Wordpress blogs are feature rich and can be improved further using Wordpress plugins. Wordpress plugins are used to improve the quality, performance, look and management of your blog. There are thousands of plugins available today to install and try on your blog, but remember that installing unnecessary plugins might affect your blog’s performance. So, it’s better to choose plugins wisely, else that will work as a negative factor for your blog. Here is my 12 must have Wordpress plugins guide for every Wordpress blogger. Remember that these are not optional, they are mandatory. Get them or die, choice is yours.

1. Akismet : Akismet is one of the two plugins that come bundled with Wordpress set up file, all you need is to activate Akismet with API key. Akismet filters all spam comments on your blog, making Wordpress comments management way easier.

2. All-in-one SEO Pack : Having a blog with decent no of posts is not enough, you have to optimize your blog for search engines also. All-in-one SEO pack plugin takes care of meta tags, keywords, descriptions, index or noindex tags on your blog. This is the most essential plugin to make your blog stand well in search engine results. You can also try an another similar Wordpress SEO plugin called HeadSpace2 SEO plugin.

3. Google XML Sitemap Generator : Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin creates a sitemap of your blog and rebuilds it automatically when you edit or add a new post (check plugin settings). Submit the sitemap created by this plugin to search engines for better indexing of your blog posts and pages.

4. Super Archive : This plugin creates an archive page for your Wordpress blog. Archive page contains all your blog posts and pages in one single page. Blog visitors like to see the list of all your contents in one single place while search engine spiders would love to treat this as your sitemap.

5. WP Contact Form : WP Contact Form creates a contact us page in your blog. Your blog visitors can use this form to contact you. This plugin sends your visitor notes to you by email.

6. Wordpress Related Posts : This plugin shows the list of related posts on the bottom of your blog posts. This is the best way to show posts related with the article. This affects your blog SEO and page views in a positive manner also.

7. WP Super Cache : While opening a blog post, core Wordpress set up and installed plugins run queries and then serve the page and running several queries increase page load time. WP Super Cache eliminates this problem by caching your blog pages and serving them as HTML formatted files upon request. This is essential to make your Wordpress blog faster.

8. Ping Optimizer : Wordpress blogs are coded to send pings to search engines when you edit a post or publish new ones. If you are editing your posts or making new posts too often, your blog will send continuous pings to ping servers. Sending maximum pings will get your blog banned from ping servers and this will make your blogging career hell. Use ping optimizer to limit your pings, you can set the time interval between new pings or set it to ping for new posts only from the plugin’s settings page.

9. Broken Link Checker : We give many outbound links from our blog posts. But with the source of time, few of those links gets broken and shows a 404 page. Linking to 404 (Not Found) pages from your blog will affect your SEO factor. Use Broken Link Checker plugin to find out any invalid or 404 links from your blog.

10. Global Translator : We all try to blog quality posts to attract more visitors. If this is the case, then we should allow people from any countries to read our blog posts in their own language. Adding WP Global translator will show flags of different countries on your blog and upon clicking on those flags, your blog page will get translated to the respective country’s language instantly.

11. Nofollow Reciprocity : We often give links to other blog posts or websites for different purposes. Wordpress automatically adds a dofollow tag to the links inside the post. Giving dofollow attributes to a link acts like a linkback and this will make your post appear lower in search engine results. Use Nofollow Reciprocity plugin to add nofollow attribute to all outbound links from your blog automatically.

12. StatPress Reloaded : Keep the track of your blog visitors to know what they like and what they don’t on your blog. StatPress Reloaded plugin shows you the trend of your blog traffic with graphic charts and detailed view. You can see your traffic statistics easily on your blog without using Google analytics with this plugin.