10 Most Useful WordPress Plugins for Websites and Blogs
Plugins make WordPress so value-driven CMS platform for web users worldwide. Whoever considers WordPress the best CMS solution for his blog or business website is aware of the awesome scope of customization through plugins and extensions. While there is a limit to this value addition, we would like to see some popular and widely recommended plugins on the WordPress platform.
You need to target a higher search rank and consistent flow of traffic with your WordPress website or blog. You need to have an SEO plugin to utilize all the key tools and measures that help to boost your prospects for a higher search engine rank. Yoast as of now comes as the most popular and effective SEO plugin for WordPress users. The plugin comes with a free and a pro version.
To help your website visitors to contact you and to build a relationship with them you need contact forms. WPForms is the ideal contact form plugin to help your visitors effortlessly fill up the information and stay in touch with a WordPress site. The plugin allows you to create contact easily with simple drag-and-drop actions. The plugin apart from creating contact forms also allows you to create email subscription forms, forms for online orders, payment processing forms, etc.
Slack is the most popular WordPress plugin for communicating with customers. Slack allows custom integration with WordPress, custom notifications based on specific needs, and integration with other plugins. For any business website, this plugin offers the easiest way to communicate and collaborate with team members.
Jetpack is a rich plugin with several features for WordPress websites. If you want to go for a single plugin that can take care of several features and functions, Jetpack deserves a natural priority. From adding a contact form to utilizing analytics to performance monitoring to social sharing and auto-posting on social channels to the sitemap to many other features you get through this single plugin.
Akismet comes as a default and free plugin that is developed by the developers of WordPress. This plugin takes care of the spam and filters out comments to prevent spam from appearing. Though it is something you get with your regular WordPress installation for free, the plugin does a great job of maintaining and filtering comments.
Google XML Sitemap is the most popular sitemap and SEO plugin for WordPress. This plugin helps various search engines index your website so that it can be found easily and can be ranked against relevant searches. The plugin allows the effortless creation of an XML sitemap for any site just after installation.
WooCommerce is the ideal plugin if you want to build an e-commerce website on WordPress or want to sell something from your regular website. From creating an illustriously beautiful product page to integrating shipping options to payment gateways and customizing store interface, Woocommerce provides you with all just like any robust e-commerce CMS solution.
MonsterInsights is an analytics plugin that utilizes Google Analytics to deliver you all kinds of reports and insights regarding uses, engagement, and traction. The plugin always provides the most valuable stats and insights that you can easily access through the WordPress dashboard. As your business grows and traffic increases, the plugin also ensures scalable reporting and tracking features. The plugin is already used by more than 2 million websites around the world.
For any website taking data, backup is of prime importance as this ensures the security and safety of the data against any contingency. This is a backup plugin to help your website with time-to-time backup. BackupBuddy can take the backup of the theme, Plugins, and media files based on profiles can customize backup profiles, and can back up outside directories as well. With this plugin in action in the backdrop, you can never lose your valuable website data.
When it comes to website performance, caching plays an important role. W3 Total Cache is the ultimate plugin to store your website and session data and make them available as you open a web page later on. The plugin is capable of storing all your open pages and posts as static HTML documents and whenever you open them the next time, the plugin helps instantly load them. If you want to ensure optimum loading speed and performance with a caching plugin, this one works the best.
Conclusion
There are essential WordPress plugins for various features that equally deserve a place in this list. Here we could only pick a few plugins with universal appeal and popularity among WordPress users.
About Author
atman
Atman Rathod is the Co-founder at CMARIX TechnoLabs Pvt. Ltd., a leading WordPress development Company with 13+ years of experience. He loves to write about technology, startups, entrepreneurship, and business. His creative abilities, academic track record, and leadership skills made him one of the key industry influencers as well.