One thing that any WordPress user should already know is that there are pretty much thousands of plugins available. While it’s nice to have the choice of plugins, the sheer range you can choose from can be overwhelming and it’s hard to know which ones really live up to the hype.
You probably also know that there are only a few plugins that are must-have, all-rounders that work for all sites. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what type of website you’re running, which industry you work in and how many people currently visit your site – you need to know the best plugins to install, which is exactly what this article is for.
Did you know? Over 24% of the sites you find on the web are powered with WordPress and this number is growing.
This means that there are more and more people out there looking for a functional site to be able to handle the essentials – and this is why plugins are so important. A WordPress blog can easily be enhanced by the simple use of plugins, and some of the best out there are used so much that they have millions of downloads by tons of users.
So, based on many years WordPress experience, which plugins deserve their place in our “top 5 best WordPress plugins out there”?
1. Akismet
Blogs draw a lot of comments, which is what any WordPress blogger wants for their website. The only problem is that a lot of comments are junk – pure and simple automated spam comments created by bots.
This nifty little plug-in can help you to filter out the junk comments and even delete them, so that you never have to deal with them. They’re time-consuming for any blogger, so this is a great plug-in to assist you in your efficiency efforts. When your junk comments are moved out of the way, you can focus on your real user comments and save yourself a lot of time.
2. Revive Old Post
Referral traffic is a big deal to any website, and one of the largest sources of referral traffic is social media. If you’re not active across a myriad of social media platforms, you could be losing out on a huge chunk of potential for your website.
Revive Old Post can help you to drive more traffic to your site with the use of social media. This plug-in is automated, which is a bonus as it’s going to save you time and energy trying to share your posts across all social media posts.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tweet-old-post/
3. Yoast SEO
SEO is a big deal for any website. Everyone knows that this is the case and many companies and bloggers rely on SEO to push traffic and turn referrals into visitors and followers.
Creating content is the easy bit, but hitting the right audiences? That’s the complicated part.
Yoast SEO helps you to optimise your WordPress posts, see how your current content is doing and helps you to improve the readability of your content to your site visitors. A must for any website owner!
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
4. Wordfence Security
Added security measures to your WordPress site is important. Passwords are great, but cyber hackers love a little bit of code to crack, which is why plugins like Wordfence were created.
It features blocking networks that are malicious and trying to break into your site, scanning your site constantly for vulnerabilities and alerting you when your site is open to attack from outsiders.
This plug-in is essential if you are running your WordPress website on a lower end shared hosting provider.
5. WP Rocket
Recognised as the most powerful caching plug-in, WP Rocket can help you to speed up the loading times of your website, making your site run more efficiently for visitors.
You can improve the browser caching at the user-end, and enable faster loading times. This helps your servers to do less work and speed up your website at the same time.
A blog that loads quickly is one of the things that users want the most – we live in a time where we want instant access to everything, and your website can appear far superior to the rest if you can speed it up a bit!
Given that there are thousands of plugins, there are far more out there that you can spend time exploring for your WordPress site. However, these five are the ones that can make a big difference to your website.
You may already have an understanding of code, but if you don’t, plugins can fill the knowledge gap and allow you as the site owner to improve the site and its functionality. If you’re all about the user experience, then this is something that you should be exploring today.
