There are so many reason to love WordPress. It’s user friendly, It’s SEO friendly and just about anyone of any skill set can learn to use it. I would argue though, that what really makes WordPress so great is the plugins.

With WordPress plugins you can completely alter the way your site works, performs, responds and looks without ever having to know any code.

This is great, because there are those of us out there, including me, who don’t want anything to do with coding a website. We just want to take our ideas and ambitions to market and see if we can create an income online with it.

WordPress plugins make this possible. It doesn’t matter if we are wanting to add a shopping cart to our site or a social share button. It’s all possible using these wonderful plugins.

Every year I try to make a top 10 list for all my followers and students. These are plugins that I not only recommend, but that I am personally using myself.

Some of these are making the list 2 years running because they are still the best option. You can check out last years list here…

Enjoy and please feel free to share in the comments below if you feel there is a better option then what I have listed.

#1 WordPress SEO by Yoast  – Unless your living under a rock, you have probably heard about WordPress SEO by Yoast. This is a fantastic tool to improve your sites overall SEO. This is especially great for beginners too, because the plugin tells you what you need to add to your post to make it more SEO friendly. It’s great and arguably the most important plugin you can install.

#2 Pretty link  – This plugin is a must have if your are an affiliate marketer. I don’t know about you but there is no way in the world I can even begin to remember those long and ugly affiliate links. Pretty Link is a free plugin that lets you take those ugly long links and make them pretty and easy to remember.

#3 OptinSkin – This plugin was on the list last year and It’s on the list again this year! I absolutely LOVE OptinSkin! Nothing is more important to a blogger then his or her email list. The list is everything.  This plugin let’s you create and customize awesome looking opt-in boxes to increase your chances of capturing an email address. My conversions went up significantly after installing this plugin. Unlike all the other plugins on this list, Optinskin is NOT a free plugin, but it is more then worth the investment if your serious about building your email list.

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#4 Powerpress – This is another one of those great plugins that’s making the list for the second year running. Podcasting is what I love most. It’s been the most effective tool for growing my online presence. If your a podcaster or thinking about becoming one, then this is a must have plugin for you! Blubrry PowerPress brings the essential features for podcasting to WordPress. Developed by podcasters for podcasters, PowerPress offers full iTunes support, web audio/video media players and more.

#5 TF Social Share – Right now It seems that most bloggers prefer to use a share bar as their social sharing plugin. I on the other hand prefer TF Social Share. I think a blog looks nicer, cleaner and more inviting without a huge share bar on the side. If your going for a simply, clean and easy to follow look for your blog, then I recommend you do the same. This plugin is the most efficient way to integrate the important social share buttons like twitter, facebook like, google +1 (plus one), LinkedIn, stumbleupon and Pinterest in three different position and styles.

#6 Facebook Members – I’ve been using this plugin for several years now. I have yet to find a Facebook widget plugin that even comes close in comparison. Facebook Members is a WordPres Social Plugin that enables Facebook Page owners to attract and gain Likes from their own website. This is the simplest way to bring Facebook LikeBox + Facebook Recommendation Bar functionality to WordPress with many more Options like Background color, Border color.

#7 Google Analytics Dashboard – This is a plugin that I have just recently started using. I love having my Google Analytics right there in my WordPress dashboard. I highly recommend it! Google Analytics Dashboard gives you the ability to view your Google Analytics data in your WordPress dashboard. You can also alow other users to see the same dashboard information when they are logged in or embed parts of the data into posts or as part of your theme.

#8 Comment Luv – We all want more comment love right? This is a great plugin to make sure your getting the love your blog deserves, and it helps your readers as well! Reward your readers by automatically placing a link to their last blog post at the end of their comment. Encourage a community and discover new posts.

#9 WordPress Insert – Looking for a plugin to make inserting those google ads or affiliate ad banners into your blog post? This is by far the best option I have found and I love it!  Wp-Insert is the most powerful yet easiest to use wordpress ad management plugin which does a lot more than ad management. Wp-Insert can manage your ads, google analytics or any other tracking scripts, legal stuff and even make editing your themes or writing code in content easier for you. All these from within a well contained and easy to use interface.

#10 Ad Square Widget – Adding those 125 x 125 ads to your sidebar by just using html code can be a real pain! This plugin makes it incredibly easy to display those 125 x 125 ads with no hassle. I currently use this plugin in right here on EasyTechSite.

Google Analytics – Track your WordPress site easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews.

Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

Backup wordpress – BackUpWordPress will back up your entire site including your database and all your files on a schedule that suits you. Try it now to see how easy it is!

Contact form 7 – Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

WP Super Cache – This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

JetPack – Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.

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