Since being founded in 2003, WordPress.org has risen to be the number one self-hosting tool for blogs and websites. Most WordPress themes take very little effort to set up and customize, and for the aspects you need that aren’t in your theme, there are a myriad WordPress plugins. With so many to choose from, it’s helpful to know what other users find helpful, and why.
Most Popular WordPress Plugins
1. Askimet
This anti-spam plugin is included in WordPress installations, so it’s at the top for more than one reason. Downloaded more than 25 million times, the easily integrated tool helps fight spam comments. In its tenth year, and at the top of the list, you can trust that Askimet by Automatic can keep spam on your site to a minimum.
2. WordPress SEO by Yoast
With more than 14 million downloads, Yoast’s SEO platform does a lot of the SEO legwork for you. There are extensions for this plugin, which include:
- News SEO
- Video SEO
- WordPress SEO Premium
- Local SEO
- WooCommerce SEO
3. Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is a customizable form for your website. Not just any contact form: you can have it collect, store and display whatever information your site actually needs to collect – nothing more, nothing less! Email list, CAPTCHA and CSV export all work well with Contact Form 7, and its versatility and usability have earned it nearly 22 million downloads.
4. Google XML Sitemaps
Your XML Sitemap allows Google and other search engine spiders to effectively crawl your site. Setting up a custom sitemap like Google XML Sitemaps allows you to tell the search engines which information to index, which to not index, and to give priority to certain aspects of your site.
Having an efficiently crawled site is great for your SEO, because it allows you some control in how search engines see your website.
5. Jetpack by WordPress.com
WordPress.com has its benefits, but having your own self-hosted WordPress.org site definitely has advantages. Take into account that with Jetpack, you can enjoy all of the WordPress.com features that aren’t otherwise available to WordPress.org users.
6. Wordfence Security
Wordfence is the most popular advanced security plugin, with nearly 4 million downloads. Its long list of features provides users with the following:
- Core file scans
- Backdoor and malware scans
- Limits bots and spiders
- General hardening
- Blocking attacks
- Scanning for bad URLs in your content
7. Google Analytics by Yoast
In addition to tracking your Google Analytics for you, this plugin allows you to:
- Tag outbound links, 404s and downloads
- Filter user levels
While it’s not necessary to use a plugin to track your Google Analytics, it’s convenient, easy and extremely popular, earning nearly 7 million downloads.
8. NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN is an image gallery plugin and has more than 11 million downloads. Features include:
- Managing multiple galleries
- A variety of display options
- Several effects options
9. WooCommerce – Excelling eCommerce
WooCommerce has become the top WordPress eCommerce plugin. With over 5 million downloads, it’s making online sales easier and more seamless for web-stores everywhere. WooCommerce has a huge range of features and several additional features are available through extensions, making it fully customizable to your needs.
10. WordPress Importer
If you’re importing your content from an older version of WordPress, a WordPress.com site, or any other platform, you’ll need to use this plugin. It handles safely importing all of your pages, posts, categories, tags and custom fields. Given this plugin’s importance in a fairly common task, it’s no surprise that it has almost 9 million downloads.
These are my pics for the top 10 WordPress plugins, and the downloads certainly speak for themselves. Download this eBook and learn more about digital marketing for your business. Remember there is ROI in branding yourself online, and using WordPress for your blog is one of many ways to achieve this.
What about you? What’s your must-have WordPress plugin?
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