The beauty of WordPress plugins is that they can be simply installed on your WordPress website to increase its functionality. By itself, the core WP system is lean, and functions on the bare essential coding. But by installing carefully selected WordPress plugins, you can create a mean machine which functions precisely as you need it to.
You may need a live chat option, an eCommerce option, a sign up form option – there are thousands of plugins to match your needs. But here we’re focusing on 10 essential WordPress plugins that every carefully nurtured WP website deserves. These will help your website function optimally and will improve its search engine optimisation.
SECURITY
1. Sucuri Scanner
This plugin is a toolset for security integrity monitoring, malware detection, audit logging and security hardening.
2. WP Security Audit Log
This plugin allows you to keep an audit trail of all changes made on your site. Very handy if you have multiple users with access to your site.
3. iThemes Security
This plugin (formerly Better WP Security) gives you over 30+ ways to secure and protect your WordPress site. It also offers advanced features for more experienced users to harden WordPress security even further.
CAPTCHA
4. Google Captcha
Prevents spam login registrations and spam comments whilst letting real people get through easily – they simply need to confirm that they are not a robot before they submit a form.
BACK UPS
5. BackUpBuddy
Essential to backup your WordPress site and content – one of the most fundamental good practices for all WordPress websites.
EASE OF USE
6. Duplicate Post
This plugin allows you to clone a post or page, or edit it as a new draft – making life so much simpler!
OPTIMISATION
7. Smush
A great plugin to easily optimise your image file size to improve website performance and boost your SEO.
8. Hummingbird
Hummingbird checks your whole site to find ways to improve loading speed – from file compression and size reduction to browser caching.
9. W3 Total Cache
A plugin to help with SEO and performance optimisation of your site via caching. However it is difficult to develop the site when cache is enabled so better suited to small businesses that make infrequent site updates.
10. Yoast SEO
A great helping hand to get your website fully search engine optimised. It guides you through your on-page SEO by prompting you to define a focus keyword, and ensuring the page URL, SEO title, metadescription and image Alt Text are all relevant to this keyword.
This great guide for using Yoast in WordPress should give you all the information you require.
All WordPress websites need to be given the very best chance – in terms of performance, security and SEO. And we believe these 10 essential WordPress plugins are deserved by absolutely all WP sites!
We are experts in all things WordPress, and if you need any help or support with your site – hosting, maintenance, optimisation or migration – then just contact us.
