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
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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……
I think Yoast SEO is used by almost everyone owning a WordPress blog or at least it should be. It makes things so easy and straightforward… I also love W3 Total Cache because I’m not a technical person and I wouldn’t be able to improve my website’s speed on my own. Never heard about Replyable or All 404 redirect to Homepage – catchy name 😉 – but I’m going to have a closer look at them very soon. Thanks for this, got a lot of good ideas from your list!
Thank you for your comment Andrew 🙂
You’ve asked about some plugins that are good so here are some I use:
OptinMonster – this is a conversion rate optimization software that helps you get more subscribers
Sucuri – increases security on your website
BackupBuddy – you should always have a backup in case things go bad, no?
MaxCDN – helps with loading times of images and static content
HootSuite – is essential if you want to plan out your Social Media Marketing and reduce the time needed considerably
Insert Headers and Footers – this is a must for beginners and not only them as it makes it soooo easy to add new code in without having to mess about with your theme’s code.
Well, these are the ones I find most useful. Hope they help!
Thank you for your comment Tyler 🙂
These are good plugins. I use MaxCDN on several sites.
Selma,
I hadn’t heard of many of these plugins before reading your article. I’ll be exploring these further.
Thanks,
Greg
Hi Greg and thanks for your comment 🙂
I’m sure, you find the plugins useful and practical.
Have a great day,
Selma
Hi Selma,
Thanks for your ideas and sugestions.
I will try the All 404 Redirects to Homepage. I do not know from where theses 404 errors come from, some of the errors I found has nothing to do with my work, as far as I know, and I was just not considering these errors.
But you gave the idea that it is important and a best practice to some search engines, so I will consider.
Anyway if you can explain better (I am not an expert) why these 404 errors appear, I will be very happy.
Thanks again and congratulations!
Warm regards,
Hi Pedro and thanks for your comment 🙂
The 404 error indicates that the server was not able to find the requested page. The most common cause of a 404 Not Found error is when user follows a broken link or types in a website URL that doesn’t exist.
It’s possible that the content has been removed from the server or the URL has changed.
The best solution to fix this, is to create a redirect and take a URL that does not exist and redirect it to a new post or page.
Hope this helps 🙂
Have a wonderful day,
Selma