Want to get your website running at its peak SEO form, without data-loss worries, and suited up for social media sharing?Read on for the best WordPress plugins for data backup, search engine optimization, and social media sharing buttons.
WordPress Backups
Your WordPress plugin repertory wouldn’t be complete without a plugin that gives your website a safety net backup. Because your WordPress database holds every post, page, media, comment, and link you have on your website, a solid system for restoring things in the event of uncontrollable loss is prudent.
With WordPress backup plugins, you can schedule automatic backups and store your backups in a remote location. In the event of a hardware or disk failure, the digital graveyard does not have to be the final resting place for your website.
Many free WordPress Backup options are available. Here are the top mentions: WordPress Backup to Dropbox, BackWPup, BackupWordPress, and Online Backup for WordPress. They are all very similar and are worth a quick comparison in description. Remember to note the rating, number of downloads, and the compatibility with your version of WordPress when comparing.
The top premium choices include Backup Buddy for a minimum of $75/year (covers two sites) and Vaultpress for $15/month basic service. If your budget permits, these are among the most recommended backup systems available.
Search Engine Optimization
When you use SEO (search engine optimization), you’re improving your website’s visibility in search engines such as Google and Safari by customizing your posts and pages with a few clicks.
With All-in-One SEO, you can optimize your keywords, titles, descriptions, and meta tags for all posts and pages. WordPress creates default title tags and snippets – the preview of each post as seen by users when searching – but these aren’t always going to increase your visibility in search engines, which is why you need an SEO plugin.
Another plugin option for easy SEO help is WordPress SEO by Yoast. The features include writing specific, targeted keywords and descriptions as well as many other SEO enhancements (even more than All-in-One SEO).
You’re improving your content for SEO when you take a few extra minutes to choose a focus keyword and apply it to the various areas Yoast guides you through. After you’ve finished with the general tab, click on the page analysis tab for more tips on how to improve your content for search engines.
The debate continues on which is better, Yoast or All-in-One. So far, Yoast is the winner. If you already have All-in-One SEO and wish to change to Yoast, go here.
Social Media Plugins
There are a number of ways to create media sharing on your website, and Share Buttons by Lockerz is one of the best. You can share, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using over 100 social media sites.
The newest addition is the Pinterest Pin It Button, adding to the Facebook Like Button, Twitter Tweet Button, Google+ Share Button, and Google +1 Button. The customizable Smart Menu even puts the services most used at the top of the menu, depending on the browsing history of each user.
If you go to the bottom of this post and hover your cursor over the Lockerz Share/Save box, a drop-down menu appears with the other services Web Savvy Marketers has for sharing, including the handy email tab. Check out the Share Button Demo on Lockerz to see what else this plugin can do.
Another popular media sharing plugin with icons for all the notable services, as well as an option to create six of your own media links. The added bonus is its icons come in three sizes, four styles, and four animations.
This is extremely easy to use and allows you to add a colorful and personal touch to your social media sharing. The Twitter icon doesn’t show as updated, because the screenshot still shows the old Twitter version.
Your choice for a social sharing plugin that takes up little website space and looks super-slick with its optional floating effect. The social media buttons are limited to the most-used services, includes the Pinterest Pin It Button, and has a useful social statistics admin page, showing the summaries of all your social metrics.
The most critical plugins you will use on your WordPress site involve backup security, SEO, and social media sharing. Take the time now to choose the plugins which best suit your website needs.
Flickr photo courtesy of angel n.
Hi Kacee
I´m glad you referenced my post from last week in this article. It´s been 8 days since my last update to that post, so I´ve just checked the current state of downloads and ratings for All In One SEO Pack and WordPress SEO by Yoast. The result is that once again the tendency gets confirmed: as of today the number of downloads for Yoast´s plugin has almost doubled that of All In One SEO Pack during the past 8 days: 115,083 vs 60,272. Regarding ratings, the final results remain the same (4.7 vs 3.8), but then again there have been much more people giving a 5 star rating to WordPress SEO than to All In One SEO Pack
Hey, Luis! You’re post continues to be spot on. Yoast gets my vote. Thanks for your help in my research for this post.
Thanks Kacee,
These are really great plugins, I use most of them.
I also checked the new plugin Seo Plugin by Squirrly and its also a great one too. Helps me with keyword research and seo live assistant.
I see that they work together just fine.
Cheers!