With thousands of plugins on the market made available for WordPress sites, narrowing this list to just 3 essential plugins was no small feat. With so many industries, I wanted to share a few that stand out to me as must-have plugins for all sites no matter the niche. Below I list my reasoning behind my selections along with some keys features as to why you need to install these plugins on your WordPress website today if you haven’t already. 

1. Yoast SEO 

Every single day Google handles over 9 billion searches alone, and if you want a piece of this organic traffic pie, developing a SEO strategy is a must. Of course there are wide selection of SEO plugins on the market but it’s easy to see why Yoast SEO is one of the most popular tools in the space. For newer sites and those with smaller budgets, the free version will provide you with all the capabilities you will need to get started. There is also a premium version that comes with additional features that you can use right away or add on later as you scale. You will need to perform basic keyword research the Yoast plugin will guide you step by step through the process of optimizing your new content for the search engines.

Key Features: 

  • Title, keyword and meta description templating to better optimize WordPress post and pages.  
  • Simplifying advanced XML Sitemaps functionality with the push of a button.
  • Improvements made easy by see just how well content is optimized. 
Get Yoast SEO

2. WP-Rocket 

WP Rocket is by far my favorite caching tool on the market. Nobody likes visiting website with slow loading times and having a caching plugin is going to help you speed up loading times on your website. WP Rocket will create cached copies of each dynamically-generated page on your site, leaving less work for your servers. What really makes this plugin stand out from the rest is just how simple the setup is compared to other cache tools in space.  

Key Features 

  • Caching creates an ultra-fast load time, essential for improving SEO and increasing conversions.
  • Improves user experience 
  • Enables lazy loading 
  • Integrate with (CDN) Content Delivery Network’s like Cloudflare 
Get WP-Rocket

3. Contact Form 7

If you want to convert site users from visitors to customers providing a contact form is something you see on almost all websites today. Contact Form 7 will allow you to seamlessly create and manage multiple forms. This simple and easy-to-use plugin will not only allow you to quickly create forms but also allow for easy integrations with other tools like newsletter opt-ins. 

Key Features

  • use reCAPTCHA verification to filter out spam (Integrate with Aksimet) 
  • integrate with mailing list like Constant Contact & Mailchimp 
  • Lots of third-party extensions to add additional functionality
Get Contact Form 7

 

 

These 3 essential plugins were selected because they will work wonders for all websites no matter the size or niche. Additionally, there is a clear funnel created by installing these plugins. Yoast SEO to create organic traffic, WP-Rocket to create a better user experience with faster loading times, and then finally converting those organic users with a contact form.