Tools To Enhance Your Blog

A graphic of a woman sitting at a desk with a laptop with widgets, tools, plugin icons.
by: Dev Sperling | blogging

Blogging is one of the pillars to improving SEO, and it can be hard to start and maintain a successful blog. Are you wondering what the best blogging tools out there are? Well you’ve stumbled upon the right place. We’ve compiled a list of the best plugins, widgets, and tools that are essential to making a great blog excellent. 

 

Instagram Feed 

Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms out there, and with the an Instagram feed plugin, you can import pictures from your account directly to your blog. It’s a good thing to look into if you have a visual brand. 

 

The Instagram feed widget can even display photos from multiple Instagram accounts in the same feed or in separate feeds! Additionally, you can display multiple Instagram feeds on the same page or on different pages throughout your site. You can use the built-in shortcode options to completely customize each of your Instagram feeds. 

 

There are many benefits to having an Instagram feed on your blog. For one, it increases social media engagement. Also, if you don’t have the time to upload photos to your website directly, the Instagram feed can save you time while making your site visually appealing. 

 

Email Subscribe Form 

E-mail marketing has the highest return on investment of any marketing channel available online today. With that said, email subscription forms can convert casual readers into active readers. Readers are more likely to share your content with other people in their network through email and social media when they are subscribed to your blog. To turn visitors into subscribers, an Email Subscribe form is an absolute must-have for any blog. 

 

YouTube Gallery 

Do you have a YouTube channel? If yes, this is the perfect widget to have, especially if you plan on posting some tutorials on your blog. Videos are the future of marketing. Users find them digestible and informative. Having a YouTube Gallery widget on your blog has also been shown to give channels more subscribers. 

 

Testimonials Slider

It’s common to buy products or services online. However, before someone decides to spend money online, they study the vendor. Consumers always want to be certain they are investing their money well. As a result, this makes testimonial sliders incredibly valuable. Testimonials help to build trust in your potential, hesitant customers.

 

Author Profiles 

If possible, we highly recommend you allowing more than one staff member to write your blog posts. Let your audience learn more about your staff members.  Bylined blog posts make your company appear personable, and it suggests you have talent. 

 

Comments Section 

At Sperling Interactive, we believe in the comments section. Blogging isn’t just about publishing content. It’s a two-way conversation and a community builder. Responding to comments can deepen your relationship with readers. The act of commenting theoretically increases the likelihood that the user will also engage in other ways, such as subscribing to your email newsletter or even making a purchase down the road. 

 

Recent Posts Widget 

Displaying recent posts helps your readers find them easily and it’s be shown to keep people longer on your site and subscribing to your email newsletter. 

 

Social Count Plus 

Are you proud of your social media following? You can display your social numbers with Social Count Plus

Compact Archives 

The default monthly archives widget shows your blog archives in a long list of months. This can take up a lot of space. Compact Archives solves this problem by grouping your monthly archives into years. It also includes a widget that you can use in your blog’s sidebar. 

 

Google Language Translator 

Google Language Translator plugin allows you to easily add a language switch widget to your website. It uses Google Translate to translate content on your website in any language. 


Yoast SEO 

Yoast SEO is one of the most used and best plugins regarding search engine optimization. It has been trusted by most WordPress website owners and is also frequently updated for better upgrades and to be compatible with Google algorithms. 

 

Google XML Sitemap 

Google XML Sitemaps is another very useful SEO plugin. The plugin helps the search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. to better index your site with a special XML sitemap. 

At Sperling Interactive, we offer an array of content creation services. Be sure to check out that page to see how we can help you.