If you’re starting off setting up your WordPress site, you’re joining a vast community of open source users and web developers. This is a smart move because it connects you with tons of free resources that you can further develop yourself or gives you a window into whom you would like to purchase premium products.
That said, there’s a dizzying array of options when choosing WordPress themes and plugins. In fact, the WordPress plugin directory contains over 50,000 options. Which ones are the best WordPress plugins?
In this article, we’re going to save you a truckload of time and work by talking you through 7 WordPress plugins you need to install today. When you follow the advice in this article, your website will make the transition from an amateur effort to a professional finish.
1. Website Take-Off With Jetpack
The Jetpack plugin offers a free set of core functions that serve to enhance and optimize your website. For example, it will back up your data and protect you from other malicious programs that want to exploit potential vulnerabilities in your website software.
The plugin has an easy to understand dashboard that will help you see the website status across these performance areas. You can also upgrade to a premium version for more comprehensive features.
2. SEO Buster with Yoast
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seems very complicated and overwhelming. The Yoast plugin will help you follow some of the essential on-page rules for optimizing your links, headers, and content.
It has a nice feature that allows you to choose the keyword and will then tell you how many times that word appears in your content (keyword density). This plugin uses a simple to understand traffic light system that conveys the parts of the page you have done correctly and also what needs improving.
3. Speed Up with WP Super Cache
In the modern world of the internet, people are used to getting information super fast and then moving onto the next interesting tit-bit. That means if you want to hold someone’s attention long enough for them to read your website page, it has to load pretty quickly.
If the user is left waiting for your page to load a moment too long, you can kiss them goodbye as they will soon click on another link. This plugin will speed up the load time of your pages and the speed of your website.
4. Google Handshake – Google XML Sitemaps
When your website goes live, Google will need to trawl through the site, indexing all the pages and their content. This will allow Google to direct search inquiries more accurately to your website and content that matches the searcher’s needs.
This plugin is an indexing tool that will make all of your pages and their content visible to Google. Without it, it’s like trying to find a book in the library without an index card. This plugin is also useful to update Google as you add more pages to your site.
5. First Contact with WP Forms
This is another essential plugin for your site. Creating relationships and getting contact information is a vital part of marketing and developing your site. This one of the awesome WordPress plugins that will allow you to create various forms for users so that they can input the needed information.
The user interface is very friendly and easy to use. In fact, building forms is one of the fundamentals of good website construction. You can check out some other WordPress resources for beginners here.
6. MonsterInsights – Google Analytics
This plugin will help provide you with vital information about the usage of your website. Things like how many visitors you have and what pages they looked at. What search terms they used and how long they stayed on your page etc.
This type of website ‘intelligence’ is essential in developing the content of your site and optimizing it so that it offers a good experience for the user. You will need to start to get used to using dashboards that this sort of information. In fact, WordPress itself has its own dashboard that you also need to be familiar with.
7. Anti-Spam with Akismet
This clever plugin will basically protect you from spam attacks. This is a malicious type of software deliberately designed to steal sensitive information or cause havoc on your website, causing you to take it offline.
Not only that, spammers are trying to hijack your computer and use it for their own purposes. This neat plugin will help protect you. You can also decide to purchase premium services that may be needed to further protect the commercial aspects of your site.
Spam is no joke, and you need to take its threat seriously. This simple to set up plugin is essential to protect your website in an increasingly hostile internet landscape.
Best WordPress Plugins – Get Started
There are only so many plugins you want to use on your website before it will start to slow down with all the processing, so you need to choose wisely. Thankfully, in this article, you have read about 7 of the best WordPress plugins. You may decide you do not need all of these helpful WordPress plugins. If that’s the case, then fair enough.
The good news is that they’re free and you can give them a go. If you decide they don’t fit, you can always delete them.
The important thing is to get started. If you have any questions, you can get in touch with us here. We will be glad to help.
