If your website uses WordPress as its CMS, it’s important to choose the right plugins. Plugins are pieces of software you can add to your website to add new features, both onto the website itself, but also to help you run the website in the background.
The best plugins can have a drastic effect on the number of people that visit your site and how they interact once they’re on there.
Here’s a list of our five most useful WordPress plugins and why you should add them to your site.
Yoast SEO
An SEO plugin, whether it’s Yoast or Moz is essential for your website. These plugins help you to optimize the pages of your website and any new blog posts so that they have the best chance possible of showing up in search results.
The reason we like Yoast is its content analysis. When writing a blog post, it gives an indication of what needs improving, such as word count and keyword regularity, so that your post has better SEO.
If SEO is important for your business, we’d always suggest getting a professional to do it. But using an SEO plugin will at least help you cover the basics so that search engines are better able to index your pages.
LiveChat
Next time you’re on our website, you may notice a little pop-up in the corner. It’s our Marketing Assistant, Dan asking if you need any help in a chat window.
Of course, Dan isn’t typing that to every visitor. But if anybody does reply back, they’ll be put straight through to him.
LiveChat is a way to offer real-time customer service to your visitors. Whether it’s answering a quick question about a product or guiding them to the correct section of the website to help.
The major upside of LiveChat is it can add a more human element to your website. Engaging with another person over chat can help you instantly connect with your customers.
WPBakery Visual Composer
Creating a website from scratch is a tough feat, even for a web designer with years of experience. That’s why it’s handy to use a platform like WordPress so that there’s a framework to start with that can be built upon.
But even with WordPress, you need a lot of experience to create new pages on your website. If you’ve got no idea where to start and are still coming to terms with using WordPress, WPBakery Visual Composer can be a massive help.
The composer allows you to create website pages with a drag and drop editor, rather than the basic text editor of WordPress. Meaning you don’t have to worry about coding and can focus on the layout of your pages.
The downside to a visual composer is that it can be limiting regarding what it allows you to do. If there’s something specific you want on your website, you will probably have to hire a website designer to code it for you.
A Backup Plugin
There are a lot of backup plugins for WordPress, so we won’t recommend one. We’ll simply say, there are a lot of backup plugins for a reason. They’re essential for any website.
A good backup plugin will allow you to schedule a full backup of your website to be done regularly. Along with emailing you a backup of your blog posts.
People often think that their website is permanent and nothing bad could happen to it. But you should treat your website like any other piece of data and make backups.
The server with your website on may crash, the building could get flooded, or your site might be hacked. There are any number of reasons your data could get compromised. So it’s always good to have a recent backup so you can easily get your website back online but also, so no data is lost.
JetPack by WordPress.com
So you’ve read this article, and you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. WordPress is meant to make your life easier, not harder. Now you have to install all these plugins, it seems a little too much work!
Fortunately, WordPress have released their own plugin named JetPack. Why is this plugin so amazing? Because it does many of the things listed above, and more…but in one plugin. It’s like fifty plugins in one.
It lets you create backups, check analytics for your website, gives you security protection and includes SEO tools.
The downside is that many of the better features cost money. But the price is worth it for the convenience, and a lot of the main features are free.
For many, it’s the only plugin that is needed.
What WordPress plugins do you use for your website?
