10 of the Top Plugins for WordPress You Can Get Right Now

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There are over 55,000 WordPress plugins (and rising) and many of them are not good.

The plugins that are great, however, can do incredible things for your website from helping you customize your website without code to optimizing your SEO rankings.

With so many options available, it can be very difficult to know which ones will add the most value to your site. That’s why we’ve put together this list of ten top plugins for WordPress to help you get your website running at it’s best.

Check them out below and see what features you’ve been missing out on.

10 of the Top Plugins for WordPress

1. Beaver Builder

One of the major hurdles for people creating their own WordPress site is the difficulty they face with coding.

Often, people spend a long time just to learn how to move a text box or expand a background. In frustration, many leave their design as ‘good enough’ even if they’re not completely happy with it.

That’s where plugins like Beaver Builder come in.

It saves you countless hours by turning your page builder on WordPress into a simple drag and drop feature. If you struggle to learn how to code then this is an essential plugin that you can’t be without.

2. Jetpack

There are few plugins more perfectly designed for WordPress than Jetpack because it was literally made by the same people who made WordPress itself.

WordPress gives each person the ability to customize a site to suit them perfectly. So even though the team created something very useful, they still wanted to give everyone the option to choose whether or not to use it.

What makes Jetpack so good is that it offers a whole suite of extensions that bring numerous benefits to your site.

For example, it provides site security to help fight off potential hackers and the ability to help you improve your site performance by consistently scanning for issues. It can even help you with your social media outreach and content to ensure your website gets the maximum exposure possible.

Of course, because it offers so many features it isn’t as specialized as other plugins which offer just one. So while some of the plugins below off similar features to Jetpack, they may do so at a much better quality.

Either way, Jetpack is a fantastic plugin worth considering especially as it lets you do so much from one place.

3. Google XML Sitemap

Optimize your SEO rankings and help drive traffic to your site with the Google XML Sitemap plugin.

Having a sitemap is an essential component that helps users navigate your site quickly and effectively. An XML sitemap provides the same thing except for SEO search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

The best part is that this plugin creates a detailed, up to date XML sitemap for you automatically making it easy for search engines to navigate your site. What’s more, the plugin will update the XML sitemap every time you update a page ensuring you’re always optimized.

4. WP Smush

There’s nothing worse than landing on a website that’s covered in text and bulky paragraphs. It looks unattractive and is very off-putting.

That’s why more and more websites have started condensing the amount of text on their page and using images to bolster the overall look. Unfortunately, this has led to websites with extremely large image files embedded in them, making the loading time significantly longer.

This is a significant problem as research has shown the longer a page takes to load the more likely a user will leave the page.

That’s why WP Smush is such a useful and effective plugin.

The main function is to compress all of your site’s images to drastically reduce the file size. Best of all, it does this while also optimizing the image so that it doesn’t lose quality.

It also has a feature that compresses the files you upload and attach, making it extremely user-friendly.

5. Yoast SEO

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a crucial part of any successful website and the major difference that helps ensure your website appears on page one.

The problem is that as you create your site and write content for it (along with meta descriptions and keywords) you don’t know if it’s actually effective.

As one of the top plugins available, Yoast SEO serves to help you improve in all of these areas and make your site’s SEO much more visible.

It does this by giving you quick and effective visuals to guide your content while proving tips to help you improve.

For example, if you have a page that focuses on a service you provide, then Yoast will scan it and provide feedback. If you have failed to provide enough keywords, this will appear in red as a critical issue. Once it’s resolved, Yoast will show it as green instead.

This traffic light approach is simple but effective and has helped thousands of website owners create better content that drives organic traffic to their site.

6. Contact Form 7

Another simple plugin for people who struggle with coding, Contact Form 7 does exactly what the name suggests.

Created to help people easily make contact forms, this plugin has a variety of features and options that make it very useful.

For example, it allows you to manage many forms at once and gives you the ability to customize each one to your preference.

It also has built-in features to work with other plugins such as Akismet (featured below) which help filter out potential spam.

7. W3 Total Cache

Caching is a critical component of loading a website fast and effective for any users who return to your site.

Essentially, when a user lands on your page for the first time, they have to load everything from scratch. This information, however, is stored temporarily in the cache so if the user returns, the information is already there and website loads faster.

As mentioned above, the faster a website loads, the more time a user is likely to spend on it.

W3 Total Cache is a plugin which has a number of essential features and benefits to help mediate this. Among it’s cashing capabilities, it also improves site performance, renders pages faster, improves your web server performance, and more.

Just know that it can conflict with other plugins like Jetpack which also has a cache feature so be sure to check the compatibility of your plugins.

8. Wordfence Security

It goes without saying that your website’s security should be one of your top priorities.

Annoying as it is, thousands of websites are targeted every day for a range of reasons from the stupid to the criminal. Some hackers do it as a challenge, others to gather your users’ information to sell or even exploit.

Hacks and malware have been the downfall of many websites forcing site owners to start from scratch meaning they lose all of their hard-earned data and SEO rankings.

That’s why Wordfence Security is a comprehensive plugin designed exclusively to protect WordPress sites from hackers and malware.

It features a firewall (which is consistently being updated) that scans your website to identify and block and malicious traffic. It also alerts you to possible security issues and protects you from coordinated attacks by enforcing secure passwords and limited login attempts.

The list of features goes on, and it’s worth noting that the premium version provides even better security such as two-factor authentication and more.

9. Akismet

Bots, trolls, and angry keyboard warriors are the bane of legitimate sites everywhere. They turn conducive discussions into arguments and create a bitter environment for your users.

Akismet was designed to combat this issue and help protect your site’s integrity and user experience. It automatically scans through comments, contact forms, and other user-submission areas to check for spam and other malicious pieces of content.

The best part is, all the information it collects and blocks is presented in an easy to use dashboard giving you extra control.

It even flags users who have a history of spam content while also showing which have provided sincere comments. This allows you to ‘badge’ high-value users so others know they are trusted by the site and worth listening to.

10. WooCommerce

If you’re running a website that sells products then WooCommerce is a standout choice.

It’s an extremely versatile plugin which gives you a wide range of tools to make the selling process as easy as possible for both you and your customers.

For you, it sends updates when stocks are low, allows you to customize the display of your products and even generates reports to help you see what’s happening.

For your customers, it enables easy checkout solutions by working with all major forms of payment and even helps with shipping by calculating the costs and tax rules automatically.

With over 30% of all online stores using it, it’s easy to see why WooCommerce has made this list.

Start Improving Your Website Now

WordPress can be complex and difficult, especially for first time users who don’t know how to code.

That’s why the top plugins for WordPress are so successful. They help streamline every aspect of your website to make it as easy as possible for you to focus on the parts you love.

Be sure to check out the other sections on our site for more tips on how to improve your website.