When it comes to building your WordPress website, you’ll find that using some of these plugins will make your website experience way better as it helps you with a lot of things that you might not consider when building your website.
And the best part is that most of these plugins are FREE! If you feel like getting more features, they also have paid versions. So without wasting any time, let’s get into it!
#1 Analytify
Analytify is a Google Analytics plugin that tracks your website’s audience in the WordPress dashboard!
The Analytify dashboard will provide detailed analytics about your website’s visitors, views, sessions, bounce rate, and MORE!
That way, you can see and understand your audience and get detailed information from where your audience’s from, what device they viewed your website from, how long they’ve been on specific pages, etc.
Analytify also shows you which sites are popular and what country your audience is from, along with the devices they’re using.
Lastly, Analytify gives Add-ons!
These Add-ons give you more data about your website and how it’s performing. So if you want to start looking at your site’s Analytics and get to know your audience and goals, you can go check out Analytify!
#2 Divi
Divi is the best WordPress page builder plugin to build stunning websites with ease!
With Divi, the page builder is packed with loads of design elements to build your website with just a few clicks of a button. Not only that, it’s a drag and drop page builder, so you can easily navigate through your website builder while dragging and dropping design elements to create your stunning website.
You also get other cool features like hover effects and scroll effects to bring your website to life! Another thing that’s so good about Divi is that you’re provided with 100+ layouts to build your website.
So whenever you feel like you don’t know how to start on a blank page, you can export a layout that suits you best and re-design it to your liking at any given time.
To learn more about this page builder, you can read my review about the Divi Page Builder Plugin to see if it’s worth it!
#3 Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is the best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin to help your WordPress website or blog/article get to the top page of google!
If the header is too long
If text is too difficult to read
If the words are too complex or too large
Yoast SEO really helps you bring your content to the next level so that people can understand your content better, to get your message across.
That way, you avoid putting out content that your visitors may find complex and bland, causing them to leave your site.
In addition, the Yoast SEO plugin has a Google Preview feature so you can make your website and blogs stand out in the Google Search Engine!
Yoast SEO also has Facebook and Twitter Previews. These features help when someone shares your website on Facebook and Twitter! Displaying the image, title, description you customized.
Hence making your social media optimization quicker and easier so you don’t need to do this manually.
Lastly, Yoast SEO creates a sitemap for your website automatically. The sitemap works like a roadmap, which leads google to all the crucial pages on your website!
Crawlers really like these things because it makes your content easier to find. Although WordPress already has a sitemap, Yoast SEO’s sitemap is more powerful – making your website rank better in the search engine!
#4 Wordfence
Wordfence is a WordPress plugin that strengthens the security of your website with firewalls, malware scans, login security, and SO MUCH MORE!
Wordfence lets you see the current state of your site and shows you issues that you may have on your site – it will allow you to resolve these issues that are prioritized from low to high.
They would either be in a green, yellow, or red coding for issues like malware. Wordfence also describes what issues they are and helps you fix them to keep your site safe from hackers, and so on!
Another thing you need to know is the most advanced feature that Wordfence has to offer, the Web Application Firewall (WAF) – WAF lets you decide how much of your site’s resources can be used by crawlers, robots, and scripts from around the world.
You can also block Countries/IP ranges from gaining access to your site.
Wordfence does offer higher benefits than the free version. However, the FREE plan is still great, but for those who need the paid version with all its features, it’ll cost you $99.00.
If you don’t like Wordfence as much, I can also recommend you check out the iThemes Security plugin!
#5 UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is a WordPress plugin that lets you backup, restore, or migrate your website in just a few clicks!
Updraft Plus also allows you to schedule backups for your files and database depending on the selected hours. Whether it’s every 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, or daily.
To store all your backups, you can choose from various cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and more!…
(You can even download them offline by downloading the files)
Please take note that you can only choose one cloud service! If you want to select multiple cloud services, you will need the premium version.
Most of these cloud services are external, so when you select a service, you might need API Key, Access Key, Authorization, and so on.
(Some of the services might need the Updraft Addon)
However, if you don’t plan on using any of the cloud services, the backups will then be stored on your server. Although, the problem with this is if something unfortunate happens to your website – you might not be able to access your backup files because they’re on the same server.
Another issue is if your website is BIG, having too much backups of it can take up space. Hence, slowing down your server.
#6 Really Simple SSL
Really Simple SSL is a WordPress plugin that migrates your website to SSL.
Hence keeping it lightweight and the options set to a minimum.
And instead of having HTTP on the URL of your website, it will show as HTTPS after installing Really Simple SSL!
The simple reason you need an SSL Certificate is that the SSL ensures that all the data through your website is encrypted and transported securely from the client-server.
Without SSL on your website, your visitors are at high risk of having their sensitive data stolen!
And even though your website doesn’t collect sensitive data, you still need SSL – without it, your website will be at risk from several attacks.
In addition, multiple search engines state that having SSL on your website will give you an advantage over unsecured websites that don’t have SSL!
#7 WP Forms
WP Forms is a Drag & Drop Form Builder for WordPress!
Creating forms is very simple because you can simply start from scratch and drag & drop the fields that you desire. Making it handy according to the number of capabilities that it has to offer.
You can also label the fields of your form and adjust the form’s settings, like where you want emails to go when clients contact you.
#8 Pretty Links
Pretty Links is a WordPress plugin that turns your long ugly links into pretty short links!
For Example:
Original Link -> www.dividemo.com/divi/page-builder/4w58yhn0jt-834n5-8n
Using Pretty Links -> www.dividemo.com/divipagebuilder/
What Pretty Links does is it simply cloaks your link, making it cleaner and professional, so people will know what they’re clicking on. Another cool feature with pretty links is that you can track your link stats and see how it’s performing!
This makes Pretty Links a great plugin that you should definitely use for your affiliate marketing links or other links that you promote like blogs, products, and so on.
#9 Smush
Smush is a WordPress plugin that Lazy Load Images, Compress & Optimize Your Images.
#10 Woocommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress made for small and large businesses. Therefore, makes creating and managing an online store easy!
WooCommerce is known as the largest e-commerce platform IN THE WORLD. It’s customizable and easy to use!
You can simply download the WooCommerce plugin, which comes with loads of pre-made templates of online stores for you to choose from.
If you feel like making changes to the template you’ve selected, you can do so by using page editors like Divi and adjusting each of the elements to your liking!
With this plugin, you can add products to your website, set up a checkout process, set up payment methods and shipping methods, discount products, create coupon codes, and SO MUCH MORE!…
If you like to learn more about the plugin, you can visit the Woocommerce Website!
Conclusion
Now that we’ve walked through these plugins, I really hope you found this blog helpful and that you get to use some of these plugins as they would really help you with your website!