Plugins are bits of software that perform certain functions either by extending functionalities or adding new features when installed and activated on a whole software application program. Therefore, when you install a plugin to your WordPress website, it adds new features or extends your site’s performance or range of capabilities. In other words, plugins are designed for WordPress users to improve site performance for SEO without any knowledge of computer programming languages like PHP.
Over 57,000+ WordPress plugins are designed for the sake of WordPress site administrators. However, as many as these plugins are, it could be a conundrum to you choosing the plugins you should install and activate for your WordPress website in terms of best plugins for site speed, SEO, social media, back up, etc. In this article, ICT Catalogue will suggest the essential plugins you’ll need to install and activate on your WordPress admin backend.
After purchasing a domain name and getting a better WordPress hosting to setup your Website, you will have to install WordPress Theme and move to installing WordPress plugins.
These are the 10 Essential WordPress Plugins to Download and Activate.
As a WordPress site administrator, your website could be professional without you having knowledge of programming languages. WordPress plugins have been designed to bring in essential functions to your website like increase site speed, improve SEO, add email subscriber box, create contact forms, etc. So here are the best 10 WordPress plugins you must have — no matter what you are talking about or doing on your website.
Jetpack
Jetpack is widely regarded as one of the most essential WordPress plugins by many WordPress experts. In fact, it is an all-rounder plugin you should install on your WP admin backend first before any other plugin. It is described as the ultimate WordPress plugin for website speed, site security, anti-spam, malware scan, CSS editing, social media sharing, and many more. Basically, it improves your site’s functionality, allows your WP admin dashboard easy to use, and grows your site for SEO. With Jetpack, you don’t have to know anything coding, because it does everything for you with one click.
Akismet
After activating Jetpack WordPress plugin for WordPress Stats, Website speed, social media sharing and more — the next plugin you should install and activate is the Akismet WordPress plugin.
Akismet is a great plugin that protects your site from spam. You can get it for free unless you receive in excess of 50,000 comments a month. Automatic, the team behind WordPress, developed this unofficial spam defender for all WordPress sites.
Yoast SEO
You can’t be running a WordPress site and not install and activate SEO plugin. Fundamentally. SEO plugins helps optimize your website and make it crawl-friendly by search engine bots. In simple terms, it optimizes your website for SEO.
Having explained what SEO plugins do to your website, it is necessary for you to choose the right SEO plugin to install and activate on your WordPress site. And that plugin is Yoast SEO plugin.
For decades, webmasters and business owners have been using Yoast SEO plugin as it is regarded as the most popular, and most importantly, reliable plugin SEO. What Yoast does is that it helps your web contents search engine visibl3 when you do the on-page SEO like meta tags, meta description, content readability, keyword distribution and density, sitemap submission for search engine bots to crawl, etc.
As far as SEO is concerned, Yoast SEO plugin is concerned too. Therefore, it is one of the essential WordPress plugin you must install.
UpdraftPlus
This is an essential WordPress plugin you must install. It is reliably used by over a million WordPress websites for backup, cloud storage of files, restore, and migration. Therefore, it is necessary to always backup your website in case of errors in functionality, hackers, or you want to move your WordPress to WordPress.org. UpdraftPlus is that one plugin widely used by webmasters. Fundamentally, its features are: create your automatic or manual backup, backup your files locally or in the cloud storage, and restore your website to its previous state.
WordFence Security
Since you are a webmaster, your website is automatically prone to insecurities like hacking, malware, and viruses. WordFence is a security plugin that is designed to fence your WordPress website against these attacks. Also, WordFence alerts you for critical problems occurring on your site and offers you real-time traffic monitoring.
WP Rocket
In terms of caching in WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins designed for this function. WP Rocket is the plugin that stands out in terms of this function.
Caching refers to process of creating static versions of content, and serving that version to visitors of customers. This process makes your website perform at its peak, save up data usage, page load speed, and most importantly, makes it SEO-friendly. So, WP Rocket is the favorite WordPress plugin that rockets your site’s webpages, enables a user-friendly interface, and serves as an excellent caching plugin for WordPress users.
MonsterInsights
Monitoring and keeping track of the data and links that run on your website is essential. MonsterInsights, formerly known as Google Analytics for WordPress by Yoast is one of the essential WordPress plugins you must install, which allows you to install Google Analytics easily and track all the data you need with a one-time click. It allows you to track outbound links, downloads, monitor your traffic, visitors from countries with stricter privacies, and reports all these on your WP admin dashboard.
Optimole
Apart from WP Rocket plugin installed, Optimole should also be installed as it is a WordPress plugin that also makes the images of your website load faster. Fundamentally, it takes your images and optimizes them for SEO, making your site performances improve further for the sake of potential visitors or customers. So, if your website image is yet to be properly optimized, Optimole is one of the WordPress plugins that should be installed and activated on your WP admin backend.
Constant Contact
When your visitors or customers leave your website, surely you would want to get in touch with them outside of your website. This is when emailing comes to play– the most effective content marketing strategy to keep retaining your visitors.
Constant Contact is one of the most essential WordPress plugins you must install as it is one of the most reliable email marketing service plugin used by many WordPress experts and users. Constant Contact allows you to build an email list, send email newsletters informing your visitors about new developments in your products and services, and keep communicating with your customers when necessary. As a webmaster and business owner, it is necessary for you to start building email lists right away to retain your visitors and customers.
Blog2Social
While you might already be super busy with content creation, you find lacking time to distribute your masterpieces across your social media networks. Luckily, Blog2Social is a handy free WordPress plugin that does all the hard work for you. Instead of posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other platforms manually, let Blog2Social do it for you. It supports fourteen different networks.
Other features of the plugin include social media post customization, a function to republish old posts and save social posts as drafts. Blog2Social also automatically adds hashtags that it picks up from your original post’s tags. What’s more, you can edit and adjust meta tag information of your blog posts and pages. The plugin also comes with an extension for Chrome and Firefox, allowing you to save links while browsing the web.
Also: Improve Your WordPress Development Skills
Installing Essential WordPress Plugins for your new WordPress website is vital to help you manage your WordPress CMS web portal.