Running a WordPress site? As a web design company in Surrey, we have listed some of the top WordPress plugins that are a must-have for all business websites. From WordPress security plugins to SEO plugins and social media plugins, this list covers all the essential areas of your website that needs to be regularly optimized. Thus, with these plugins for WordPress, you can automate various optimization tasks that will help boost your site’s performance.
Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites
1. Akismet Anti-Spam
The Akismet Anti-Spam WordPress plugin helps in checking the contact form submissions and comments while comparing it with the global spam database to prevent malicious content being published on your site. Akismet checks the comments and filters the one that would possibly be spam messages automatically. It also has a discard feature to block the spam and free up disk space which helps speed up the website.
2. WP Super Cache
With over 2+ million active installations, this WordPress plugin is one of the best ways to speed up your website. It enables you to dynamically generate static HTML files which are served to the users instead of heavy WordPress PHP scripts. It also offers three caching modes (Expert, Simple and WP-cache caching), so even a non-technical user can use it easily.
3. Smush Image Compression and Optimization
If you want to optimize your images without losing its quality, then this is the best WordPress plugin there is. One of the reasons for a sluggish website speed is heavy media files. Thus, with the WP Smush plugin, you can optimize images and resize them without any hassle. Also, it allows you to compress and optimize 50 images at a time. Plus, it allows for automated optimization for faster compression on upload.
4. Elementor Page Builder
The Elementor page builder is a never seen before WordPress website builder that has no limitation of design. It offers several unique features; shape dividers, background overlays, hover effects, box shadows, animations, headline effects, gradient background and much more. Thus, offering you an all-in-one design platform to create pixel-perfect designs with clean codes.
5. Yoast SEO
This is a #1 WordPress SEO plugin with over 5+ million active installations. It allows you to create an XML sitemap. It allows you automate canonical URLs and meta tags. It provides Google search result snippet preview and offers breadcrumbs support. It makes RSS footer/header configuration easy. It also offers content analysis and innovative schema blocks. In short, it is the top WordPress plugin for novice website owners and SEO professionals.
6. Google Analytics by MonsterInsights
It is one of the most popular Google Analytics plugins for WordPress as it enables you to connect your WordPress site to Google Analytics with just a few clicks. Using Google Analytics is important to understand how users find and use your site. With this plugin, you can see real-time statistics right in your WordPress dashboard. Plus, even if you switch your WordPress theme, it helps you to keep your tracking code.
7. WordPress to Buffer
A smart social media tool, this plugin helps you to auto-post any content from your site to your social media profiles. It allows you to schedule your posts well in advance and tracks important metrics like the number of likes, shares, re-tweet and more.
8. Broken Link Checker
Broken links on your website can lead to a high bounce rate, which could affect your rankings. As such, use this WordPress addon (plugin) which makes it easier to find and fix broken (internal/external) links on your website.
The Broken Link Checker plugin has a number of features including; detecting missing and non-working links, monitoring internal and external links in your post/pages, comments, preventing search engines from following broken links and more.
The best part, this plugin is highly configurable and notifies you about the broken links via email or WordPress dashboard.
9. SEO Optimized Images
Now you can easily insert SEO-Friendly “alt” and “title” attributes to your images with this plugin that is simple to activate and ready-to-go once you provide it with the required pattern. SEO-friendly images will drive more traffic to your site from Google Image search engine. Plus, this WordPress plugin ensures that no changes are made to your existing database, nor does it collect, store or share any user data.
10. Sucuri Security
One of the best WordPress plugins, this free plugin helps to keep your site safe from malware, spam, and hack attempts. It offers remote malware scanning and allows you to monitor file integrity. It helps you with complete website security audit and offer a vast range of features including blacklist monitoring, website firewall, post-hack security actions and more.
11. All In One WP Security & Firewall
As the name suggests, this is an all-in-one security plugin that is designed and written by experts, making it easy to use. From database security to file system security to htaccess and wp-config.php files backup & restore, this is the most comprehensive plugin to strengthen your site security. This plugin allows you to add Google reCaptcha to WordPress login form, provides password strength tool to create a strong password, offers firewall functionality and more. Moreover, with the login lockdown feature, it protects your site against ‘brute force login attack.’
12. UpdraftPlus
One of the best plugins for WordPress site backup and restoration, UpdraftPlus allows you to set-up automatic backup schedules as per your convenience. It has a user-friendly interface and offers 1-click restore option. Plus, it also allows you to save (backup) your files and database directly to Google Drive, UpdraftVault, Dropbox, Rackspace Cloud, OpenStack Swift, DreamObjects and Email.
13. BackupBuddy
This WordPress backup plugin by iThemes allows you to schedule daily, weekly and monthly backups of your site. Unlike the other must-have plugins for WordPress on the list, BackupBuddy is a premium plugin that you need to purchase. It allows you to store backup files remotely on Dropbox, Amazon S3, FTP, Stash, Rackspace Cloud and Google Drive. It offers easy restoration option and allows you to download a zip file of your entire WordPress site.
14. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the most popular WordPress plugins and a powerful caching tool. It is a premium plugin that needs minimal configuration and has automatic optimization features. It offers page caching, cache preloading, static files compression, images on request etc. The best part, this plugin is not only developer-friendly but also user-friendly.
15. AddToAny Share Buttons
One of the oldest social media share buttons plugin for WordPress, AddtoAny is a lightweight and highly customizable plugin that offers standard & floating share buttons, share counter, follow buttons, and more. It can also be integrated with Google Analytics. Most importantly, it is 100% responsive, browser-compatible and supports 100+ sharing and social media sites & apps, including Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Tumblr etc.
16. Redirection
Redirection is the most popular WordPress plugin that helps you to manage 301 redirections and track 404 errors. It is a highly recommended plugin, especially for websites that require bulk redirection.
17. Revive Old Post
Now you can boost your social media engagement with the help of this plugin that allows you to automatically share old and new content from your WP site to social media. It allows you to schedule posts for social media share. It helps you to create hashtags and is compatible with URL Shorteners. What’s more, you can keep track of your social media traffic with this plugin as it offers easy integration with Google Analytics.
18. PrePost SEO
This plugin checks the SEO score of any post before publishing it, which helps improve the SEO of the web page. It helps check grammar/spelling errors and prevents plagiarism & duplication of content. It notifies you about broken links in your post. It also checks for alt attributes and analyses your meta tags. Plus, it provides helpful suggestions on how to improve your blog posts.
19. RafflePress
RafflePress plugin is used to host various contests and games for the visitors on website or social media. It captures the visitor’s attention with attractive giveaways, which will help grow your email list and boost engagement. It offers social media integration with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and more. It also comes with tracking and re-targeting feature that can help maximize your conversion goals.
20. Wordfence Security
It is one of the top WordPress security plugins offering features such as malware scanning, web application firewall, brute-force login protection, two-factor authentication, hacker recon protection and more. It also makes it easy to manage the security of multiple websites from one place. Check out this infographic for more details.
21. iThemes Security
With over 30+ ways to secure your site, iThemes Security is a must-have WordPress plugin. Your site can be an easy target for hackers due to weak passwords, obsolete software and plugin vulnerabilities. Thus, with the iThemes Security plugin, you can quickly fix any vulnerabilities, strengthen visitor credentials, put a lockdown on WordPress and stop automated attacks on the site. Also, the PRO version of this plugin helps you to harden the site with its advanced features.
22. Contact Form by WPForms
With pre-built form templates and easy workflow, this is the most user-friendly and beginner-friendly WordPress plugin for creating quick forms for your site. It allows you to create forms for contact information, subscriptions, payments, feedbacks and much more within minutes. Also, the forms created with this plugin are 100% responsive and optimized for speed.
23. Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is one of the oldest and most trusted plugins for WordPress, with over 5+ million active installations. It helps you to manage multiple contact forms at the same time and allows you to customize your forms & mail content by using a simple markup. What’s more, this plugin also supports Akismet spam filtering, CAPTCHA, Ajax-Power submitting and more.
24. PushEngage
For easy web push notifications, PushEngage is the recommended plugin as it supports all browsers including Opera, Microsoft Edge, Chrome, Safari, UC Browser, Firefox, and Samsung Internet. It is available on both devices i.e. mobile and desktop. It also provides HTTP and HTTPS support. Plus, it offers seven different types of subscription opt-in, which can also be customised.
25. WooCommerce
The world’s most popular open-source eCommerce solution, WooCommerce helps you to build stunning online stores. It is a free plugin that enables you to customise pages in minutes. It lets you retain the full ownership of your content and data. It also comes with built-in tools that help with easy integrations.
26. Constant Contact Forms
This is another WordPress plugin that allows you to create mobile-optimized contact forms. It lets you customise data fields and automatically selects the theme/style of your WordPress site. This plugin is available for all WordPress users, even those who don’t have a Constant Contact account.
27. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a pop-up builder that helps you create stunning pop-ups, email subscription forms and sticky announcement bars that can turn a visitor into a customer or subscriber. The pop-ups and newsletter opt-in forms are responsive, and it offers smart targeting and personalization features.
