The Best Plugins for Affiliate Websites in 2024
I am a minimalist when it comes to WordPress plugins.
Using dozens of plugins is not necessarily detrimental to your affiliate site’s performance as long as they’re well-coded. Yet, whenever I encounter a cool new plugin I always ask myself: do I really need this? Will this really impact my bottom line and if so, could accomplish the desired functionality without installing the plugin?
The result of this philosophy: most of my affiliate websites use only 11 plugins. That’s it.
In this article I’m going to tell you exactly which ones they are and why I use them.
The plugins I use for my affiliate websites
Kadence Blocks
Kadence Blocks adds a ton of functionality to the WordPress editor, effectively turning it into a full-fledged page builder. With Kadence Blocks you’ll have no more need for a page builder plugin like Elementor, which means your site’s loading times will drastically improve. The best part? It’s completely free to use.
Kadence Blocks is so versatile that even lets you put together product comparisons like this without using a single line of code:
You can also use it to easily put together pro- and con boxes and other elements you’ll probably want to add to your affiliate website.
Kadence Blocks Pro
Kadence Blocks Pro is a paid extension to Kadence Blocks. It comes with some really cool Blocks to bring your affiliate site to the next level. For instance, modal screens, countdown timers and advanced sliders.
Kadence Simple Share
Kadence Simple Share is a plugin that comes with the Kadence Membership. It’s a nice little plugin that lets you add social media share buttons to your posts and pages. It’s much lighter than most social media plugins out there.
Block Navigation
I’m a big fan of Gutenberg but have to admit it’s still a little rough around the edges. To select the right element or row on your page sometimes feels like a game of whack-a-mole. The free Block Navigation plugin goes a long way in making it a lot easier to build pages in Gutenberg as you won’t lose tracks of your various rows and elements.
Post Duplicator
Post Duplicator lets you duplicate any post or page in one click. I use it alle the time and it speeds up my workflow tremendously.
Pretty Links
With Pretty Links you can easily shorten affiliate links and keep them all in one place. The cool thing is that, opposed to something like tinyurl.com, you get to use your own domain name whenever you shorten links and have full control over what comes after. So for instance, your affiliate link can look something likes this: yourdomain.com/go/name-product.
Rank Math SEO
Rank Math is my allround SEO plugin of choice. It helps me a lot with my on-page SEO, setting up meta descriptions and meta titles and with adding schema.
Rank Math SEO PRO
The paid version of Rank Math. Adds a few nifty features, such as adding multiple schema to your pages.
SiteGround Optimizer
As I host most of my sites on SiteGround this plugin is a no-brainer to me. It is essentially a free version of WP Rocket. It does a ton of things when it comes to speeding up your website, such as adding lazy loading, converting your images to WebP and minifying and combining CSS files. This plugin only works with websites hosted on SiteGround.
SiteGround Security
Another SiteGround plugin, although you can use this one even if you’re not a SiteGround customer. It’s a solid allround security plugin that, amongst other things, make sure that hackers can’t brute force their way into your WordPress website.