Below are WordPress plugins that I use for my blog. The goal is to minimize the number of plugins you have so that your site speed is fast. However, sometimes a small plugin might help with a feature you want to display on your site. These are my favorite.
Create by Mediavine
BLOGGERS
This is an awesome plug-in for recipes, how to videos, and lists. This plug-in allows you to ensure that the content that you create is easily found by Google by following their schema standards (that you don't have to know). Use it, and you are set!
Yoast SEO
ALL WEBSITES
Yoast SEO allows you to ensure that your website is set up properly for Google to crawl your site. It helps you create sitemaps and much more! If you are a newbie to SEO, it allows you to ensure that you are optimizing for SEO.
Pretty Links
ALL WEBSITES
Pretty Links enables you to shorten links using your own domain name (as opposed to using tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service)! In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Links tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, os and host.
Short Pixel Image Optimizer
ALL WEBSITES
Increase your website’s SEO ranking, number of visitors and ultimately your sales by optimizing any image or PDF document on your website. ShortPixel is an easy to use, lightweight, install-and-forget-about-it image optimization plugin that can compress all your past images and PDF documents with a single click.
Insert Headers and Footers
ALL WEBSITES
Insert Headers and Footers is a simple plugin that lets you insert code like Google Analytics, custom CSS, Facebook Pixel, and more to your WordPress site header and footer. No need to edit your theme files!
Thrive Leads
ALL WEBSITES
I use Thrive Leads to get email addresses and manage pop-ups on my websites. I've tried a few others in the past, and while this is a little pricey, it's been so easy to use (along with the other products as part of it's platform).
Redirection
ALL WEBSITES
This is a plugin I use whenever I want to delete a post and redirect it without having to go into the .htaccess file to update it.