9 Most Useful WordPress Plugins for All Business Websites

It’s quite a tricky job to pick the best plugins from 55,000 official free plugins. In this article, we’ll share the best WordPress plugins that are essential for business.

WordPress is one of, if not the most, popular Content Management Systems available. One of the things that makes it great and the choice of the majority is its customisability with plugins that extend website functionality.

There are more than ten thousands of plugins available WordPress. Therefore, it's quite difficult to choose which one is the best for your website.

WordPress Plugins that boost your website SEO

Time and time again, web developers and gurus have preached about the importance of Search Engine Optimization or SEO. It helps your target audience find you easily and carves out a top spot for your website in search rankings.

You probably already know the importance of SEO, but you might not know how to actually do it. Luckily for you, these plugins take a huge load off your shoulders and help you enhance your WordPress website’s SEO.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast is the number 1 SEO WordPress plugin available. With their slogan being “SEO for everyone,” it’s widely popular because it guides users through the step-by-step process of optimizing their content.

From optimizing your titles and h2 tags, making sure your target keywords are accurate and increasing the overall readability of your content, Yoast makes SEO simpler.

Getting to the top ranks of search engine results certainly doesn’t seem or sound like a task just anyone can do. Still, Yoast makes it possible for the non-experts to learn SEO and boost their rankings.

Out of all the WordPress SEO plugins, Yoast offers the most comprehensive solution to improve your on-page SEO. Yoast helps you add meta tags, generate sitemaps, connect your website to Google Search Console, Analytics and also optimize it for social media.

Link: Yoast SEO

2. Google XML Sitemaps

Another great WordPress plugin that helps you climb up the search engine results ladder is Google’s XML Sitemaps.

This plugin automatically generates an XML sitemap for your website, helping search engine bots view, crawl and index your site easily.

How exactly does this boost SEO, though? Simply put, the XML sitemap acts as the navigation system of Google which allows it to easily locate the essential web pages of your website.

If it’s easy for Google to find those pages, it makes it easy for your target audience.

Link: Google XML Sitemaps

WordPress Plugins that increase your website speed

One of the biggest pet peeves of internet users is a website that takes forever to load. In this digital age, we’ve grown accustomed to fast-paced on-demand services, products and experiences in general.

Needless to say, if your website isn’t snappy and quick, you’re losing the race and your audience. Improve your page speed for SEO, among other things, with the help of these plugins and you’ll be as quick as anyone else on the web.

3. WP Super Cache

One of the easiest ways to boost your website’s speed is by installing and activating WP Super Cache. This plugin doesn’t require you to be an expert to configure it.

It’s easy to learn how to set it up, and with the benefits that you’ll reap, it’s more than worth it. WP Super Cache generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress site, which are lighter and quicker to process than PHP scripts.

So instead of using those PHP scripts, the web server uses the HTML files, making your website load quickly and smoothly.

Link: WP Super Cache

4. Smush Image Compression and Optimization

Oversized and unoptimized images are huge contributors to the lagging of your website. Still, with Smush, you don’t have to worry about it.

Smush is an award-winning plugin and the unanimous people’s champion when it comes to image compression and optimization. From incorrect image size detection to automated optimization, Smush makes it easy to manage your photos.

Trusted by the WordPress community, installing Smush is a no-brainer.

Link: Smush Image Compression and Optimization

5. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market that helps you to speed up your website's loading time & performance.

It automatically turns on gzip compression, page cache, and cache pre-loading. You can also turn on optional features like lazy loading images, CDN support, DNS pre-fetching, CSS & Java minification, and more to improve page load times.

The most amazing feature of this plugin is it automatically crawls and build your website cache which results in an instant performance boost.

For image optimisation, it offers Imagify which is a free. This service will help to speed up your website.

Link: WP Rocket

WordPress Plugins for website security and backup

Hackers, spammers and the unexpected are all constant threats against the safety, security and the general well-being of your website, and they belong to the myriad of things you should know about website security.

Hackers are constantly trying to trespass, spammers cause your website to look unprofessional, and the unexpected can cause a blow beyond reparation if you aren’t prepared. With these plugins, you’ll always have your guard up and your mind at peace.

6. Akismet Anti-Spam

With almost 500 billion spam comments blocked to date, Akismet is the number one anti-spam plugin available for WordPress website.

It guarantees that spam comments won’t infiltrate your website by reviewing every comment that is shared on your website and determining which are spammy.

Helping you maintain the professionalism of your website, Akismet is a plugin that you will be grateful for years to come.

Link: Akismet Anti-Spam

7. WordFence Security

With the number of cybercrimes that happen every day, it’s important to make sure that your WordPress site is always secure and protected.

From protection against malware, viruses, and brute force hacking to a firewall and email alerts that notify you of urgent concerns, WordFence Security has you covered. With WordFence, you can relax knowing that your website is safe.

Link: WordFence Security

8. Sucuri

Security should be a top priority for all the online businesses. Sucuri is the best WordPress security plugin. If you don’t have a firewall on your website, then you need to add one today because nowadays, hackers can attack on your website through any platform.

Therefore, they monitor and protect your website from DDoS, malware threats, XSS attacks, brute force attacks, and basically every other type of attack. Sucuri block hundreds of thousands of attacks every month on your website.

Link: Sucuri

9. UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin

Other than hackers and spammers, there’s always the possibility of the unexpected. Whether it’s because of a hacker or a mistake in coding that causes you to lose all your website’s data and information, nothing hurts more than losing everything and not having a backup.

Thankfully, there is a plugin for that too. When you install UpdraftPlus, it automatically and smoothly backs all of your data and information up to the cloud.

With scheduled backups, all of your work is always secure. It expects the unexpected for you, handling it and leaving you worry-free.

Link: UpdraftPlus

Bonus

Contact Form 7

It’s crucial to have a section in your website where your audience can reach out to you, and Contact Form 7 is the best way to create that section.

It allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms that are both beautiful and efficient without having to go through the coding work.

This plugin can even be linked to Akismet, one of the other plugins mentioned here, so that you can effortlessly filter out spam.

Contact Form 7 is the choice of over 5 million users, and it’s the last contact form plugin you’ll ever need.

Link: Contact Form 7

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

Long story short, Google Analytics Dashboard for WP is the solution to tracking the real-time traffic details of your website.

It makes it easy for you to access and review all activity on your website. From sessions, organic searches, and page views to device categories, traffic channels and more.

It provides you with an easy-to-use dashboard where you can view everything without even having to log into the Google Analytics website.

With the Google Analytics Dashboard, you have access to all the information that you need to evaluate and manage your website.

Link: Google Analytics Dashboard

WPForms

Through the contact page your visitors get in touch with you. WPForms make your work easy. It is the most user-friendly contact form plugin.

It provides you a drag & drop facility. So, with writing any code you can easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, online order forms, payment forms and more with just a few clicks.

It also allows you to create a custom WordPress user registration form and login page. For the simple solution they provide a free version. For powerful features and boost your lead generation efforts they have paid versions.

Link: WPForms

Also published here; originally written by Vivek Tank and has been reposted with permission.