Top Best FREE WordPress Plugins for Bloggers / Blogs

Top Best Free WordPress Plugins for Bloggers / Blogs

All plugins discussed below have a 4.5 Star rating and more. Please see below a list of the Top Best FREE WordPress Plugins for Bloggers / Blog: 

Akismet Spam Protection

It is an anti-spam protection to block spam comments and spam in a contact form. The most trusted anti spam solution for WordPress and WooCommerce. – By Automattic

If you have a blog chances are you are going to enable comments so that people can make comments on your articles and posts. You are going to have spam comments and with Akismet you can stop those comments from appearing on your blog website. These spam comments can become annoying. If you do not remove spam comments they can negatively impact your SEO. So as a blogger you definitely want to make sure that spam comments never make it to your articles or posts. Akismet kills the spam comments even before you see them. Akismet is one of the best plugins fighting against spam comments and it is absolutely FREE to use. It is very light weight and gets the job done. 

4.5 star rating with more than 5 Million Active Installations as of May, 2021.

Comments – wpDiscuz

AJAX powered realtime comments. Designed to extend WordPress native comments. Custom comment forms and fields. – By gVectors Team

The default WordPress comment section is usually dull. WP Discuz works better than any other comment plugins out there. It provides styling, functionality and above all it does not slow down your blogging website. It is a great plugin for visits to leave their comments. If anyone is to post a comment on your article they will need to add their name, email address and also have to add the CAPTCHA code to ensure it is not a spam comment. Plus they can hit the bell icon so that they can be notified whenever someone responds to their comment or they can even subscribe so if anyone posts a comment they will get notified by an email message. There is also a floating comment bubble showing your visitors that they can leave a comment on the article if they wish to do so. It adds a lot more functionality and style to the default WordPress comment section. 

5 star rating with more than 80,000 Active Installations as of May, 2021.

Wordfence Security – Firewall & Malware Scan

Secure your website with the most comprehensive WordPress security plugin. Firewall, malware scan, blocking, live traffic, login security. – By Wordfence

Wordfence Security is an all-in-one security plugin for WordPress. The FREE version offers you a ton of security features for example firewalls, the ability to protect your website from brute force attacks, it even has a malware scanner so you can check to see if your files themes or plugins have been corrupted with malware and a lot more of security features in the FREE version. 

4.5 star rating with more than 4 Million Active Installations as of May, 2021.

Really Simple SSL

No setup required! You only need an SSL certificate, and this plugin will do the rest. – By Really Simple Plugins

This plugin allows your website to integrate with your SSL certificate on your blog website that you have gotten from your web host. SSL certificates have become so important these days that Google, Yahoo, Bing and other major search engines will actually penalize your website if you do not have any SSL encryption. Really Simple SSL is a completely FREE plugin there is a paid version however there is no need to get it, the FREE version works just great, it does everything for you need. The best thing about this plugin is you do not have to do anything, you simply activate the plugin and your blog website is fully integrated with SSL. 

5 star rating with more than 5 Million Active Installations as of May, 2021.

WP Last Modified Info

Ultimate Last Modified Solution for WordPress. Adds the last modified date and time automatically on pages and posts very easily. By Sayan Datta

This plugin helps whenever you write an article. Let’s give an example, maybe 7 months from that day you decide to update the article, it is always a good idea to indicate that this article has been updated. It is useful because it informs your visitors even though this article was initially published many months ago it has been updated. It is also good for search engines because now Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines will know that this article has been updated. 

5 star rating with more than 30,000 Active Installations as of May, 2021.

Insert Headers and Footers

This plugin allows you to add extra scripts to the header and footer of your blog by hooking into wp_head and wp_footer. – By WPBeginner

This plugin allows you to add snippets of code or scripts either in the header or footer of your blog website. A good example will be Google Search Console code or Pinterest code simply go to the header section and you simply insert your code right there and save and that is it. The plugin is completely FREE. 

4.5 star rating with more than 1 Million Active Installations as of May, 2021.

Easy Table of Contents

Adds a user friendly and fully automatic way to create and display a table of contents. By Steven A. Zahm

If you write posts that are on average more than 2,000 (two thousands words) per post it is always best to create a table of contents that will allow users to scroll through your content. It is great for SEO, it is created for the user experience. This plugin basically scans through your post / article and then looks for the main header. So if you have a H2, H3 it will then add those headings into a table of contents and you can edit it making sure it is accurate. Very simple to use. However if you use the Elementor theme, Elementor already has built-in functionality for creating a table of contents button, so there is no need to install and use this ‘Easy Table of Contents’ plugin if you already have the Elementor Theme. 

4.5 star rating with more than 200,000 Active Installations as of May, 2021.

Social Share Buttons, Social Sharing Icons, Click to Tweet — Social Media Plugin

This social sharing plugin. Share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. Click to Tweet and more. – By Social Snap.

It is fully customizable although there is a paid version of the plugin the FREE version is fantastic it allows you to add the floating bar to the left or right of your article however it allows to customize to a limited number of social networks you have the option to choose from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Mix. The other major networks such as Pinterest and Instagram are available in the paid version. But it allows your visitors to share your content on the platforms allowed on the free version. You can change the colour, size and shape of the social media icons. 

4.5 Star Rating, more than 20,000 Active Installation as of May, 2021.

WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache

5 Star rating, more than 700,00 Active Installations as of June, 2021.

WordPress Gallery Plugin – NextGEN Gallery

The most popular WordPress gallery plugin and one of the most popular plugins of all time with over 31 million downloads. – By Imagely

When it comes to creating galleries of images or even albums the NextGEN Gallery is your choice. It is FREE but there is a paid version as well. The FREE version offers you a wide variety of functionalities and design and when it comes to displaying images you cannot leave out the NextGEN Gallery. 

4.5 Star rating, more than 700,00 Active Installations as of May, 2021.

Rank Math SEO

SEO Plugin For WordPress To Increase Your SEO Traffic – Rank Math SEO is a revolutionary WordPress SEO plugin that combines the features of many SEO tools in a single package. – By Rank Math

Rank Math is absolutely a great plugin for SEO, it is ranking among the best in SEO Plugin. It is easy to use, the interface is extremely user friendly and absolutely FREE. Rank Math SEO provides support 24 hours, 7 days a week. 

5 Star rating, more than 800,00 Active Installations as of May, 2021.

All-in-One WP Migration

Move, transfer, copy, migrate, and backup a site with 1-click. Quick, easy, and reliable.

4.5 Star rating, more than 3 Million Active Installations as of May, 2021.

Contact Form by WPForms – Drag & Drop Form Builder

The best WordPress contact form plugin. Drag & Drop online form builder that helps you create beautiful contact forms with just a few clicks. – By WPForms

5 Star rating, more than 4 Million Active Installations as of May, 2021

Image Optimization & Lazy Load

Automatically compress, optimize and serve scaled images along with next-gen WebP all from CloudFront CDN – By Optimole

This plugin is useful to optimize your images. If you have a blog the chances are you will be using a lot of images for your articles and for your posts. Images can slow down your website speed because they are heavier than text. You need to optimize your images on your Blog Website and this is one of the best plugins for image optimization. It actually optimizes your images via a cloud-based system. It supports all types of image formats. Easy to use and FREE to use.  

5 Star rating, more than 80,000 Active Installations as of May, 2021.

MailOptin – Popup, Optin Form & Email Newsletters for Mailchimp, HubSpot, AWeber

Create popups, optin forms to get email newsletter subscribers via an easy form builder – By MailOptin Team

MailOptin is very simple to use. It is a plugin that you can use to build your mailing lists. It is fully compatible with MailChimp. Give it a try if you are interested in building your mailing list. 

5 Star rating, more than 30,000 Active Installations as of May, 2021.