WordPress plugins are being built every single day, so it can be hard to keep up with the plugins you need and which ones work best. This can be especially difficult when it comes to SEO if you’re a new website owner and just getting started, but don’t sweat it. It can be annoying to constantly download and try different plugins, so below lists some of the most successful in the field. You may not need all of them for your company’s success, but it’s a good place to start.

SEO and Other WordPress Plugins for 2014 and the New Year

It helps to break up your different plugin options into categories. In general, you’re only going to need one plugin per category, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try a few first to see how you like them (at least with the free options). Many companies also find that they don’t like having several different plugins for different tasks, so start slow. If mobile responsiveness isn’t your goal right at the moment, save it for later until you get a feel for SEO.

Below are a few of the most popular and successful plugins of 2014 and into 2015:

For SEO

  • WordPress SEO by Yoast. This is the plugin that has it all. You can edit page titles, meta descriptions, create your XML Sitemap, and much, much more. If you download this plugin you shouldn’t need much else, but it can be a little bit advanced at first, which brings me to my next point.
  • All-in-One SEO Pack. This is one of the most popular SEO plugins because it’s easy to use and has great features for beginners and advanced Webmasters. It helps you add in your title, description, and keyword and will then analyze whether or not your content is optimized for the web. I highly recommend starting here for SEO.
  • Redirection. If you’re still working with your SEO, you’re bound to be working with 301 redirects. This plugin will help you put your old URLs in one row and your new in another and then your redirects are automatically created! It also logs all of your 404 errors so you don’t miss a beat.
  • Jetpack. This is another WordPress plugin that has a large number of features. These features include graphs and charts showing your email subscriptions, a social networking enabled comment system, notifications on your toolbar about your site’s activity, and even a mobile theme. It also comes out with lots of updates, so it changes as the web and your website changes.

For Content Management

  • Editorial Calendar. This plugin allows you to drag and drop different posts if you want to make a change to when things are published, so it’s easy if you have a lot of writers you’re dealing with. You will then get notifications so you always know what is being published on your site.
  • CoSchedule. This is actually a newer tool but it is already growing in popularity. It also has drag and drop features and allows you to monitor social media as well. You can give other team members access to the plugin so you can assign tasks and send reminders.
  • Post View Stats. This is a different type of plugin but still effective for content management. You should always be tracking the effectiveness of each post, so this makes it easy by giving you a count of unique visitors right there on your dashboard.

For Mobile

  • WPtouch. This plugin will replaces your site with a mobile-only theme for those visiting your website from a phone, which means they will send optimized photos and CSS instead of desktop ones, helping speed the process along and keeping things loading quickly. It has over 6 million downloads and comes in a free and paid ($49) version.
  • Mobile Smart. This is a great plugin if you don’t like the responsive version of your site and you want to offer something completely different to mobile visitors. You do have to create your own version, but this plugin makes it easy to choose what you want to display. There is also a pro version ($15) in addition to a free version.
  • WP Mobile Edition. This plugin will again help to turn your existing website into a purely mobile version. It will automatically detect the device someone is using so that it knows which theme to offer to which users.

For Social Media

  • Simple Share Buttons Adder. All you have to do here is install the plugin and let it create those social buttons for you to put on your site. It gives you social icons to choose from or let’s you upload your own if you want to get fancy.
  • Floating Social Bar. This allows you to put social buttons on your website, but it sticks to the page so that the counter and buttons are always there even when someone scrolls down. This isn’t always ideal for every company, but it’s definitely worth trying.

Are you using any other great SEO plugins that we missed? Tell us about your experiences with the plugins as well as others you’ve used in the past in the comment section below.