What Makes WordPress Quite Fantastic?
Plugins- that’s what! Such plugins are designed to minimize the need for a qualified programmer, as well as reduce the costs of building your own website from scratch.
There are over 55,000 WordPress plugins available for free and with these many plugins, it’s very easy to get carries away.
The more plugins you add to your web the slower it’ll become.
Because the truth is plugins don’t actually sync up nicely with each other.
And so for this reason I’m only going to recommend 11 best free WordPress plugins for your website. I’ve grouped these plugins together to cover the 5 key areas,
- SEO + Analytics
- Performance
- Backup and Security
- Productivity
- Generally Useful
So let’s jump straight in and explore them one by one.
SEO + Analytics
1. Rank Math
Introduction
Rank Math is designed to be an all in one SEO plugin that takes care of everything related to SEO. It’s creators brilliantly integrated all the functionalities that Yoast offers + added a decent amount of new for which you would usually need to use different plugins.
It’s definitely a handy tool for your on-page optimization, content analysis, redirects, rich snippets and many more.
Why is it worth trying?
- It has got a much nicer interface when it comes to working with the posts.
- It has all the premium features of Yoast and that too for free.
2. MosterInsights
Introduction
MonsterInsights an analytics plugin and it works with Google Analytics, so you will need a Google Analytics account to use it. With over 2+ million active users, MosterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
It lets you set up analytics in just a few steps and at a glance, you can easily see the performance of your site.
Why is it worth trying?
- With Monsterinsights Google Analytics tracking, you’ll get real-time stats, so you can see how your website is doing right now.
- Mosterinsights shows you the most popular posts, pages, and sections of your website.
- This plugin will help you to accurately track your file downloads, so that you can save your time and money by only providing the downloads your audience wants.
- With Mosterinsights you can see how many clicks each banner is getting.
Performance
1. WP Fastest Cache
Introduction
For any company’s website to perform effectively, speed enhancement plays a very important role. If your website takes some time to load then the visitor will definitely leave before it fully loads and will turn to another website that loads quicker than yours.
That is why catching is vital when attempting to optimize your WordPress site. The plugins that are available for performance grading are often quite complex, but interestingly WP Fastest Cache has a comparatively simple design.
It’s a freemium plugin but you’ll be fine with the free version, there isn’t any huge difference.
Why is it worth trying?
- It is really easy to use, it has minimal options. You just have to tick the boxes and it does the rest.
- It is built to reduce the page load time by creating and saving the static copy of your posts and pages, eliminating the number of database queries needed to make the site and the related server load.
2. Smush
Introduction
Smush is a freemium plugin for image compression and optimization for WordPress. Whenever you upload a new image in the media library the Smush plugin will automatically reduce it’s size and that too without affecting the visible quality.
Another great thing about this plugin is that it can enhance all of the site’s current images on your site without needing to upload them again.
Why is it worth trying?
- By using this free plugin you can make sure that all the current and future images that you upload on your website will get load as quickly as possible.
- This not only allows to load your website quicker but it also helps you to reduce the amount of data your website consumes.
Backup and Security
1. UpdraftPlus
Introduction
Backup is the first security element for any WordPress site. While getting automatic backups, you also need a quick way to restore the backup.
WordPress does not provide any kind of backup service. However there are other great backup plugins available which allow you to automatically backup and restore your WordPress site.
UpdraftPlus is one of the most widely known backup plugin for WordPress. With the help of this plugin, you can backup, restore or even migrate your website with just a few clicks. This plugin allows you to do manual backups, scheduled backups and backup to a remote location.
Why is it worth trying?
- UpdraftPlus is a strong WordPress backup plugin and it’s a great option for those users who want the freedom to choose their backup schedule.
- It has been tested on over 1 million sites.
2. Really Simple SSL
Introduction
What is SSL?
Simple Socket Security(SSL) means that when you visit a site, an encrypted link is created between the web server and your browser. With SSL the route between the web server and your browser becomes completely secure. It will make sure that hackers can’t get access to your data.
How do you check if your WordPress website is protected?
By checking if your site’s URL begins with http or https. The “s” means you are secured.
Really Simple SSL plugin detects your settings automatically and configures your website to run over HTTPS.
Why is it worth trying?
- It is one of the most widely known SSL plugins right now with more than 3 million installs and counting.
- SSL plugin automatically redirects all incoming requests to HTTPS.
- The site URL and the home page URL also gets updated.
- All the content gets replaced from http:// URLs to https://
3. Securi
Introduction
Unfortunately, many website owners do not worry about their website’s security, until the site gets damaged. An attack on website can destroy your brand’s reputation, visitors trust, and SEO ranking.
Addition of a security plugin is a great starting point for protecting your website. Such plugins offer a great range of key features such as malware scanning, web application encryption, integrity checks of file systems and many more.
Securi is one of the most popular and widely used security plugin. It offers both free and paid versions, but free version also provides major services such as file integrity monitoring, security alerts, and security hardening.
Why is it worth trying?
- If you don’t want to pay the money and still want valuable security services then yes Securi plugin is definitely worth trying.
- The Securi free WordPress security plugin offers security activity reporting, file integrity monitoring, malware scanning, security alerts etc.
- The customer service is available in the form of instant chat and email.
Productivity
1. Duplicate Post
Introduction
In many situations, it is beneficial to create duplicates of your existing WordPress posts or pages. You may use that copy as a template for future posts, or as a guide when redesigning your website.
Fortunately, there are so many plugins available to clone a page or post in WordPress.
One go-to option for this purpose is a Duplicate Post plugin. This plugin allows you to create a clone of your pages or posts. The aim of this plugin is to create an exact duplicate of a chosen post or a page. With this plugin, you can also clone the emails, slug, menu order and much more besides copying the content.
Why is it worth trying?
- Having a plugin that duplicates will save a lot your time.
- It has over 1 million active installs.
- This plugin is one of the easiest ways to duplicate a post or page in the littlest amount of time possible.
- You can also deactivate it to avoid your website’s speed from slowing down. after you are done with it.
2. Divi Theme
Introduction
Divi theme is not only popular for its classy design and features but also for its versatile page builder. You don’t have to be technically skilled to use the Divi builder. It allows you to easily customize your website and create custom page layouts without writing any code.
Company owners love it because it lets them create their own website as per their imaginations in minutes without hiring a developer.
Why is it worth trying?
- This free page builder helps you build pages visually on the front end of your website.
- You can customize every part of your website- colors, fonts, and text styles everything is customizable.
- Anyone can jump into Divi, thanks to its visual editor and hundreds of designs.
Generally Useful
1. WP Forms Lite
WP Forms Lite plugin allows you to add forms to your WordPress website may be a contact form or a newsletter signup form. It’s really easy to use because it has a drag and drop interface. You just need to drag on the fields you like and arrange them in order that you want and then you can drop the form into the post or a page using a shortcode.
This is usually useful because every website needs a form plugin.
P.S: If you are looking to add more complicated forms pr multiple page forms then you may use other premium form plugin which is Gravity Forms. When it comes to forms, Gravity Forms can do everything.
2. Iubanda
This final plugin is kind of a service and plugin tied together. Iubanda gets you covered when it comes to cookie policy, privacy policy and all that stuff that you need on your website to be legit. And plus these things effect your SEO as well. By using Iubanda you can have a website or app which is compliant with international laws such as GDPR, Cookie Law and CalOPPA.
So if you haven’t got any cookie policy and privacy policy, you need one right now.
Wrap Up
Now you know the best WordPress plugins for your website, we hope this list helps you make improvements to your website. So what are you waiting for? Get started with these plugins today.
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