WordPress is the most popular CMS for websites, thanks to the many features and the great flexibility it offers. However, many functionalities are still missing from the core software upon the first setup. The best way to fill in the missing pieces, of course, is to get yourself the right plugins. WordPress plugins, just like the apps many use for their blogs, can boost efficiency and productivity.
WordPress plugins offer all kinds of customization for site admins. However, with almost 40,000 options to choose from the WordPress Plugin Directory, it can be really difficult to sort the good from the, well, not so useful and practical.
We’ve narrowed it down and compiled the top 10 WordPress Plugins you should definitely have.
W 3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is customized to improve the page loading speed for WordPress sites, which will in turn enhance your website visitors’ overall experience.
The idea of caching is storing the website data temporarily in the cache, and speed up web page loading speed when a repeat visitor opens the same page next time.
The plugin helps to reduce the workload on your server so that your website become faster. By reducing page loading time, overall site performance improves, your site can rank higher ons search engines. Subsequently, your site gets more traffic and even sales conversions.
Yoast SEO
Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. You can optimize your WordPress site for search engines using Yoast SEO. Besides helping you to add meta tags, it optimizes your site as a whole. As we all know, SEO is a priority for every website. The better your SEO, the higher your site will appear in the search engine results, the more traffic you can get. Thus a simple and efficient way to start improving your SEO right now is to download the Yoast SEO plugin.
All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets
The All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets plugin can help give search engines a useful summary of your content to display. Rich Snippets are a special markup that you can add to your content and describe your content more precisely to search engines.
The plugin supports the following content types: reviews, events, people, products, recipes, software applications, videos, and articles. All in all, it helps your site rank better, get more click through rates and site traffic.
WP Smush – Image Optimization
WP Smush is really one of the must-have plugins for WordPress users. Nowadays, many WP users upload images to their sites as it’s a great way to grab visitors’ attention. This can in fact, take up a lot of storage space, and slow down your site. Luckily, you can compress your images to take care of that problem.
WP Smush Pro is well known as the best image compression and optimization plugin. Additionally, it works in a way that saves storage space and helps your site load faster without diminishing the quality and look of your images.
Akismet
One of the most common issues faced by WordPress users is the SPAM comment. You’re going to attract more than your fair share of spam bots no matter your blog is new or has been running for years. Fortunately, Akismet helps to filter out any comments on your blog that look like spam. The plugin automatically checks comments against the Akismet Web service.
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 allows you to create multiple detailed forms on your site. This plugin has a simple user interface and is very easy to setup. You can forget about having only the basic name, email and message field since this plugin does a lot more and works well.
Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML is a must-have plugin as it will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your site. Having an XML sitemap is crucial in helping search engines index your website/blog better.
Web crawlers can see the structure of your site and retrieve the results more efficiently with a sitemap.
Major Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo will be notified every time you create a post about your new content.
SUMOME
SumoMe is an absolute must-have plugin for internet marketers. It includes social sharing (highly configurable), heatmaps (see where people are clicking), content reading measurement (see how far down people read your pages or blog posts), and tons of ways to grow your email list including a welcome mat, pop-ups, hellobar and more. If you are serious about growing email subscribers, we do recommend upgrading to the pro version.
Testimonial Widget
Nowadays, most consumers conduct research online well before they plan on buying. Testimonials and reviews are a great way to provide unbiased feedback about your offerings to consumers looking for the products you offer. This is a great plugin for businesses to showcase their customer reviews. With the Testimonials Widget, you can effortlessly showcase portfolios, quotes, reviews, basic text, images, and videos on your WordPress site.
AMP WordPress plugin
The aim for AMP is for publishers to be able to load their sites quickly on mobile since mobile responsive could be clunky and slow because desktop resources are heavy and plenty. This plugin help translate your content to a very stripped down version of normal web pages, but do contain all the important content with fast loading speed.
So there you go. The must-have plugins for all websites/blogs that built on WordPress, the world’s most famous CMS. Not only do these plugins are easy to install, they give your website/blog a competitive edge.
Give them a try today. Cheers!
