WordPress has become one of the most popular open-source content management systems in the world. That’s fancy-talk for a hosted website platform that’s intuitive to use, frequently updated, and immensely powerful in the right hands.
Much of this power comes from the easy-to-use plug-in system that accompanies the WordPress platform, allowing you to customize how your site works effortlessly.
While there’s a host of fantastic platforms, applicable to almost every niche you could want, here’s 5 must-have WordPress add-ons no website should be without.
An SEO Plugin
Search Engine Optimization is essential if your website is to thrive and drive your marketing goals. Despite the many other options you have for drumming up web traffic, having a site optimized for search engine performance that will aid native ranking and drive customers to your website remains a cornerstone of smart marketing.
There’s a host of great SEO plugins for WordPress, but by far the most popular today is YoastSEO. Regularly updated, with robust security and intuitive information, it makes the process of keeping your website’s SEO tip-top simple and accessible.
Smart Contact Forms
Another essential part of running a successful website is ensuring your clients can reach you through a number of contact channels that are convenient to them. While it’s great to have a range of these, an onsite email contact form is a must.
However, these forms can easily become weak spots in your cybersecurity, prone to spammers, bots, and other issues. Luckily, there’s a number of great WordPress Plugins that can help.
WP Forms remains a strong and robust choice for most websites, so if you’re looking for a top scorer, try this one.
Data Analytics
In the online marketing arena, data is king. If you aren’t using solid analytics on your websites, so you can track visitor behavior and learn more about the people interested in your product (and what brings them to you), you’re already behind the pack.
There’s a host of fantastic competitors in this WordPress plugin arena, but MonsterInsights remains an easy-to-use and simple data analytics plugin.
Speedy Responses
Load time is another critical area you need to perfect on your website. Stats suggest that you have only 10 seconds before a user clicks away. If those 10 seconds are being wasted on loading times, you’ve already lost the sale. You should ensure that your website is optimized from the ground up, but having a plugin or two to help doesn’t hurt either
Look at Optimole to help you ensure seamless load times across all your images. Images can account for up to 50% of the lag in load times, so ensuring a great response here can vastly improve your user experience. WP Rocket helps optimize your cache folders, too.
Security
Last, but certainly not least, you need robust security. Most of this starts on the server side, but you can do a lot to secure your WordPress site, too. With WordPress being one of the most popular web platforms on the net, it’s also the target of a lot of malicious intent and security threats.
A plugin like iThemes Security can help you tighten up weaknesses in WordPress, and keep your website clean and safe.
With these 5 WordPress Plugins under your belt, a safe, better web experience is guaranteed.
