10+ Most Popular WordPress Food Blog Plugins

I’ve seen new food bloggers make big mistakes when starting out. Each individual either installs WordPress on their own hosting account or signs up for a WordPress account and has their site set up in the cloud. Either way, these new bloggers have access to tens of thousands of (very tempting) plugins – plugins that can change the background colors of their web pages to creating backups of their websites to enhancing their site’s SEO. Some plugins are absolutely essential for a fully functional and efficient website, yet some are downright nasty and should be avoided. The mistakes I’ve seen mostly have to do with installing far too many non-essential plugins. The trick with food blogging, and blogging in general, is to install the fewest number of necessary plugins as possible. The simpler the better.

Which Plugins are the Best for Food Blogging?

Contained in the list of WordPress plugins that I compile below will be those that are specific to the food blogging category. In addition to that, there will a few that are specific to that category as well as pretty much any other category of blogging. Since we’re on a cooking website though and since you’re a food blogger, I’ll focus on describing how these plugins will help you as you write, photograph, share recipes, and anything else you find yourself doing.

Also, this list of plugins will be rolling, meaning it may change over time as plugins are created and as they die off and are removed from the plugin directory over at WordPress HQ. By the way, at the time of this writing, the aforementioned directory holds 59,775 plugins. Can you believe that? If you didn’t think there was a need to pare all those choices down, I think that, yes, we can agree there’s a need.

Free vs. Paid Plugins

Just a quick note to let you in on some important information. While tons of awesome WordPress plugins are completely free to use or are free to use and have a paid “pro” upgrade option, some are totally paid solutions, meaning, you won’t be able to use the plugin if you don’t buy it outright. In the list below, I’ll label each option to show whether it’s free, free with pro upgrade, or fully paid, so you know whether or not you should even bother clicking on the link to visit the page where the plugin can be found. Hopefully you’ll find that helpful.

Food Blog Plugin Groups

To make things as clear as possible and as easy for you to digest and understand, I’ll create a few groups of essential food blog plugin types. Within each group, I’ll list some of the best available options. I’ll also only list the plugins that are tried and true – that have been tested by the most popular food bloggers on the internet. What you’ll find below are the plugins all the cool kids are using.

SEO Plugins

After installing and setting up WordPress for your food blog, you’ll likely want to install an SEO plugin. These types of plugins help with all sorts of things, from allowing you to customize page titles and meta tags to creating a sitemap to setting up page redirects. Really, these plugins are quite powerful and can do a lot. And honestly, it would be odd not to install one for your website.

That being said, unless you’ve got very unique circumstances, one of the following three options should be more than sufficient for your needs. Note: you need install only one SEO plugin for your blog. Please don’t install more than one. Please.

All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO)

First created in 2007, AIOSEO has become one of the world’s leading WordPress SEO plugins. Over three million downloads. Feature list includes a setup wizard, on-page optimization, smart meta tags and descriptions, XML sitemaps, and more.

Downloads: 3+ million
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Yoast SEO

Yoast is currently the world’s most popular SEO plugin with over five million downloads. Both free and paid versions available. Features include easy setup, auto SEO improvements (meta tags), customizable titles and meta description templating, Schema.org structured data integration, breadcrumbs, and more.

Downloads: 5+ million
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

SEOPress

SEOPress isn’t nearly as popular as the above two options, but is still loved by the WordPress community with over two-hundred thousand downloads. Launched in 2017. Features include a universal SEO meta box that’s editable from any page or theme builder, completely white label (no advertising) on any of its pages, content keyword analysis, ability to import data from other SEO plugins, and more.

Downloads: 200,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Recipe Plugins

I’ve owned food blogs where I haven’t used a recipe plugin. I merely wrote the recipe out inside the post body. These posts were okay and they ranked well in Google, but I’ll confess that many users left comments complaining about the lack of certain features. The first complaint had to do with the fact that my readers weren’t too interested in my long-winded descriptions of the dishes they wanted to prepare. They were more interested in just the recipe itself. The second complaint was that I didn’t have any print option. If they wanted to print the recipe, they’d have to print the entire post, which was sometimes quite long (meaning, lots of useless paper was printed). The third complaint came from me (and by extension, my readers). It didn’t take long to realize that my recipe pages didn’t offer any of the bells and whistles that I’d seen so often on other recipe websites; sharing, SEO benefits, recipe ratings, the ability to add to collections, thumbnails, metric/standard measurements, and so much more. Needless to say, I’m now a huge advocate for recipe plugins.

The question is, which food blog recipe plugin is the best? Well, that’ll be up to you. It’ll depend upon your needs. I can lead you to some hugely popular options though.

WP Recipe Maker

A very sought after recipe plugin for food bloggers. Features include being compatible with both classic and Gutenberg editors, the ability to add recipes to any post or page, uses schema.org/Recipe JSON-LD metadata, which is what Google uses for their search results, guided recipes for Google metadata, ability to shop for ingredients with Instacart button, and so much more.

Downloads: 50,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Recipe Card Blocks

A different kind of recipe plugin. Uses blocks to display various areas of the recipe input. Included in the blocks: recipe card, recipe details, ingredients, directions, nutrition facts, and more. Features include Elementor support, structured data integration, AMP support, various appearances, works with Gutenberg, and more.

Downloads: 10,000+
Cost: Free with WordPress Business Plan + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Tasty Recipes

Not the least expensive option out there, but apparently loved by many of the top food bloggers. There is no free option for this plugin, but if you’re highly popular, money isn’t as much of an issue as a start-up. Features include multiple themes to match your cooking website, easy installation and use, easy to read recipes and formatting, full customer support, user ratings, unit conversion, video integration, nutritional information, share buttons, jump to recipe button, and much more.

Downloads: Unknown (but very popular)
Cost: Paid
Visit Website

Create by Mediavine

A popular WordPress recipe plugin with over 8,000 downloads. Features include the ability to create multiple Google Schema.org types (recipes, how-tos, lists, roundups), very lightweight with attention toward speed, SEO optimized, easy to use, ability to import data from other recipe plugins, advertisement ready, theme matches website theme, live preview, mobile first, and more.

Downloads: 8,000+
Cost: Free
Visit Website

Star Rating Plugins

We all know what star ratings are. We’ve seen them everywhere. Once upon a time they appeared only on the pages of the websites that used them, but now those same ratings show in search engine results as well. It seems that all top food blogs take advantage of these ratings. It’s because they’re important. Folks who are searching for recipes and see favorable star ratings tend to click those favorable result websites.

To start, I’ll tell you that some recipe plugins incorporate star ratings right in the plugin. When determining whether or not you need a star rating plugin in and of itself, take a look at your recipe plugin first, if you’re using one. You may not need a separate plugin. If you don’t currently have access to a ratings feature in your recipe plugin, take a look at the below list of the best and most popular food blog rating/review plugins.

YASR – Yet Another Star Rating

One of the most popular star rating WordPress plugins available with over twenty thousand downloads. Features include responsive design, customizable settings, intuitive interface, shortcodes, multi-criteria ratings and reviews, schema.org support, WordPress and WooCommerce compatibility, optimized code, and more.

Downloads: 20,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Rating-Widget: Star Review System

Both star ratings and reviews available with this popular food blog plugin. Features include support for over forty languages, GDPR compliant, ratings for posts, pages, comments, WooCommerce, BuddyPress and bbPress forums, custom post types, and authors, fully customizable, and more.

Downloads: 7,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Website Speed Plugins

If you’re new to blogging, you may not be aware of how slow-loading and clunky some blogs can be, especially of they’ve got tons of content on their pages (eh hem, cough cough, food blogs). If you’re not careful, you can easily get caught up in operating a website that’s got terrible speed results and that isn’t optimized in this regard at all. As you can imagine, when it comes to load times, faster is better. Google and the other search engines love speed and having a fast website should be top on your list of items to address.

Not to get too technical here, but caching plugins help website load speeds tremendously. Without a plugin, your website server needs to “serve” your page assets every time someone visits. In cases like these, there are unnecessary server and database responses at every turn. By using a caching plugin, those unnecessary server responses go away. The assets on your web pages are “cached” (stored) in both the user’s browser as well as on the server and the strain on the server is decreased. Below, I’ll list a few of the most popular food blog caching plugin solutions.

WP Rocket

One of the most popular website speed plugins on the market today. This is a paid option; there is no free version. Features include an improved page load time, improved PageSpeed performance score, optimized Core Web Vitals, easy fast setup, page caching, browser caching, or GZIP compression, and more.

Downloads: Unknown (but very popular)
Cost: Paid
Visit Website

Cache Enabler

Cache Enabler is a super popular WordPress caching plugin with over one hundred thousand downloads. Features include fast and efficient caching engine, automatic cache clearing, manual cache clearing, WP-CLI cache clearing, cache expiry, and more.

Downloads: 100,000+
Cost: Free
Visit Website

Spam Filtering Plugins

There are a few WordPress comment spam filtering plugins available today, but Akismet has been available since the beginning of time. It’s the most popular by far and it’s the only one you’ll need if you’re interested in stopping spammers from leaving junk comments on your food blog. I can’t imagine any other plugin that filters spam working better than this one, so this one is the only one I’ll list here. If you have your heart set on using another option, you can easily Google alternatives.

I will tell you that there are other spam filtering plugins available, but many of them filter more than simple junk comments. Some filter comment spam and also filter spam that stems from contact and other types of forms. Some spam plugins offer anti-spam measures as well as other security features, and some offer all that, plus a firewall. Since these types of solutions would require an entirely different post to discuss their merits, we’ll keep it simple and focus only on comment spam here.

Akismet

I’m not sure when Akismet was initially launched. Probably around the time WordPress was initially launched, meaning, it’s quite old. That may be why it’s the best. Lots of history. Akismet is available in seventy three languages and catches and filters both comment spam as well as spam that makes its way through contact forms, if enabled. While the filters in Akismet work silently behind the scenes, the plugin also offers a history panel where you’re able to view each and every comment’s status; whether they were cleared or blocked, spammed or not spammed. Overall, this is the spam filter you’re looking for.

Downloads: 5+ million
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Website Backup Plugins

Backing up a cooking website is nothing new. An industry has been built around this very task and that industry is decades old. The primary methods for keeping a website backed up is to do it on the server through your host, do it on an outside server (like the amazon cloud) through an outside service, or to do it right inside your very own hosting account via a WordPress website backup plugin. Some WordPress plugins also offer backing up to an outside server. Personally, I have all my websites backed up on the server and I also download all my files and databases once per week. But that’s just me being overly cautious.

There’s no shortage of WordPress backup plugins, but two in particular have run away with the market. They’re extremely popular, so I’ll list them below.

VaultPress

VaultPress is actually part of Jetpack Security now, so you won’t be able to download this individual plugin. By itself, VaultPress was highly popular with over thirty thousand downloads. Jetpack Security, however, runs on over five million websites. It’s pretty much the go to security suite for WordPress. Jetpack security will back up your website, act as a firewall to protect from brute force attacks, and stop spam by integrating Akismet into its operation.

Downloads: 30,000+
Cost: Paid
Visit Website

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus doesn’t only back up a website, it also offer migration services. So if you’re interested in moving your website from one server to another, it’ll do that for you. Backing up and restoring from backups only takes a mere three clicks. This plugin is very simple to install and set up. With the free version, you’re able to back up to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and a few more. With the paid version, you’re able to back up to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, and more. You can set your backups manually or schedule them instead.

Downloads: 3+ million
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Photo Optimization Plugins

Like website backup options, there are plenty of alternatives for optimizing the images on your food blog. You can do it through a plugin, through the hosting server via settings, or through an outside service. For food blogs in particular, optimizing images is critical. Each recipe post is generally stuffed with high quality pictures and if left to their own devices, can slow down a page load dramatically. They also eat up bandwidth, which can unnecessarily cost you money. To control all of these factors and to have your photos load quickly and efficiently, it’s best to use an image optimization plugin for your cooking blog. I’ll list a few of the most popular options below.

ShortPixel

Free image compression plugin with paid upgrade available. Features include JPG, PNG, GIF, and PDF compression. This plugin also converts the aforementioned file types to WebP and AVIF. Includes WP-CLI support, cropping within the plugin, PNG to JPG conversion, and more.

Downloads: 300,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Imagify

A hugely popular WordPress image compression plugin with over eight hundred thousand downloads. Resizes and compresses images on the fly as they’re being uploaded as well as images that have already been uploaded. No quality loss with the compression. Offers “Smart Compression Mode” that compresses images without quality loss. Also converts image file types to WebP.

Downloads: 800,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Social Sharing Plugins

We all know that sharing food posts is the thing to do. Once you see that delicious lasagna dish, it’s like the force of 100 hurricanes couldn’t stop you from telling everyone you know about it. If you think this way, you can bet your visitors are thinking the exact same way as well. That’s why it’s so important to give those visitors an easy to use tool to share your posts with their social media followers.

There are quite a few food blog sharing plugins to choose from, but I’ll keep things simple and show you two of the best.

Shareaholic

Offers full suite of sharing tools, from share buttons to theme features to short codes. Follows GDPR regulations. Also has the ability to add Pinterest “Pin It” share buttons that hover over images. Features include floating share buttons, related posts, content analytics, social follow buttons, GDPR cookie notices, website monetization, fully customizable, mobile optimized, fast, secure, and more.

Downloads: 30,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Social Snap

A simple WordPress sharing plugin with over ten thousand downloads. Features include quick install and settings, easy to use and efficient, asynchronous loading, fast loading and high performance, shares Facebook, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, and more, print page button, copy button, multiple placement locations and types, highly customizable, and more.

Downloads: 10,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Contact Form Plugins

Giving visitors to your food blog a method for contacting you is important. Just as important is filling up your mailing list. We all know that conversions, conversions, conversions are the most important aspect of running a successful blog. Yes, you may obtain visitors via search engines. The trick is to keep them once you have them and that’s what contact forms were designed for.

Below, I’ll give you one plugin that’s widely considered the go-to WordPress contact form plugin for food blogging. Heck, with more than 5 millions downloads, it’s not me saying this, it’s everyone else.

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 does a few things very well and over five million websites agree. This plugin gives you the ability to create and customize multiple contact forms. You can also customize the output of each form. Includes AJAX-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering integration.

Downloads: 5+ million
Cost: Free
Visit Website

Internal Linking Plugins

If you’re new to food blogging, you might not have a full understanding of the importance of internally linking between your posts and pages. It’s a search engine optimization strategy that basically keeps all of the pages on your website connected to each other, one way or another. Internal linking, and the anchor text used within those links, is a valuable method for guiding human visitors and search engine robots alike around your website. It’s a fairly comprehensive subject, so if you’re interested in learning more, simply search Google for “Internal linking SEO.” The results will tell you everything you need to know.

For now though, just know that hard coding all of the links in your posts can be daunting. Sure, if you’ve got ten posts or fewer, it’s not an issue; hard code away. But when you’re sharing thousands of recipes on your food blog, it’s not feasible to manage all of your links by hand. That’s where internal linking plugins come into play.

Again, while there are many options that you could take advantage of, I’ll list two that I’m familiar with and that work very well.

Internal Link Juicer

This WordPress internal linking plugin comes with a free option as well as with a paid upgrade. It gives you the ability to interlink posts and pages with just a few settings and keywords. Features include maximum diversification, automation, full control over linking pages, customizable link output, configurable linking behavior, high performance, and more. The pro version unlocks many more features.

Downloads: 40,000+
Cost: Free + Paid Upgrade
Visit Website

Link Whisper

The link below leads to the totally free version of this plugin. Search Google for the paid version. Features for the free version include contextual internal link suggestions, automatic link suggestions as you write your posts and pages, internal link reporting, customizable internal link suggestions and settings, and more.