There are almost 50,000 plugins in the WordPress plugin store. Sifting through to find ones that work, are supported, and are easy to use can feel like you’re trying to find a grain of sand on a beach. 

So to help narrow the search a little, I’ve put together the top 10 plugins best WordPress plugins for 2017. You might not need all of them, but even with the best external apps like Google Analytics, you’re bound to be looking for at least one or two.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the world’s most popular SEO plugin and consistently ranks in the top 10 plugins that are most popular on WordPress.

It helps with your SEO readability, quality, and content, all in an easy to use interface.

You can write custom title, add Twitter Cards, Open Graph meta data and Sitemaps. You can also ping search engines whenever you update your site.

2. W3 Total Cache

Website speed is important. Like, really important. But if your site isn’t quite up to the challenge of satisfying impatient users, you can use W3 to grease the skids, so to speak.

There are tons of different kinds of caching, but W3 takes them all and puts them into a tidy bundle for you. Now, your site is easily accessible from literally anywhere in the world.

3. EWWW Image Optimizer

Another speed demon on our list of top 10 plugins is EWWW Image Optimizer. This plugin will help get your images in the right format at the right time. Using modern compression techniques and image best practices, it’ll keep your beautiful site light and fast.

4. Disqus Comment System

Disqus is basically a social network of comments. It replaces your blog comments section and lets people comment and discuss posts, where their comments follow them around in a profile. With notifications to comment replies by email, it makes it easy to manage your community and deepens community engagement on your site.

5. Jetpack

Jetpack is an amalgamation plugin developed by WordPress themselves. It helps with everything from SEO to backups, speed tests to email list management. For a one-stop shop, it’s hard to look past Jetpack.

6. Google XML Sitemaps

Submitting your sitemap to Google is a critical part of getting found online. Fortunately, you can automate this process. Google XML Sitemaps fires off a new sitemap whenever your website changes with fresh content, so you have one less thing to worry about.

7. All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets

Rich Schema.org snippets are a great way for you to exploit a niche and improve CTR. All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets makes it easy to take advantage, without having to have a lot of technical know how.

8. Replyable

Replyable is another plugin for comments that allows users to subscribe to your comment threads, so you’re ready to engage your audience at a moment’s notice.

9. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is another amalgamation plugin, only this time it’s specifically for e-commerce websites. It will help you with everything from shipping and payments to analyzing your store with in-depth analytics.

10. All 404 redirect to Homepage

Yes, this actually the name of the plug.

And it pretty much does what it says – it pushes all your 404 redirects to your homepage.

Since 404 redirects are part of the best practice for major search engines like Google and Bing, they’re a critical part of getting your site ranked.

Plus, they improve the user experience, so instead of a user clicking on a deleted post and going nowhere, they end up back on your homepage so they can browse your site some more. It’s a win-win.

Summary: top 10 plugins you can’t live without

There are plenty of plugins out there that leave something to be desired. But with these top 10 plugins, you’ll have your WordPress site humming in no time.

Question: What plugins are you using that other WordPress bloggers should consider? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Until next time……