I have been in the Web Design and SEO business for way too long now! I have tested more than 1000 plugins and many plugins are doing the same things. Here I have only listed the best plugins.
I don’t get any affiliate from any of the plugin authors so these recommendations are as good as unbiased.
The plugins listed here are tested through years and years and I always compare them to similar plugins to see if a competitor becomes better.
These are the best plugins for WordPress when you start your blog.
8 Top Plugins For WordPress
For a long time we used W3TC for caching but over the years it became more and more complicated and often we would see that speed was better without the plugin than with it. That’s why Fast Velocity Minify became our main plugin for caching for some years.
But in 2020 one of my developers tested W3TC again. He didn’t know I ditched it some years earlier and he got extremely good results. It appeared the company got restructured and the plugin got a simpler and much more user friendly design.
Later on we tested a combination of Fast Velocity Minify and W3TC and found that this duo is extremely potent.
If you buy the pro version of W3TC you don’t need FVM. But I hate subscriptions so I wouldn’t buy it. That’s why we found out that FVM can do what the free version of W3TC lacks. And voila! You got two plugins that are pretty explosive!
But you can use either of them with exceptional results.
Smush
One of the heavy optimization tasks of a website is images. Naturally, we want a great image with a lot of detail, but at the same time, it has to be lightweight.
There is nothing as a huge image that ruins load times. Of course you need to cut and size your images before uploading them to Word Press Media Library in your blog. That is very important.
Smush compresses images and makes the them smaller without compromising quality. It is possible to make images even smaller but then you will have to do it manually image by image.
For most jobs, Smush is pretty good. And best of all – it is easy, It does 98% of the work for you and you save a lot of time.
Rank Math
Rank Math the best SEO plugin for wordpress that takes care of a ton of SEO things on your website. I used to be a huge Yoast fan, but I have to admit that Rank Math is the top of the pop right now.
I have the Pro version, but you don’t need that at all. I just want to be able to research keywords a little better but you can use the Keyword Tool in Google Ads to do that. Use Rank Math to connect to your Google Analytics account.
Btw. Rank Mat also offers a free SEO analyzer – Click here.
SEO Redirect 301s
Sometimes it is necessary to change the title of a blog post. What people search for change over time meaning traffic and keywords change.
When we do this it is best practice to also change the slug. But when changing the slug we actually introduce a new article to Google and have to start ranking all over.
SEO Redirect 301 automatically takes care of redirecting traffic and juice from the old URL (slug) to the new.
So all you have to do is install the plugin and forget everything about it. It works in the background and detects whenever a slug gets changed and redirects it to the new slug.
W3TC
W3TC is a caching plugin. In our tests it showed up to be the best cache plugin for wordpress by far. It is the best caching plugin you will get. It is slightly complicated but I will create a video on how to set it up. In the meantime you can find help on YouTube.
The free version can do everything for you except for managing the load of Java script. The pro version can do this but you can also use Fast Velocity Minify for this one thing.
But even if you chose to go with W3TC without managing Java scripts you are in for a treat! It will speed your site up dramatically! And Google like that!
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a brilliant thing. They take care of a lot of security by protecting your site against a number of hacks and they will put a copy of your website on a number of servers in the cloud worldwide. This means your readers will always get the copy that is closest to his hosting company, which speeds up load times.
It can be a little complicated to make it work but if you follow the guide from Cloudflare exactly it is easy. It might take up to 24 hours before everything is ready.
Mail Poet
There are a ton of mail services on the Internet today. They all cost money.
You need something to handle your signups and Mail Poet is free up to 1.000 subscribers. Which means you can get air under your wings for free from the get go.
This gives you a chance to make money and when you reach 1.000 subscribers you can either upgrade MailPoet or sign up for an online service.
All In One WP Security
You need security on your blog. Most people forget that! But there are unlimited numbers of hackers and automated bots out there and eventually, they will find you. I have dealt with a lot of hackers but All In On WP Security makes it much easier and 90% safer to run a blog.
I have had dozens of customers who got hacked by Via*ra Bots. It’s a mess! Most companies take a small fortune for cleaning up after a hacker attack. I am skilled. Have done it soo many times. It takes me max. two hours to clean up. I like it when my customers like me!
It takes 5-10 minutes to walk through the setup but it is absolutely worth it if you are serious about security.
Simple Google Bot Visit
Simple Google Bot Visit will show you on your pages and articles the last time Google read your article. You can also see this in Google Search Console but it is much easier to keep an eye out in your blog.
If Google doesn’t visit your new article you know you need to create more backlinks to it and get your sitemap from Page Rank imported into Google Search Console – if you didn’t do this when you wrote the article!
Being indexed in Google SERPS is a two step process.
- Google first have to find your article and read it. Rank Math can inform Google of your article and backlinks and sitemaps can too.
- Then Google place it in their index – which can take an unspecified amount of time.
This plugin will show you at least when Google has read your article and after that you can only wait.
The Keyword Part
Keyword phrases that didn’t really fit in but are good for attracting less than 20 searches because of low competition.
1. Best Plugin Seo
2. Best Plugin Blog WordPress
Keywords that can bring in more visitors if DomainRank is at least 30.
3. Best Plugins for WordPress
4. Free WordPress Plugins
5. WordPress Plugins List
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