The Best WordPress Plugins 2021
So you need a website for your business, but your not sure where to start? You need it to look great, be easy to use and easy to manage, and you can’t afford to pay for a developer to do it for you? Where do you turn? WordPress of course!
WordPress is bar far the worlds largest web building platform and if you choose to use WordPress you’d be in pretty good company.
Check out this list of huge companies all using WordPress:
Elementor is a drag and drop page builder, meaning you can build websites without needing to touch a line of code! Just select the element you want to use, drag it into place and watch your website take shape. Elementor is free for their basic plan, which, for most users, is more than enough, however, if you need something a little more impressive they have a pro version starting at $49 – $199 for multiple sites. We love using Elementor as it makes designing the layout of a website a breeze!
Firstly, for those who are new to all this, what is SEO? And why is it important? SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of improving/increasing the quality and quantity of traffic that visits your website. The most high-quality visitors your site gets, the more likely they are to convert into spending customers. The good news is RankMath makes optimising your website easy and even give your pages a score out of 100. RankMath gives you very clear recommendations on how to improve your SEO. The best part, RankMath is free!
How does RankMath compare to Yoast? So Yoast is the largest and most popular SEO plugin on WordPress, however, is it the best? To be honest both plugins work in very similar ways, they both offer really useful recommendations and considering they’re both free, try the both and see which one you prefer!
Now that you’ve got a great looking website and you’re visitors are improving, how do we let those visitors contact us? WP Forms is one of the easiest contact form plugins to use. It has a drag and drop interface and setting up and installing a form is very quick and beginner-friendly, just choose the fields you would like, such as; email, phone and name and then place it on your website. WP Forms is built by the same team behind one of the largest WordPress blogging sites WPBeginner, so you know that your getting somethings very powerful, again, for free!
WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce plugin available for WordPress with over 5 million installs. WooCommerce is an out of the box solution with everything you’ll need to launch a successful online shop. WooCommerce is completely free, which, when compared with other platforms such as Shopify, who charge a monthly fee, that is a huge benefit. Due to WooCommerce’s popularity, they have a huge developer following meaning there are plenty of integrated plugins to fully customise the user experience.
Okay so this is a bit of a cheat, as its not really a stand alone plugin, however, if you are going to use WooCommerce, you’ll need to use a payment gateway, that’s where Stripe comes in. Firstly you need to sign up for a stripe account, then you input your keys and that’s it, your ready to start taking online payments. There is one downside to using Stripe, their fee’s are slightly higher than some other providers, but the ease of use far outweighs the negative. It is also worth noting that Stripe takes security very seriously, so you’re in safe hands.
MonsterInsights is by far the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. MonsterInsights allows you to connect your WordPress website to your Google Analytics account and track your website’s traffic, including how your visitors are reaching your website and how the behave when browsing around. This data is valuable as it allows you to optimise your website to increase traffic and engagement.
The smallest plugin on this list but one that is incredibly useful, especially for beginners. The Duplicate Page plugin, allows you to make an exact copy of pages and posts, keeping the content and design elements in place. Top Tip: Make sure you edit the page titles and meta descriptions as-well-as any SEO information you set, as this will also be duplicated.
When it comes to security plugins, there are plenty to choose from, and all equally as impressive. However, our favourite is Wordfence Security. The guys at Wordfence have managed to bring simplicity and power together in a free plugin that covers everything you’ll need for most basic websites. This free security plugin offers everything from firewall blocks to protection from brute force attacks. They will also send you a helpful email if there are any concerns on your website.
Okay so most of the time your SSL certificate will be handled by your hosting provider or domain registrar. However, if that is not the case this lightweight plugin will handle that for you. Whilst some of the features of this plugin are a little limited, it’ll handle most things you need it to, such as moving the site from HTTP to HTTPS. One things is certain, however you do it, make sure your site has an SSL certificate.
One of the most versatile, and popular plugins for WordPress is the Jetpack plugin. It was developed by Automattic, the people behind WordPress.com. It helps with anything from site analytics and spam monitoring to social media posting and image lazy loading. This plugin is an industry standard and you’ll find it on the majority of WordPress website.
With over 50,000 plugins to choose from available for WordPress, the choice really is yours. That said, for beginners, we would strongly recommend sticking to the most popular options. The popular plugins are likely to have the best technical support as well as being the most unto date and secure. If your still a bit unsure of where to start, but still want a beautiful and responsive website, take a look at our web design services.