5 Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Every Website
WordPress Plugins: Plugins are pieces of software that enable you to expand the functionality of your website, and they're one of the main reasons. WordPress has become the most popular content management system on the planet. But where do you begin when there are approximately 55,000 plugins to select from in the WordPress plugin repository? How can you tell whether a plugin is genuinely necessary or simply bloat? What are the absolute must-have plugins? While we're pleased to provide recommendations for WordPress plugins, we understand that you probably want the facts. We've created a list of plugins we suggest for almost any WordPress site. This list is for you whether you're getting ready to launch a new site or attempting to improve an existing one. You may realize later that you need more plugins depending on your specific requirements, but this selected plugin list should be an excellent starting point.
A search engine optimization plugin
Because of its numerous built-in SEO capabilities, WordPress is often regarded as one of the most SEO-friendly CMS systems available.
But what truly makes WordPress sites shine in search engines are all the third-party SEO tools and plugins that allow for additional optimization.
As a result, we believe that an SEO plugin should be installed on every WordPress site.
There are various plugins dedicated to search engine optimization, however, the Yoast SEO plugin is what we suggest to our customers.
It is, without a doubt, the complete solution for keeping your site's on-page SEO efforts in top shape.
And we're not the only ones who think so: Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time, with over 5 million active installs.
Yoast gives you the ability to optimize specific pieces of content while also allowing you to customize sitewide SEO settings.
For example, Yoast will enable you to adjust SEO titles and meta descriptions for each page and post on your site.
You can speed up the process even more by using title and meta description templating for various post kinds.
This is helpful if you have a large amount of material to manage!
Yoast also includes the comprehensive capability for producing and uploading XML sitemaps and complete control over your site's breadcrumbs.
There are free and paid versions of Yoast, but the premium edition is a good investment if you're serious about your site's SEO.
A form-filling plugin
Connecting with your clients or audience is one of the main reasons you have a website.
Forms are a common way to make that connection - it's rare to find a professional or business website without some contact form.
You'll need to pick a form plugin to add forms to your WordPress site.
There are many form plugins out there, so narrowing down all of your choices might be difficult.
The plugin commonly regarded as the "best" may not be the most excellent option for you.
While some websites may need a premium, feature-rich form plugin to achieve their specific objectives, the same "powerhouse" plugin may be excessive (and, frankly, a waste of money) for a smaller site that requires a straightforward contact form.
When we published our guide to the top WordPress form plugins, we considered this variety of demands.
We discovered that there are a LOT of excellent alternatives out there in our search to find the best form plugin for most WordPress users.
While we prefer the premium Gravity Forms plugin and routinely suggest it to our customers, we were pleased by several free and low-cost alternatives, such as WPForms, Ninja Forms, and Formidable Forms.
Finally, the ideal form plugin selection will rely on your demands and budget; therefore, we suggest examining each one's benefits and drawbacks before deciding.
A plugin for backups of remote sites
Do you depend on your web hosting company to back up your website? We certainly hope not!
The backups offered by your web server are just insufficient.
Every WordPress website should have external site backups performed regularly, and these backups should be managed independently of the hosting provider.
With so many free and premium WordPress backup alternatives available, there's no reason!
To borrow from an old Chinese saying, the ideal time to set up an external backup of your website was yesterday, and the second-best time is now.
Not sure where to begin when it comes to choosing a backup plugin? Don't worry, we've got you covered.
We analyzed six of the most popular backup plugins — including BlogVault, VaultPress, and Updraft Plus, among others —
In our guide to the best backup plugins for WordPress and found what we think to be the best backup plugin for most WordPress site owners.
Page speed optimization plugins
Patience is not a highly valued characteristic when it comes to perusing the internet.
User experience, online accessibility, and SEO benefit from paying attention to your site's performance.
If your website takes more than a few seconds to open, you're likely to lose people — particularly mobile device users — before they can look around.
Your page speed may make or break your position for a competitive term since Google wants to offer its search engine visitors the most excellent quality results.
For these reasons, we believe it is essential to install a plugin that improves the speed and efficiency of your WordPress site.
WP Rocket is one of the most popular performance improvement plugins.
This plugin comes with a slew of great features that work together to cache your pages and improve your site's performance.
It's a plugin that we strongly suggest to all of our customers.
Installing an image compression plugin to improve page performance is also recommended.
Imagify, which was created by the same people that made WP Rocket, is one of our favorites.
The Imagify plugin automatically decreases the file weight of any photos you submit to your WordPress site after it's installed without affecting image quality.
Beautiful pictures and a lightning-fast website? Please, yes!
A spam filtering plugin
Is your blog's comment section clogged with spam? Spam isn't simply a pain to remove;
It exposes your site's visitors to phishing and fraud and jeopardizes your site's trustworthiness.
Fortunately, installing an anti-spam plugin is one of the simplest and most effective methods to keep unwanted information off your WordPress site.
Akismet Anti-Spam, created by Automattic, is our anti-spam plugin of choice.
Akismet stops spammers from spreading dangerous material by screening out anything that seems to be spam from any comments and contact form submissions your site gets.
For personal, non-commercial usage, Akismet is "pay what you can," whereas commercial sites start at just $100 per month.
