As WordPress becomes more popular many plugins can be downloaded to add additional functionality or design aspects that will make WordPress work better for you.
This article explorers some of the many plugins that are available for WordPress, and presents the top plugins for your website.
What is a WordPress Plugin?
A WordPress plugin can be thought of as an extension that extends the capabilities of your WordPress website. These plugins allow you to do anything from adding social media buttons to setting up e-commerce stores or even just changing the layout and style of your website.
There are thousands of free plugins available on wordpress.org, but there are also premium plugins available if your website needs additional features.
The best way to find out if a particular plugin will meet your needs is by reading reviews and watching demos online before downloading it for your website. There are many plugins to choose from, but often time there is a specific type of plugin that you need for your business or organization.
Due to a large number of WordPress plugins available, it’s easy to get overwhelmed when trying to pick one. However, there are many types of specific plugins that can be found to achieve certain goals.
What Plugins Should My WordPress Website Have?
Akismet Spam Protection – Akismet Spam Protection by Automattic is a spam protection tool that everyone who runs a WordPress blog with comments should be using. It’s built into every new WordPress.com site, but it can be installed on self-hosted WordPress sites as well.
This plugin can save countless hours dealing with spam. Your time is better spent writing more content and interacting with your readers, not removing spam comments.
If you’re using WordPress 2.6 or later, this plugin is already active on your site; there’s nothing to do but go into the dashboard and look for new comment spam in your spam queue.
The Akismet plugin is open-source software developed by Automattic, a Web development company founded by Mark Forrester and Matt Mullenweg who also created the blogging system WordPress.com.
The plugin is included in every installation of WordPress 2.6 or higher that has been downloaded directly from wordpress.org or its affiliates. For more information on the software, see the official Akismet website at http://akismet.com/.
Ninja Popups – Now I know what you’re saying… Nobody likes pop-up windows. The fact is though that they have their place and when used correctly can be very effective. Ninja Popups is a versatile WordPress plugin that allows you to create and use a variety of different popup windows on your website. You can trigger the popup based on the percentage of pages viewed, page enter or exit, or any one of many conditions available.
You can display any HTML content in the popup window including text, images, buttons, and videos. You can also put a lightbox on top of the popup to allow users to easily follow links or play videos.
The plugin gives you full control over the look and feel of the popups including their location and whether they open before or after your content. With advanced features like advanced targeting, exit intent, and on-click analytics, Ninja Popups gives you more control than ever over your popups.
You can use the plugin to display any type of content needed including text, images, or even entire articles. You can also include custom CSS styling allowing for unlimited creative possibilities. By providing multiple types of triggers to choose from you can ensure that your popups are presented at the right time to maximize their effectiveness.
Google Kit – The Google Site Kit WordPress Plugin is a free and useful plugin for any WordPress site. It allows you to track your site in Google Analytics with ease.
Google Site Kit is a free plugin that gives you access to your website metrics from within the comfort of WordPress. It allows you to track your site’s content and traffic with Google Analytics and automatically adds your site’s most recent posts to your analytics profile. It does not use Ajax on the front-end, so it works great with caching plugins.
To use Google Site Kit, go to your site’s dashboard, hover over the “Plugins” menu item, and click on “Add New.” Search for “Google Site Kit,” then follow the installation process. Once installed, you’ll have access right away in the WordPress Admin Menu.
You can now see how many visitors have viewed, searched, or commented on a page! You can also see a list of keywords that have been used to find your site.
The Google Site Kit plugin for WordPress is a good tool to use in conjunction with your website’s analytics account. The plugin gives site administrators quick and easy access to their Analytics data from within WordPress. As such, it helps reduce the time that would otherwise be saved if users had to switch between Analytics and WordPress, then make the appropriate changes as they desired.
Although Google Site Kit is a great plugin overall, there are still some things it could improve upon, such as the ability to track which keywords have been used to navigate to a site from major search engines like Google. It could also improve by allowing support for more analytics accounts, as well as better integration between Google Analytics and WordPress Multisite. Still, it’s a great plugin overall without too many flaws.
It is very easy to set up, as you only need to insert your tracking code snippet in the plugin settings. Clicking update will do the rest for you. The best part of all is that it’s free! No premium upgrades or membership is needed.
It is great for any WordPress site, whether you are running a personal blog or an e-commerce website.
Yoast SEO – With over 12 million downloads the Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress is one of the most popular plugins out there. This plugin comes with a snippet preview and page analysis functionality that helps you optimize the content of your pages, images titles, meta descriptions, and more to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between. Most websites that are concerned with SEO use this or a similar plugin. You can download it free.
Yoast SEO can help you improve your site’s SEO, but it also adds dynamic functionality. This means that the plugin is constantly learning new things about how users interact with your content and website. For instance, if you publish an article that gets a lot of attention on social media, future articles of yours will be given a higher social media score. This means that the plugin will start to see your posts as more important and beneficial for search engine users, which is a win for you.
The plugin also comes with some great features for developers. First of all, the plugin only loads when it needs to, which saves on-site speed and load times. The plugin also comes with a variety of SEO features that you can disable if you don’t need them.
The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress sites because it has so many great features. The snippet preview functionality helps you see what your page will look like in search results, and the page analysis functionality helps you understand how well you’re optimizing your content. Dynamic features mean that as the plugin learns, the plugin can optimize your site even better.
The Yoast SEO WordPress plugin is free and only loads when it needs to. Most sites will use this or a similar plugin to improve their SEO and prepare for ranking in search engine results pages. You can download the plugin free today!
Elementor – Elementor is a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) Drag & Drop WordPress Page Builder Plugin that allows you to create beautiful and engaging websites. Using Elementor brings more flexibility for designers, saves time for developers, makes updating easier both for site owners and developers.
Elementor comes packed with everything you need to create beautiful websites. No other WordPress page builder can compete with Elementor in terms of features. With its Visual Layout Builder, unlimited rows and columns, live customizer 100s of content elements, ability to add 3D/Parallax effects, full-screen intros… Elementor is all you need to create any kind of website.
Elementor uses WordPress Customizer which means live previews and instant updates. Edit your content, see the changes instantly, and fine-tune the details — changes are updated in real-time! Elementor’s intuitive UI can be described as a Visual Drag & Drop Page Builder and real-time Markup Editor.
Many Site Builders are usually just drag-and-drop, often not offering enough design customization options which results in the same look for all websites built with that builder, but it’s different with Elementor! With Elementor you can customize every single pixel of your website to look unique and amazing.
Using Elementor is good for designers as you can customize everything with no limitations and use the familiar WordPress Customizer to see changes in real-time, so it’s also great for developers!
In Conclusion
Plugins can add additional functionality to your WordPress site and help personalize it to your needs. I talked about how plugins are useful and what types of plugins you should install. I also gave an overview of five useful plugins that every site should consider. If you use this list of plugins, you can greatly improve your business’s website.
You know how difficult it can be to find the right plugins for your WordPress website.
Whether it’s adding new functionality or improving existing features on your site, our WordPress development team can deliver on all your requirements. Contact us today for more information, or call (206) 388 3843.
