & Firewall Plugin

05. BulletProof Security Plugin

Last but not least, BulletProof WordPress Security plugin has many unique security features that many plugins lack. When installed, this plugins adds Login Security, Database security and a Firewall along with other security layers. With a simple user interface, your WordPress security is a matter of few clicks. The plugin will take care of your blog security and you just relax.

BulletProof Security Plugin limits the failed login attempts in case of Brutforce attacks and ban security scanners, fake traffic and bots, Block IPs and many more. Other then the pro security measures, the plugin also optimize the WordPress blog performance and speed by adding cache.

Some highlighted features of BulletProof WordPress Security plugin are following:

1. .htaccess Protection
2. Built-in file manager for .htaccess file
3. Login Monitoring and Security
4. Database backups: Full or partial, scheduled or manual
5. Delete old backups to save your disk storage
6. Database Table prefix changer to hide and secure it from hackers
7. Optimizes site performance by adding caching
8. Come with 3 Theme Skins to look better

Well these all are the features available with free version of BulletProof Security plugins, many pro features are available on paid premium version. Download BulletProof Security Plugin

Some other important security measures

To have better WordPress blog security, also follow and apply these security measures:

1. Use a Secure Hosting
2. Keep all the things updates including WordPress Version, Plugins and Themes
3. Choose a Strong Password
4. Never use admin as username and hide the user Names from public
5. Enable 2-Step Authentication
6. Limit login attempts to prevent brutforce attacks
7. Don’t ever use any pirated themes or plugins
8. Take frequents backups of your files and database.

Read here the full article on 10 Easy Tips To Boost WordPress Security

WordPress.org is indeed the best CMS and the most popular blogging platform that every blogger loves but the thing which I really hate about WordPress is the security issue and its vulnerability to being hacked easily. WordPress is vulnerable because it is an open source CMS where the source code is open to all so the hackers can easily find security holes in it and use it to breach the security of WordPress blog.

On an average more than 60,000 WordPress sites hacked daily which is almost two third of all websites hacked in one day. Well this is a serious issue which most of WordPress bloggers don’t really care about, and if you too, don’t take the security of your WordPress blog security seriously, you may be the victim one day.[AdSense-A]

But don’t be panic, having little efforts will make your site and important data safe. Here are 10 practical tips to secure your WordPress site.

01. Secure Hosting

Almost 41% of all the WordPress blogs got hacked because of vulnerable hosting they have used. It’s a huge percentage so the hosting must considered first in order to make your WordPress site secure.

From the day first, opt for a secure web hosting service for your WordPress blog rather than going for cheap hosting. Remember, your WordPress blog is as secured as your hosting therefore look for the hosting services that keep security on priority. Do some background search and read the reviews regarding the hosting company you are about to host your site on. They may cost you bit more but make it sure that your WordPress blog is on secure place in safe hands. A secure hosting is one with following features

• Web Application Firewall
• Support for latest PHP & MySQL versions
• Account isolation
• Intrusion detecting feature

02. Updates WordPress Version, Plugins and Themes

Don’t ignore “Please Update Now” message showing on your dashboard or your WordPress site will be open to hacker’s attacks. Every updated version of WordPress comes with fixes and patches for the possible or potential vulnerabilities along with other features. If you are using the older WordPress version, hackers who knew the security issues of may target you blog.

The same is true regarding WordPress plugins and themes. So every time you got a message to update a plugin or theme, don’t ignore it.

03. Choose Strong Password

Weak password is another most common risk factor accountable for 8% of total WordPress hacks. Needless to say, a password like “america”, losangeles” “qwertyu”, “asdfg12345” is easy to guess and can be easily broken with online password breaking tools that apply thousands of password or word combination in a second.

Here are few tips to make strong password

1. Use mixture of alphabetical and numeric characters.
2. Use both upper- and lowercase alphabets as the password is case sensitive.
3. Use different symbols in password like $%*&! (don’t sue spaces)

Read here Google suggestions regarding strong password Or alternatively use password manager application like LastPass or KeePass (free) which will generate and remember strong password for you.
See the strength of your existing password here at GRC

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04. Never use admin as username

Along with a strong password a strong username is also crucial. By default WordPress site has “admin” as username for administrator which is easy to guess and hacker attempt repeated logins using “admin” as username with list of common passwords. If you too, use admin as username, your blog is at risk of malicious attacks. Change it to an uncommon user name.
Note: After the WordPress 3.0 update, users are now allow to choose own name instead of admin.

05. Hide user Names

Well you may change the username from “admin” to another name but hacker can still gain access to your username via author archive page on your blog. So you must hide it from the hackers by configuring the user’s table in Database.

To hide the username form hackers, you need to change it in wp_users table. For this you have to access your database using phpMyAdmin. Look for wp_users here you’ll see a column user_nicename with list of users. Click on the username and change it to something other then the real username. For example if the username is johnsnow, change it to something like jhowsn.
Read the article regarding hiding your username here

06. 2-Step Authentication

You may have had enable Two Factor authentication feature on your Gmail ID where after login, a code is sent to the given phone number which let you access your Gmail account from a different PC or device.

If you apply the same 2-Step Authentication to your WordPress blog, there will be significantly improvement in your blog security. However 2-step authentication is not an inbuilt feature of WordPress, you have to use third-party plugins to enable this feature on your WordPress blog. One of the best ways to enable 2-factor authentication is to use Clef Two-Factor Authentication while the other plugin is Authy. All you need is to install one of these plugins, register on their respected sites, proved the phone number and you’ve done.

07. Limit login attempts

Sometime hackers or bots try to crack WordPress blog password by brute-force attack via online or offline tools by applying combination of thousands of usernames and passwords. Although they might not always successful in cracking your password but still if they do it, you may lost your blog and data. To avoid such attacks, a good solution is to limit the number of login attempts from the same IP. Again, this feature is not available in WordPress by default but plugins will do it for you. A list of plugins available in WordPress plugins directory that allow you to specify the number of failed login attempts from an IP. Just try one of the following plugins

• Limit Login Attempts
• Login LockDown
• Login Security Solution
• Login Security
• Stealth Login Page

08. Don’t Use pirated themes and plugins

Pirated Premium WordPress themes and plugins are easily available at file sharing or torrents sites but don’t ever use such pirated WordPress themes or plugins. These themes may have malicious code or script hidden in them which upon installation to your WordPress theme or plugins directory may render severe harm to your WordPress blog.

Even be conscious to use free themes offered by an unknown source or developer. It is better to pay some $$ to buy premium WordPress theme rather then to lost your data forever. Or if you want to use free themes, use one from the trusted companies or those available on WordPress official theme repository. Similarly use only plugins that are listed in WordPress.org plugins directory as they are test and evaluated for any malicious code

09. Use A Security plugin

After all these tips, you can still make your WordPress blog security tight by adding an extra layer of protection using a security plugin. Just explore the WordPress plugins directory for some handy security plugins. These plugins will add an extra layer of security to your blog, protect your blog from malware and will regularly scan your blog for any malicious code or unusual activity. Both free and premium security plugins available there, choose the one which is most trusted and rate by other WordPress users and has the features that best suit your requirements.

Some of the handy Security plugins available at WordPress plugins directory are:

1. All in One WP Security and Firewall
2. BulletProof Security
3. Better WP Security
4. Exploit Scanner
5. Wordfence

10. Take frequents backups

Take a backup of your WordPress blog before it’s too late. Even after all the safety measure you apply to improve your WordPress blog security, there is no assurance that your site is 100% safe, so you need to be prepared for the worst happen.

Being a WordPress blogger, it’s crucial to take regular backups of your blog so in case if something wrong happen with your blog or if your WordPress blog is being hacked, you can easily restore all the data and can re-establish your site to its previous glory.

If you are a novice blogger and don’t know much about the backup process of your site data, don’t worry, there are some handy plugins that might help you in this regards. Some of these plugins includes

• WordPress Backup to Dropbox
• Backup WordPress
• BackupBuddy plugin
• WP DB Backup

Some hosting services provide backup feature to take backup of website or blog on routine basis. Checkout your site’s cPanel to see if this features is provided to you by your hosting provider.

Perhaps, social media sharing is the 2^nd important thing to got popular and drive more traffic to blog after Search engines. To do so, bloggers need to integrate the social media sharing and social bookmarking buttons to their blog pages and post which let the readers simply and quickly share the post or contents on social media or social bookmarking sites. This helps the bloggers to drive more traffic and get better search ranking too.[AdSense-A]

Well there are thousands of plugins available in WordPress plugins directory and probably you may be using one of them (if you are a serious blogger), but they may cause extra load on your site speed or may not enough to have all popular social media sharing icons or buttons. If it’s true for your existing plugin, here we have compiled a list of top 5 essential WordPress Social Media Sharing plugins for you to have most of the popular social sharing integration, view the analytics of sharing and dominate the social media in 2015.

Quick Overview of Social Media Plugins

Our list of best social media sharing plugins contains:

1. JetPack
2. Digg Digg
3. AddToAny
4. DC Simple Sharing Buttons
5. AddThis

01. JetPack Sharing

If you haven’t installed Jetpack WordPress plugin, install it now and you will fall in Love with this plugin. Developed by Automatti, Jetpack is the most popular and most downloaded WordPress plugin which adds many superb features to your self-hosted WordPress blog, one of which is the Social Media sharing buttons. Jetpack allow let you to add social media buttons to your blog post allow the visitors to share the post or content on popular social media networks including Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Digg and many others. All you need is to install JetPack plugin and activate the sharing module to add simple sharing buttons to your blog.

Install JetPack from WordPress plugins directory here Jetpack plugin

02. Digg Digg

Digg Digg is another Social media sharing plugin developed by Buffer used by popular websites like Mashabel.com. Digg Digg Social sharing plugin supports all popular social media networks along with Email and Print buttons. With Digg Digg, you can add social media sharing buttons either to the top or bottom of the post or can add left or right floating sharing bar to the post with social share counter. The plugin has many unique features one of which is the Lazy Loading which is best for site speed and performance by delaying the load of social media buttons.

So if you want social sharing along with performance, download and install Digg Digg Social sharing plugin here.

03. AddToany Social Sharing Plugins

With more than 3 million downloads and 4 out of 5 rating, AddToany is perhaps a best sharing plugin for WordPress to allow your visitors share your content on popular social media sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn, Pinterest and over 100 more social media and social bookmarking sites. Along with sharing buttons for popular social media sites, AddToAny add a universal sharing and email buttons to the sharing bar.

You can add the sharing bar to the top or bottom of the post or align it as vertical or horizontal floating sharing bar. This plugin is highly customizable and you can change the sharing icon or color of the buttons to meet your need and theme style. AddToAny load asynchronously their script so do not slow the page loading.

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One of the unique features in AddToAny social sharing plugin is that it can be integrated with Google Analytics so you can view the stats of sharing from your Google analytic dashboard. Click to go to AddToAny Official page on WordPress and Install the plugin.

04. DC Simple Share Buttons

If you are tiered of extra load made by sharing plugins, DC simple share plugin is the solution. DC simple share plugin, as the name indicates, is a simple and light-weight social sharing plugin which do not load external recourses or JavaScript files to show sharing buttons but it’s rather a code written in HTML, CSS and PHP which do not cause delay in page loading. Since page loading time or site speed is one of the key factors in page ranking so you may like this plugin due to its light-weight.

DC simple Share plugin allow visitors to share content on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and LinkedIn. This plugin can automatically add social sharing buttons to your blog pages and post or you can put them manually where you want by simply putting php tag in the template.

The limitations in this plugin are that it do not show the number of share made and that you can only put the sharing buttons on the bottom of page. So if the share count and placement of sharing buttons is not a big issue for you, DC simple share plugin is the best choice among all other social sharing plugins. Download and install DC simple Sharing plugin from WordPress Plugin directory here.

05. AddThis Sharing Plugins

Developed by AddThis Team, AddThis social plugin support over 330 social media and social bookmarking sites which makes this plugin the largest sharing tool among all others. AddThis plugin provides a clean and simple sharing buttons for popular social networking sites as well as Email and following buttons.

Not only sharing of content but, AddThis plugin keeps your visitors engages by recommending them the trending content of your blog and provide real time social analytics to webmaster to track how content being shared on social media netwoeks.

Another unique feature of AddThis social sharing plugin is that you can shorten the URL of the post or page (with Bit.ly or awe.sm) before sharing it on Social Media.

Over To You

If you have ever been tried one of them, what was your experience or if you recommend any other social media sharing plugin to our audience let us know in comments. If you like these plugins share it with your friends.

You Might also like

• 5 Best WordPress SEO Plugins to Improve Your Site SEO in 2015
• List of 10 Essential Handy Plugins To Manage WordPress Blog

Blogging with WordPress is really easy and one, even without having knowledge of programming or markup, styling or scripting languages like php, mySQL, HTML, jQuery and CSS, can run and manage all aspect of their blogging by their own. There is no need to buy the services of developers or other professionals to manage you blog, to take care of your blog security, optimize you site SEO or to take backups of your site and Database. Although some firms can do these tasks best but thanks to hundreds of thousands of plugins developed by professional or developers, there is little or no more need to pay for each and every modification you want to add to your blog. For instance, you don’t need to pay for the security of your blog now, you can manage your WordPress site SEO by your own, can speed up your site with little effort, can interact with your visitors, publicize your content on social media with ease, can take backups and add other functionality to your blog with these handy plugins listed and discussed below. Plugins really made blogging easy and empower the bloggers to do with their blog what they want.[AdSense-A]

Among these hundreds of thousands of plugins available for WordPress blog or site, here we have compiled a list of 10 Essential Handy Plugins for your new or existing WordPress blog to take care of some important aspect of blogging like, Site SEO, Security, Site Speed & Caching, enhancing interaction with your visitors, add contact form and an elegant Author Bio Box, deal with spamming and publicize your posts or content on Social Media sites. These all must do aspect of professional blogging can done with these useful plugins. Now you cannot remain novice but consider yourself a pro blogger.

Read: 10 Important Things To Do After Installing WordPress

01. W3 Total Cache

Site Speed is one of the important aspects of your blog or site reputation and SEO. The sites with slow loading time don’t get high ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). So don’t ignore the site speed and don’t be indolent toward optimizing it as this will affect your site SEO too.

There are hundreds plugins for site speed and caching avail be among which I personally use and recommend the W3 Total Cache. W3 Total Cache improve your site speed and overall performance by caching every aspect of site including objects, pages and database, minifying CSS and JavaScript and add content delivery network support to your site. W3 Total Cache take care of complete performance of your blog and being use and recommended by many other professional bloggers and web hosts as well.

02. All in One SEO Pack

When it comes to site search engine optimization, All in One SEO Pack is the best among other available SEO plugins not just because of the number of features it provide but the ease of use of this plugin too really matter to make it the best SEO plugin. All in One SEO plugin adds SEO friendly Title, Keywords, Description to Posts and pages, automatically generates Meta Tags, submit XML sitemap to Google, Bing and notify search engines. All these features come with great ease make the plugin suitable for both novice and professional bloggers.

03. Akismet

Spamming and spam commenting is a big issue for every blogger to deal with. Novice blogger initially deal with spam comment manually as I was. I was tired while deleting thousands of spam comments daily manually taking lots of time or have to take backup of the entire database first and then run SQL command to delete all comments whether spam or genuine at once.

Then I found the Akismet plugin and dealing with spamming got easy. Using Akismet plugin is the best way to deal with spam comments and it provides Real Time protection 24 hourly. Akismet filters the comments look like spam and sends it directly to spam directory from where it can delete at once to save space and improve site speed.

04. CommentLuv

I was really happy when I got first comment on my. For every new blogger, commenting on his or her site is the indicator of site traffic, performance and reputation. These factors are crucial for site SEO too. In order to get more traffic and comments on your site, CommentLuv plugin is the option.

CommentLuv attracts the visitors to comments on your site in order to get a backlink from you to their site. This plugin make a win-win strategy for both the Webmaster and the visitor. The webmaster of the blog gets more traffic and comments and the commentator get a backlink.

Note: CommentLuv Premium also deal with spammers

05. AddThis

Experienced bloggers do not just relay on the traffic from Search engine. They want to attract more visitors to their site using any legal source, one of which is Social Media. The bloggers tend to share their contents or post on social media and encourages others to do same.

A simple way to publicize your contents on Social media like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest is AddThis WordPress Plugin. AddThis plugin allow your visitors to share the posts or contents of their interest on almost all popular social networking and bookmarking site with a single click. AddThis allows sharing the post on more than 330 sites.

Read: Best Free WordPress Social Sharing Plugins for 2015

06. Starbox Box

Have you notice the Author Bio Box at the end of your favorite post? Most bloggers tend to add their Bio on the post which they have published on their own blog or as guest on other blogs. If you want to add a professional and elegant yet free Author Box to your won site, StarBox is best choice.

The plugin is not just to add description of yourself but it would let the visitors to read your recent posts and will able to found you on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and many other social media sites.

07. Contact Form 7

Have a blog an don’t have Contact Us Page with a Contact Form is look like have shop and do not have window or door for customers. Contact form let your customer or advertiser to contact you to buy your services or to publish their ads on you site. Even Google do not approve the sites for AdSense if they don’t have Contact Us page or form.

An easy way to add Contac form is “Contact Form 7”. This simple and flexible plugin allow you to add manage and customize contact form for your blog or number of blogs from just one dashboard. Contact Form 7 plugin can also be integrated with CAPTCHA to prevent spam mails.

So install Contact Form 7 to add contact form to your bog, stay connected with your visitors and to make your site ready for Google AdSense Plugins.

08. SEO Friendly Images

This is one another great SEO plugin which is deal with the images not text. Of course images should be SEO ready too to get high rank in Image Searches and drive lots of traffic from Google Image, Bing or Yahoo Images. Since the key elements of Image SEO is to add “title” and “alt” tag to images but this can be time consuming if lots of images are being uploaded to your blog.

Install the SEO Friendly Images and relax. This time saving plugin will do the job for you. SEO Friendly Images add “Title” and “alt” tag to images uploaded currently or in the past make them Search Engine friendly. The plugin validate your post against W3c / xHTML too.

09. Wordfence Security

Security is a big issue to deal with for every blogger either novice or experts. On an average, 30,000 WordPress blogs hacked daily. One of the major reasons behind this is the use of pirated theme or plugin which contain malicious code. The piece of code is used by hacker as a security hole to attack your blog and crush it.

To get rid of this, Wordfence is the choice. This WordPress security plugins scan your blog source code for any piece of malicious code in theme and plugins and clean it to secure your site. Wordfence also improve the site speed and make it 50 times faster

Read: Best Plugins To make your WordPress Blog Secure

10. OIO Publisher Plugin

Last but not least, who don’t want to monetize their blogs? Since everyone want to make revenue from their efforts they made for blogging, OIO Publisher plugins is a choice in this regards.

OIO Publisher Plugin is not just a plugin but it is an ad manager which enables the publisher or website owners to maximize their revenue from their blogs with ease and 100% control on the ads display. It will add a professional look to the advertisement so you can run your advertisement campaign without any mess look. You can place you ads on the blog wherever you want.

Read: 5 Best WordPress AdSense Integration Plugins 2015

The Best WordPress SEO Plugins

As all of know that SEO is the most vital part of blogging in order to get good reputation or ranking in term of SERPs and to get your post or blog notice. But SEO always seems hectic for novice bloggers who really don’t know about the search engine ranking phenomena and thus relay on or buy SEO services from other professionals or SEO firms which are costly deal by the way.[AdSense-A]

So if you too worry about your site SEO and don’t know much about it, don’t be panic. Thanks to large community of WordPress developers, there are thousands plugins using which, you can aids in and improve SEO of your blog or site. So let’s start with the most popular SEO plugins first followed by the most efficient and powerful WordPress SEO plugins.

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

In our list of 5 best SEO plugins for WordPress blog, let start with the most used, most popular ad the most robust SEO plugin that is WordPress SEO by Yoast.

The plugin WordPress SEO by Yoast is come with many functionalities which others SEO plugins, including Keyword focused article heading, Page title and URL, Meta description, RSS optimization and many more which many other WordPress SEO plugins may lacking.

This plugins will really help newbie bloggers to add Search engine optimization to their pages, posts, categories and RSS without any technical understanding even. This plugin forces the blogger to stay in limit allowed or best for Search engines while writing Page or Post title and Meta description by indicating the too long or too short title and description by creating SERPs snippet at the bottom of page or post on Dashboard.

After a brief review of WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast, there are some highlighted features of free version of the plugin, although you can get more with paid premium version.

1. XML Sitemap option
2. Search Engines like Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
3. Breadcrumbs
4. Allow you to edit your .htaccess file
5. Allow you to edit your robot.txt file
6. RSS Feed Optimization
7. Page Analysis
8. Social Integration for SEO
9. SEO friendly and Keyword focused Page or Post Titles
10. Meta Description of pages or post

What is CommentLuv?

Since comments are proof of the how popular your blog is and how interesting your posts are. The post or blog which get more comments indicate that the post or blog is going famous among the visitors. So how encourage the visitors to comments on your blog post? One option is to write quality content but if you lack this ability, what you have to do? CommentLuv is an option.[AdSense-A]

CommentLuv is a plugin for WordPress that encourage visitors to comments and enable them to share a link back to their recent post at the end of comment. It is like “Give and Take” where the blog author gets more visitors, more comments and the commentators are reward with (Just comment on any post of this site to see how Commentluv works). Based on the principal of Give and Take

Comment on blog in this way is a win-win situation between commentators and the blog author. The author of the blog gets more visitors especially those who want a link or referral to their blog or to recent post and the commentators gets a referral link to their posts.

What are the Benefits of CommentLuv?

As a win-win strategy for both blog author and commentators, CommentLuv has following benefits:

1. CommentLuv catches the attention of huge numbers of commentators
2. CommentLuv connect blog author with your readers
3. CommentLuv notifies commentators about replies made to their comments
4. CommentLuv rewards commentators with a dofollow backlinks to their blog
5. CommentLuv provides referral to the most recent post of the commentator’s blog or the commentators may choose among the 10 recent posts
6. CommentLuv prevent and filter spam comments effectively

How to Install CommentLuv on my Blog?

CommentLuv plugins requires WordPress Version 3.0 or latter to work. So if you are using WordPress version previous than 3.0, upgrade to a latest version first and then use one of the two mentioned methods to Install and activate CommentLuv plugin for your WordPress blog

Method 01

Just download CommentLuv Plugin v 2.9 from here, extract the files to your desktop and upload CommentLuv plugin to wp-content/plugins folder using FTP program.

Congrats, you have installed the CommentLuv plugin to your blog just go to plugin screen find the CommentLuv plugin and activate it.

Method 02

On you WordPress Dashboard, Go to Plugins > Add New > Type in Search Box “CommentLuv”. Select the right Plugin from the list on search result page and Press Install. Activate the plugin when installed and configure according to your needs (the default setting of CommentLuv plugin works best for me).

So if you get familiar with  CommentLuv and understand its benefits, let us know in Comments and share it with your friends.