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Home ยป Blogging ยป 5 Blog Plugins You Should Be Using

5 Blog Plugins You Should Be Using

February 3, 2022 by Claire | The Simple, Sweet Life 11 Comments

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image of someone removing a slice of quiche with text overlay

If youโ€™re new to food blogging and donโ€™t know where to start with plugins and tools for bloggers, no sweat! In this blogging for beginners post, weโ€™ll go over the five plugins I think every food blogger should start with.image of someone removing a slice of quiche with text overlay

Disclaimer:ย Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links. I use all of the products included in this post and recommend them because they are products I personally love and trust.

Thereโ€™s a lot that goes into blogging. And I meanย A LOT.ย 

Thereโ€™s writing the content, taking and editing photos (and/or video), promoting your postsโ€ฆ and before you can even do any of that stuff, you have all the prep work that goes into making and researching what youโ€™re doing. It can be pretty time consuming.

Now, this is not me trying to complain; it may be time consuming, but I love the whole process (ok, maybe not theย wholeย process but certainly most of the processโ€ฆ). Rather, the point Iโ€™m trying to make is that there are a lot of ins and outs to blogging, and itโ€™s SO easy to overlook little things that could make your life a whole lot easier.

Blog plugins can be one of those things, but donโ€™t let them be! They can make blogging so much easier, and can improve your readersโ€™ experiences.

That being said, there are SO many blog plugins out there! You could literally spend days trying to wade through everything available. Yes, literal days. But ainโ€™t nobody got time for that!

So to make your (blogging) life a little easier, here are the top 5 blog plugins I think you should be using for your food blog.

In this post you'll find: hide
1. WordPress SEO
2. Tasty Recipes (affiliate link)
3. ShortPixel Image Optimizer (affiliate link)
4. LuckyWP Table of Contents
5. UpdraftPlus โ€“ Backup/Restore
Bonus: WP3 Total Cache

1. WordPress SEO

SEO is one of those blog buzzwords. If youโ€™re not already familiar with it, it stands for โ€œsearch engine optimizationโ€ and, in a nutshell, has to do with how search engines โ€œreadโ€ and categorize our blogs for searches.

This has to do with how weโ€™ve named our images, keywords that appear often in the post, page url, etc. If this sounds like something complicated and that youโ€™d rather avoid, no sweat! WordPress SEO by Yoast makes it easy! Simply assign a keyword to your post, and this plugin will help identify where your post is strong and weak in terms of SEO.

2. Tasty Recipes (affiliate link)

Every recipe post should have a recipe card. Why? There are many reasons, but a few important ones include indicating to Google that your post is a recipe and having easily identifiable recipe information for social media sites like Pinterest to pull.

Personally, I like, use and recommend Tasty Recipes (affiliate link). Itโ€™s SEO (search engine optimization) and user friendly, has beautiful built-in themes and a great support time.

3. ShortPixel Image Optimizer (affiliate link)

Food blogs tend to be image heavy, and rightly so! But loading all of those images can slow down your page load times, leaving your readers hanging and dragging down your ranking with Google.

Using an image optimizer like ShortPixel (affiliate link) can help. This kind of plugin reduces the file size of your photos, speeding up your load times without sacrificing so much quality that your images no longer look good.

4. LuckyWP Table of Contents

This may be my new favorite plugin. As Iโ€™ve started writing longer guides to basic baking concepts like my ultimate guide to royal icing or how to make sugar cookies like a pro, itโ€™s become increasingly obvious that these posts really should have a table of contents at the top to help my readers find exactly what theyโ€™re looking for.

Enter LuckyWP Table of Contents.

This slick little app allows you to add a table of contents by post, add basic styling elements to match your blog, and choose which headers appear in the table.

5. UpdraftPlus โ€“ Backup/Restore

You put a lot of time into your blog. So naturally you want to make sure no matter what happens, your precious content is backed up somewhere.

Honestly, I canโ€™t tell you how many times Iโ€™ve had published, well-established posts disappear on me out of thin air (without my site being hacked or anything like that). And I canโ€™t imagine what I would have done if I had had to rewrite all of that content from scratch.

Luckily, backing up your content is easy with apps like this. If you donโ€™t already have one on your site, go. Download. One. Now.

Bonus: WP3 Total Cache

We all like fast loading websites, right? What am I saying, of course we do! No one wants to go back to the days of dial up where page loading could take several (or in some cases, 10โ€ฆ 15โ€ฆ) minutes.

If youโ€™re running a blog, slow loading pages canย kill your traffic and really hurt your readership. Ainโ€™t nobody got time to wait for pages to load!

Luckily, there are plugins like W3 Total Cache. This plugin is, admittedly, a little on the technical side, but itโ€™sย absolutelyย worth taking some time to sit down and figure out how to use it. The pay off: a fast loading website!

So Iโ€™ve talked about my top 5 blog plugins that every blogger should be using, but whatโ€™s your opinion? Whatโ€™s one plugin you couldnโ€™t live without, or one youโ€™ve been dying to try? Join the conversation in the comments!

Update Notes: This post was originally published in August of 2014 but was republished with updated plugins in February 2022.

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Filed Under: Blogging

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Comments

  1. Jessica says

    August 26, 2014 at 4:06 pm

    Such a great post, Claire! I’m already using a couple similar plugins, but definitely going to get #1 and #3 now. Thank you!

    Reply
    • The Simple, Sweet Life says

      August 27, 2014 at 10:47 pm

      So glad you found some useful info in this post! ๐Ÿ™‚ #3 is probably one of my favorites, and #1 is just kind of a life saver for me. Who has time to think of SEO when they’re typing?? ๐Ÿ˜‰

      Reply
  2. Laura@Baking In Pyjamas says

    August 31, 2014 at 2:08 pm

    Very informative, great post! Thanks for linking up to Sweet and Savoury Sunday, stop by and link up again. Have a great day!!

    Reply
    • The Simple, Sweet Life says

      September 1, 2014 at 5:07 pm

      I’m glad you found it helpful! I’ll definitely be stopping by again this week to link up. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  3. Andrea @ This Pug Life says

    September 1, 2014 at 6:03 am

    I’m already using some of these, but I need to look into the SEO one. I’m lacking in that department.

    Reply
    • The Simple, Sweet Life says

      September 1, 2014 at 5:11 pm

      Glad you found some helpful tips! SEO (in my opinion) can be a giant pain in the butt, so it’s always nice to have something that can make those tasks a little easier. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  4. Natasha In Oz says

    September 4, 2014 at 11:06 pm

    Great advice here-many thanks for the tips. I’ve just pinned this and will try them soon.

    Thanks for joining the Say G’day Saturday Linky Party!

    Best wishes,
    Natasha in Oz

    Reply
    • The Simple, Sweet Life says

      September 7, 2014 at 11:27 am

      So glad you enjoyed the post! Thanks for sharing it! ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  5. Cathy says

    April 6, 2015 at 6:29 am

    I don’t think I’ve ever stuck around to read so much of a blog before! You really have great content and I’m learning so much today. Thank you so much.

    Reply
    • The Simple, Sweet Life says

      April 8, 2015 at 10:10 pm

      Awww thank you! What a sweet thing to say! ๐Ÿ™‚ I’m really glad you’re finding some useful info. and feel free to shoot me a comment or message if you run into any questions about anything. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  6. Sue says

    April 12, 2022 at 4:40 pm

    This is so informative.

    Reply

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Hei pรฅ deg!

I'm Claire, the baker, blogger, sprinkle enthusiast, and cookie painter behind The Simple, Sweet Life. Whether you like simple sweets, comfort (baked) foods, or works of sugar art, you're sure to find something here to sweeten your day! Get to know me better here!

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