WordPress is a large community with a wide range of offerings. The case is no different when it comes to plugins. There are so many plugins available and at times, it gets difficult to decide which one you need on your website and which ones are just overhyped. Some of them serve some niche purposes but there are a few that are truly must-have for your website regardless of its type.
No matter what niche your website belongs to, there are certain plugins that you would want to install in order to increase the overall functionality.
Here, we are going to discuss 5 must-have plugins for WordPress. We will also explain what makes them stand out.
WooCommerce:
More than 3.8 million ecommerce sites are being powered by WooCommerce making it one of the best WordPress plugins for setting up an online store. With this plugin you will be able to:
- Sort products into categories
- show product ratings
- set the preferred measurement units
- upload unlimited images.
It also has a huge extension library making it highly versatile and you can:
- add a currency converter to the checkout page
- create a live chat
- automate the sales tax
and do much more!
It is also compatible with other plugins and themes.
The list of WooCommerce features does not end here and with this plugin you get access to endless possibilities for your website. Although Woocommerce is free to download and use but not all of its extensions are free. You will have to pay a certain amount for these premium extensions.
Yoast SEO:
Getting your website ranked on search engine is one of the most important steps in the process of brand building. Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin designed to help you publish higher-quality and SEO optimized content.
The plugin uses a smart mechanism to show how your content will fare with search engines. It uses different colors to show the optimization level of the content. Green shows that your content is fully SEO-optimized, yellow indicates that it needs more optimization, while red means that your content is badly-optimized.
This mechanism is influenced by multiple factors including keyword density, use of focused keyword, length of meta description etc. You get a list of all the points you need to improve on .
This plugin does a lot of things like:
- Identify SEO weaknesses in WordPress pages and posts
- Update page analysis results when the changes are made
- Build XML Sitemaps
- Creating SEO breadcrumbs
This plugin can be used for free but you will get access to only basic features. You can get the premium version by paying $89/year for one website.
W3 Total Cache:
Nobody wants a sluggish website because of a simple reason that it has hugely negative impacts on the business and then eventually the sales. You can use a fast and reliable caching plugin like WE Total Cache if you want to avoid this.
This will save your website’s static content into the visitors’ browsers in the form of cache files. Whenever your site needs to be reloaded on these browsers then the server does not need to download all the files again. This will result in the reduced load time of the website.
This plugin also implements Content Delivery Network (CDN) that allows the user’s browser to access your site using the nearest server.
W3 Total Cache is free to download but if you want to use the premium version that you can do so for $99/year.
Broken Link Checker:
In every website, there are some links that point to web pages that no longer work. This can affect your website’s performance negatively by increasing the load time that also results in increased bounce rate. Search engines also drop websites if they include too many missing or broken links.
Going through each and every link on your website and checking whether it is working or not is a tiresome process. To avoid this, you will require a tool that will do it for you. Broken Link Checker is such a plugin. Once activated, it will monitor your site for broken links and send the report via email and the WordPress dashboard. From there, you can edit or remove the links in question.
Some of the key features of this plugin are:
- It monitors all the links on your website and makes sure they work.
- It regularly checks for problems and notifies you if any issue is found
- This plugin prevents search engines from following broken links
This plugin is free to download and use.
Contact Form 7:
You have created a nice website but ever thought about how your visitors are going to contact you? Contact form of your website is something that the visitors and potential customers will use to communicate with you. This is the reason why we have included Contact Form 7 in the list of our must-have plugins.
This plugin gives you the freedom to customize the contact forms of your website. You can tweak the style and add various form fields including queries, suggestions etc.
It also supports CAPTCHA, Akismet Anti Spam, and Ajax-powered submissions.
With Contact Form 7 you can:
- manage multiple WordPress contact forms
- customize your existing WordPress contact forms
- help prevent spam by using CAPTCHA and Akismet
This plugin is free to use. You do not have to pay anything to use its features.
Wrapping Up!
Given the wide range of plugins, it’s very obvious to be overwhelmed when it comes to selecting the right plugins for your WordPress website. If you keep all your requirements and the ultimate goal of your website in mind then you will be able to choose which plugins will help in adding the desired functionality to your website.
However, if you find yourself confused then you can contact me to get some more professional advice. I am just a call away and all your queries will be answered in the most professional manner.
