WordPress plugins can add much need functionality, else save you or your visitors time. From improving search engine optimisation, to making it easy to display photo galleries and much more besides, WordPress plugins are extremely useful.

Though it is all too easy to get carried away and install too many plugins. This can impact website performance, plus cause issues with WordPress automatic updates. However if you pick a small selection wisely, including those actively worked on, hopefully you reap the benefits of using WordPress plugins.

So I thought I would share with you, two hWordPress plugins that I find useful. These two plugins help with images and search engine optimisation.

NextGEN Gallery

I remember back in the day trying to use photos with websites was nothing but a pain. Sure I still optimise my images to this very day to load in quickly and help performance, but it is a different ball game when it comes to uploading multiple images.

Some people decide instead of bothering with a gallery, they will choose a small selection and then create articles that seem to scroll into the abyss, which after the first few photos I tend to leave, plus not incredible happy precious bandwidth was used loading those images.

Other times people will upload their images to flickr, then people are invited to leave the website to view the images. Anything that suggest people go elsewhere, rather than staying on a website, should be avoided, unless truly necessary.

So it is with much relief that I found the nifty NextGEN Gallery, a WordPress gallery plugin, that is incredibly easy to use, but has a lot going on under the hood. I must admit I only use a fraction of its capabilities, but it says me time, stops me from uploading my photos elsewhere and makes the viewing experience easier on website visitors.

What I do is optimise the images, to make sure they are not too large. Then I place them in a compressed archive, aka a zip file and then upload via the WordPress dashboard. The plugin then loads the data in, and gives me a tag, which I then insert into the page or post.

When the visitor visits the page or post they are presented with thumbnails, that when clicked open into a lightbox and they can either close the image, else continue to browse the gallery. I love this plugin!

YARPP

YARPP stands for Yet Another Related Post Plugin and again is pretty easy to use. Basically it covers off the headache of internal blog post linking. At the end of each blog post it will present a list of related posts. YARPP does the hard work of compiling the list and using the titles in the anchor text link. This means it contributes to my internal SEO strategy.

Plus hopefully it contributes to increasing visitor time on the website and the amount of posts each visitor views.

Article Source: http://www.articleclick.com/Article/WordPress-Plugins-that-I-find-useful/1954476

About the author: Andrew is a writer and passionate about SEO strategy.

Related Posts