As a small business owner, your website is one of the most important tools in your online arsenal. It’s the first point of contact for many potential customers and make the difference between landing a new sale. With the right essential wordpress plugins in place, you can enhance your WordPress website’s functionality, speed, and security, as well as improve user experience and boost conversions. In this article, we’ll share with you 10 essential WordPress plugins every website needs. These plugins will help you achieve your business goals and provide your customers with an exceptional online experience.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical for any website looking to rank high on search engines. Ranking high in search engine results makes it easier for your customers to find your business.
RankMath is a plugin that helps you optimize your WordPress website for search engines, ensuring your content is optimized for relevant keywords and phrases. This plugin provides page analysis, meta and link elements, and XML sitemaps. RankMath also analyzes the readability of your content and offers suggestions for improvement. By using RankMath, you can improve your WordPress website’s search engine rankings, which can lead to increased traffic and more business. We ensure that every website we create has an SEO plugin installed and ready to start your WordPress website ranking journey.
Forms are by far one of the best tools in your online toolkit to engage your customers and generate leads. If you have a CRM platform setup (such as Hubspot, Salesforce or Monday.com), you will want to make sure that when your customers fill out a form, the web form is integrated into your CRM. Most CRMs have options to enable you to integrate with your WordPress website and web forms to capture your leads.
WPForms is a user-friendly form builder plugin that allows you to create contact forms, payment forms, registration forms, and other types of forms for your WordPress website. The plugin comes with pre-built templates and drag-and-drop functionality, making it easy for non-technical users to create professional-looking forms. WPForms also integrates with popular email marketing services like Mailchimp, allowing you to grow your email list and stay in touch with customers.
Jetpack is a multi-functional plugin that includes features such as website performance optimization, security, backup, and analytics. It’s a comprehensive plugin that offers a suite of tools to help you manage your WordPress website effectively. Jetpack’s security features include brute force attack protection, malware scanning, and spam filtering. It also offers website speed optimization, image optimization, and caching. With Jetpack, you can keep your WordPress website secure and running smoothly, giving you peace of mind and saving you time.
Website speed is a critical factor in website success, and ensuring that your WordPress website has caching features enabled will help to ensure that your website loads quickly.
W3 Total Cache is a plugin that can help you improve your website’s speed. This plugin caches your website’s pages, images, and other elements, reducing load times and improving user experience. W3 Total Cache also offers features such as minification, which reduces the size of your website’s files, and content delivery network (CDN) integration, which delivers your content to users from a server closest to them. With W3 Total Cache, you can make your website faster, which can improve search engine rankings, reduce bounce rates, and increase conversions.
Images are one of the most demanding type of website content that needs to loaded. Images that are not optimised increase the time it takes to load the website — increasing the time it takes for your customer to view it.
Smush Images is another essential plugin for WordPress websites that every business should consider using. This plugin optimizes images by reducing their size without compromising their quality, which helps to improve website speed and performance. With Smush Images, businesses can compress and resize images in bulk. By reducing the size of images on their website, businesses can improve user experience, reduce bounce rates, and increase their chances of ranking higher on search engines. We include Smush Images on WordPress websites we create to improve the sitespeed performance for businsses.
Spam can be a headache for website owners — it take up time and resources that could be better spent growing your business. Any form on your website can be a doorway that spam can walk through. So protecting your WordPress website is essential.
Akismet is a plugin that helps you deal with spam comments. This plugin automatically filters spam comments, reducing the amount of time you spend moderating comments on your website. Akismet uses machine learning algorithms to learn from your website’s comments, making it more effective over time.
Knowing who is visiting your website is key to building and growing your business website.
MonsterInsights is a Google Analytics plugin that provides WordPress website analytics and insights. With MonsterInsights, you can track website traffic, user behavior, and other key metrics. This plugin offers an easy-to-use dashboard that provides real-time data on your website’s performance, allowing you to make data-driven decisions. MonsterInsights also integrates with popular email marketing services, such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact, allowing you to use your analytics data to grow your email list and stay in touch with customers.
To make the most of MonsterInsights, setting up a Google Analytics account is highly recommended so that you are getting the best insights about your visitors. WordPress websites created by MaginCreative always have Analytics set up prior to launch because we know how important data insights can be to making the right decisions for businsses.
Incorporating these 7 essential WordPress plugins to your website can significantly enhance its functionality and performance, making it more user-friendly and appealing to your audience. Each plugin serves a unique purpose, from improving SEO to speeding up your website’s loading time and enhancing its security. By leveraging the benefits of these plugins, you can attract more traffic to your website, improve your website’s user experience, and ultimately increase your leads and sales. As a business owner, it is crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest technology and trends to remain competitive in the digital world. At Magin Creative, we can help you build a high-performing website that meets your business needs and goals.
