WordPress is one of the most used content management systems to develop websites in 2022. WordPress platform is gaining popularity for the last few years due to two important reasons.
The first one is to develop a website in WordPress, one need not know to code as it’s mostly drag and drop platform. The second one is the availability of several WordPress plugin that helps a website to attain any kind of functionality a modern website needs.
Here are the 9 WordPress plugin, a new WordPress website must have for better performance.
1. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is one of the most used WordPress plugins to make a website SEO friendly. Yoast does not only help you to improve the SEO of your website, but it also helps you to improve the readability score of your website’s content.
You know the visitors of your website often do not read the complete content right away. They first scan your content by reading a few lines and if the readability is good they tend to read the complete content. This is where Yoast can help by improving the readability score of your website’s content.
Yoast scans your content and proposes changes that will help to improve the readability score.
Some of the important features of the Yoast SEO plugin are
- Helps you to improve the SEO of your website
- Helps you to verify your website with Google Search Console
- Creates XML sitemap of your website
- Can help you control which taxonomies can be indexed
How much does Yoast SEO Cost?
The basic version of the Yoast SEO plugin is absolutely free. However, they do have a premium version with more features. Check the price of the premium version here.
2. Smush – Image Optimization
Do you know that images that are not optimized can slow down your website when it loads? So when you optimize the images in your website, it helps the website to load fast. It is really important for the website to load within three seconds as it’s the benchmark set by Google and it’s also an important ranking factor.
Smush is one of the best image optimization plugins developed by the WPMU DEV team. This plugin can compress the images without losing the quality of the images. This plugin also helps you bulk optimize the images and can lazy load the images when the web page loads. Lazy loading is one of the important features of this plugin as it helps in improving the website speed.
Here are the important features of the Smush Plugin:
- It lazy loads images
- Helps to bulk optimize the images
- Compresses images without losing the image quality
- It can process almost all images files like PNG, JPEG, and Gif files
How much does Smush Cost?
The basic version of the plugin is absolutely free. But there is a pro version with additional features like converting the file sizes to Webp.
3. UpdraftPlus – WordPress Backup Plugin
Do you know that there are several thousand websites that get hacked every day? With WordPress now being one of the most used content management system, there is a high chance of getting hacked. So, installing the UpdraftPlus WordPress plugin is one of the first things to do in a new WordPress website.
UpdraftPlus backup plugin backs up the entire website and you can also store the backup version in exterior storage like Google drive
The important features of the UpdraftPlus plugin are:
- Automatically backs up the website
- Backups can be stored internally or in external cloud storage spaces like Google drive
- One-click restore option to the earlier backup version
How much does UpdraftPlus Cost?
The base version of this plugin with most of the features is absolutely free. However, there is a paid version with additional features.
4. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is one of the best caching plugin that can improve the website loading speed. We have already discussed how important is the website loading speed, as it’s one of the important ranking factors.
Among all the caching plugins available WP Rocket is easy to install and configure. When compared with other caching plugins, it can improve the website speed by more than 63%.
Some of the important features of this plugin are:
- It can cache dynamically generated pages
- Comes with the integrated CDN
- Has the lazy load feature to improve the loading speed
How much does this plugin cost?
There is no free version of the plugin. You can check the price of the pro version here.
5. Redirection
Redirection is one of the mush have WordPress plugins on a new WordPress website. When a website grows there are chances that we may delete some old pages, or merge two pages into one due to content saturation. This plugin plays a major role in setting 301 redirects within your website, when you want an old page to redirect to a new page.
This plugin also stores all the redirects in its database, so that we can disable the redirects any time we wish.
How much does this plugin costs?
This is a free plugin and no pro version available
6. WP Forms
The whole purpose of any website is to generate leads. To generate a lead, you need to install a contact form. WP Forms is one of the best contact forms plugins available in the WordPress repository. This plugin is easy to install, comes with in-built forms, and is mobile-friendly.
Some of the important features of this plugin are:
- In-built form templates
- Responsive and mobile-friendly
- Can be integrated with Google Captcha
- Can customize the form color based on your theme color
How much does this plugin cost?
WP Forms lite is a free plugin and the lite version almost has all the needed features for a basic contact form. However, if you need additional features, you can always go for their pro version.
These are the 6 must-have WordPress plugins that should be installed on a new WordPress website. The installation of plugins is pretty straightforward. However, customizing these plugins need some experience.
If you are new to WordPress, you can get help from an experienced WordPress web development company to have your WordPress website and plugins configured.
