Believe it or not, there are over 30,000 plugins for WordPress and the number keeps on growing. We have completed a list of 10 vital WordPress plugins you will find useful, no matter what type of website you run. If you want your website to be secure, fast, high-performing, and user-friendly, learn more about these essential plugins. Each one of them is the creation of skilled developers. Each plugin on our list is also updated regularly and rated highly by its users. They work flawlessly with many themes and on various versions of WordPress. Most importantly, these WordPress plugins are totally free.
How many WordPress plugins does your site need?
You have probably heard that installing too many plugins can slow down your site. However, some plugins on our list actually do the opposite. How many plugins you should have depends on your site’s needs. The point of installing these plugins is taking full advantage of the site you are running. So, which plugins you install is far more important than their number. It is recommendable that you select ones that are highly rated and have multiple functions and then have professionals keep your plugins in check. Some of those plugins are right here on this list! So, keep reading and find out which WordPress plugins every website needs.
1 WordPress SEO by Yoast
There are many SEO plugins for WP. Since they are not all equal, it is very important to choose the right one.WordPress SEO by Yoast is powerful and offers many options. This plugin has been around for over a decade now and it is extremely popular. You can opt for a free version or a premium one for some additional features. Whether the free option would be enough or you should purchase the premium one depends on your website’s needs. But, whatever option you choose, using Yoast SEO for WordPress can help your ranking tremendously. This plugin helps you optimize your pages/blogs for search engines. It checks readability, key phrase density, images, links, etc., advising you what needs to be improved.
2 MailChimp For WordPress
Everyone who takes email marketing seriously will find MailChimp one of the most useful WordPress plugins. This plugin captures email addresses and sends them to the lists of your choice within MailChimp. Then, you can design emails and select the lists of addresses to send those emails to. All you need to do is sign up for a MailChimp account and install this useful plugin on your website.
3 Jetpack
This is another WordPress plugin that has multiple functions. It is like having 20 plugins in one. Some of its functions are showing basic site stats, automatic posting to your social media, site monitoring, etc.
And that is just the free version. All you need to do is open a wordpress.com account since Jetpack is already an integral part of a WordPress site.You can activate/deactivate individual modules to fit your specific needs or upgrade to a premium version to get additional features.
4 WP Smush It
The importance of visual marketing is undeniable. Without images, your content will come off as dry and boring. However, high-quality images are typically large files that are too slow to load. Large image files tend to load slowly as well. If your website is image-heavy or it has large image files, WP Smush It is exactly what you need. This WordPress plugin compresses images to make them smaller and easier to load, thus, images will appear instantly on your page.
5 Simple Social Icons
Nowadays, social media marketing is of utmost importance for your brand. There are a lot of different plugins you can use for your social shares. However, this WordPress plugin truly stands out as far as simplicity, aesthetics, and customization are concerned.
6 WP Super Cache
A slow website is a website visitors leave in a matter of seconds. To increase improve user experience, we suggest installing this handy plugin. This plugin creates static pages of your website which are then served instead of processing full PHP scripts. As a result, page-serving time is reduced significantly. This plugin provides caching for visitors browsing your site on mobile devices, too.
7Akismet
Comment spam can clog up your site, ruin the user experience and damage your brand. This reliable, effective plugin helps block spam if your website allows user-submitted comments. Akismet antispam is actually the most popular plugin of all time. Although it is free for personal use, there is a small fee for commercial use.
8 Google XML Sitemaps
Search engines require a sitemap to index your site. Submitting a sitemap to search engines is key to good SEO. Unless you want to do it manually, which we don’t recommend, install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. It will save you a ton of time and help boost your ranking on search engines. The sitemap this plugin creates is compatible with Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
9WPForms
Every site needs a good contact form. Users do not want to copy and paste your email address so they can send you an email, especially when using a mobile device – and we know that most searches today are done on a mobile device. This WP plugin is user-friendly and has powerful features. It provides an efficient, user-friendly way for visitors to get in touch with you at any time. The forms are simple and easy to customize.
10 Elementor Page Builder
A page builder is basically a plugin that enables you to build pages with sections, modules, and widgets. Unfortunately, most page builders are either expensive or lack some features. Building a web page from scratch is time-consuming and frustrating (for most of us). Luckily, this amazing WP plugin comes with a ton of templates ready to go. This is a simple and intuitive front-end editor that is full of useful features. It enables you to have full control over every element on your page.
Conclusion
Website design and maintenance is hard work. No wonder many businesses use the services of professional companies, such as the one behind wpfullcare.com, to take care of their website. Using WordPress plugins is essential, whether you want to optimize your website for search engines or just enhance user experience. So, if you want a better performing site, consider installing some of the thesevital WordPress plugins every website needs. They do wonders and cost nothing!