What are Must-have Plugins to Add to My New WordPress Site?

16 January 2021

What can you do with the default functions included in the WordPress engine? Not much, honestly. To manufacture an impressive web project, you’ll need to use third-party extensions – frameworks and plugins. This is the thing about WordPress. Every site owner is given the same starting point and you can choose the direction in which to develop a site for your business.

In this guide, I’m going to list the WordPress plugins that, in my experience, have proven to be the most essential and reliable. These are most often used by WordPress owners and are the easiest to work with for beginners.

You’ll Learn About:

What are the essential plugins for your website on WordPress?
Study Crucial WordPress Plugins for Free

While plugins are a powerful tool to extend the basic features of WordPress, you need to keep in mind that overusing them can slow down your site. Also, before installing or purchasing any plugin, make sure to check its WordPress compatibility and the feedback of those who are already using it. You can find the feedback on WordPress Plugins page in the Reviews section of each plugin’s page.

You want only quality products inside your system.

One more hint before we start: remember to back up your site’s database prior to installing any third-party extensions. If you use a ready-to-use design template from some provider, check with them directly to get a list of compatible and recommended plugins.

What are the essential plugins for your website on WordPress?

When it comes to must-have plugins, it is impossible to pass by the ‘SEO’ topic. Search engines become more and more intelligent every single day, which makes us look for new products. Which one to choose depends on your needs and the projects’ structure. It can be a one-page plugin or a complete pack; just make sure it has all the essentials like these WordPress must-have plugins do.

Appointment Booking WordPress Plugin

This product can indeed be called one of the must-have WordPress plugins. If you provide services and need a convenient tool for their management, this option is perfect for you because it was created for it! It allows you to add services and employees, manage bookings, receive customer contacts through the form, and use the calendar to see the entire schedule of booked and free times. In short, the MotoPress team included everything you need for balanced work and a harmonious workflow in one plugin.

Suitable for lessons, equipment, beauty-procedures booking;
Unlimited locations and services support;
Price setup for each option;
Staff timetables;
Comfortable booking Wizard for clients.

Yoast

The product’s creators call their child the #1 SEO WordPress plugin. However, it is not the only reason we decided to add it to the must-have plugins. The plugin has an affordable price and comes with a free version. It does not require SEO knowledge or any other technical skills. The main Yoast’s task is increasing your visitors’ engagement by getting more visitors from Google and Bing. It also has all the essential features to attract people from social media and bring more clean traffic to the project. So what SEO must-haves would you find inside the plugin’s pack?

Finding high-performing keywords ASAP. With the plugin’s help, the keyword-searching process becomes quick and straightforward, as you will find everything right in Yoast. Powered by SEMruch and available in more than 100 countries, the feature shows you high-quality keywords and boosts content’s relevance.
Optimizing keywords. The feature furthers your work by automatically showing synonyms, related keyphrases, plural forms, etc.
Multi-language. Yoast recognizes English, German, Russian, Italian, Polish, Arabic, and many other languages.
Clean data introduction. It is critical to showcase your pages to Google in all their beauty, but you also need to be sure search engines exactly know what the site is about. The feature creates clean SEO-ready data to get Google’s attention and bring better search results.
Indexable. The plugin uses a new way to generate WordPress data, which creates a faster and safer experience.

What are the other features all the best WordPress plugins for SEO should contain? Among the other Yoast’s features, there are the next:

No outdated content,
Page preview,
Readability check,
Breadcrumbs control,
No duplicate content,
Links marking (as sponsored or no-follow),
Block editor and classic editor compatibility,
Internal linking blocks and suggestions,
Elementor integration,
Seamless keyword expert, etc.

AIO SEO

Here is another well-known WordPress add-on, called the All-In-One SEO package. The plugin’s creators say that bettering user experience is it’s #1 feature, from site SEO setup to ongoing SEO optimization. As expected, all the AIO’s components are highly optimized for Google and other popular search engines. So, no matter if you are working on an old project or about to run a new WordPress site, these features would further the success:

Advanced SEO modules,
Local SEO,
SEO optimizer,
WooCommerce SEO,
Smart meta title & description,
Video & news sitemap,
Google links,
Google search console, etc.

Beside, AIO integrates with all popular WordPress add-ons, including the following:

WooCommerce,
MemberPress,
Elementor,
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
Open Graph Support,
Webmaster Tool Content,
Knowledge panel, etc.

Squirrly

This tool is popular among today’s beginners and provides an excellent SEO experience. Powered by machine learning and cloud services, Squirrly offers you to study SEO things with an AI-based private consultant. Like all most crucial WordPress plugins, Squirrly has lots of easy-to-use features to ease your life, including:

Zero-clicks installation,
Customizable JSON-LD schemes,
Social media pixel advances options for eCommerce,
Automation features,
Google Analytics tracking, etc.

Study Crucial WordPress Plugins for Free

Before getting back to plugins, take a look at our new course for WordPress users. It is 100% free and consists of 5 step-by-step lessons on working with the best plugins for WordPress. The Crucial WordPress Plugins course is just what the doctor ordered for those who:

Manage a new WordPress website,
Not sure how to choose plugins,
Want to optimize their business or personal project(s),
Want to provide a better onsite experience,
Going to attract new customers,
Want to get better SEO results, etc.

Long story short, the course would help starters who have never run a website before. It is also a free and all-in-one solution for users with previous site-building experience who want to improve their skills. Here are the main topics the Crucial WordPress Course covers:

How to backup a WordPress website?
How to protect your website?
How to optimize a WordPress-based website?
How to improve SEO?
What are must-have WordPress plugins?

Analytics Plugins

No matter what project kind you launch, it is always important to track your progress. What is more critical, knowing your audience, shoppers’ needs, and habits influence any business development. It is easier to double sales or enlarge the customer base when you see what features people are looking for. So, here are the best analytics plugins to use on WordPress.

Google Analytics Plugin

This tool would be perfect for everyone who wants to improve their website and get more traffic and sales, including:

Business people, startup owners, companies,
eCommerce business owners,
Marketers,
Bloggers & publishers,
Developers & agencies,
Photographers and other creative people.

The plugin is hugely user-oriented, which speeds up the working process, as you can effortlessly connect the website with Google Analytics and start making data-driven decisions. The need to use all the built-in features is what many people hate about modern plugins. Unlike other supporting add-ons, Google Analytics lets its user enable or disable all the advanced Google tracking features in clicks.

To help you better the website, the plugin has the following report types:

Audience report shows detailed visitors’ insights, like where they are from or what they are interested in,
Behavior report shows how visitors find the site,
Content report shows your content’s stats,
eCommerce report with store statistics,
Forms report shows conventions for different contact forms,
Search console report shows whether the website is ranking good in Google,
Custom dimensions report.

Get Social

Nowadays, social media is quite eCommerce-ready, and all the big players already use social platforms to promote. So, we decided to include Get Social in the WordPress plugins’ must-haves selection, as it contains two vital features in one package. Aside from social analytics dashboard and integrations with MailChimp and Google Analytics, Get Social includes:

Customizable share buttons with images,
Mobile share + follow buttons,
Copy & paste share tracking,
Subscriber bar, etc.

Enhanced eCommerce

This plugin would be a powerful weapon for business people, online store owners, and everyone else who takes their deal seriously. It comes with an impressive feature list, and you can make the most of Google Analytics without having extra knowledge. Here are only a few of them:

Guest checkout functionality,
Shopping, checkout, product, and sales behaviors reports,
Captures product impressions, add to cart, product clicks, etc.,
IP anonymisation,
Local currency settings.

Content Editing Plugins

Content creation might be the most critical part of any project’s design. Even if you are a complete beginner, it should be comfortable for you to work on the website content and its forms. That is why we selected for use must-have plugins WordPress users should view before filling their new-born websites with content.

Advanced Editor Tools

Although today Gutenberg is one of the most comfortable plugins, not all users find it easy to work with. Besides, sometimes you already have some add-ons that can’t work together with Gutenberg, so you just have to look for alternatives. The Advanced Editor Tools plugin is compatible with all classic WordPress editor plugins and lets you add, remove and rearrange the visual editor’s components. It includes 15 plugins with various options, like tags, text modes, editing styles, etc.

ZeGuten

Here is a ready-made solution for anyone who needs beautifully created content regularly. The product comes with 20 ready-to-use content blocks, and each of them comes with unique design solutions. You have 5 styles for posts, including Listing, Grid, Chess, Masonry, and Carousel. Besides, the item contains:

Blurbs & Progress Bars,
Image Comparison,
Animated Boxes,
Pricing Tables,
Subscribe and other CTAs,
Contact Forms,
Tabs & Testimonials,
Sliders, etc.

ZeGuten has everything the best WordPress plugins should have and even more.

Pods

Pods is not just a plugin but a full-fledged framework that allows to:

Create various content types, including custom posts, taxonomies, and advances content types with tables,
Create custom pages in seconds,
Create content connections with relationship fields,
Extend and customize different content,
Add custom fields, etc.

Image Optimization Plugins

Image optimization should be the first thing (or at least one of the first aspects) to consider when launching a new WordPress site. The modern digital market offers numerous options to make your images look perfect. You have Retina-ready design, mobile-first design, responsiveness, and other ready-to-use options to choose from. So, how to make the right decision and optimize your website images well on the first try?

EWWW Image Optimizer

This easy-to-install plugin would help you to make the site load faster by optimizing all its images. It is a vital step if you want to improve SEO and boost the bounce rate. Here are the main product’s features:

No limits,
Free parking,
Adaptive steering,
High torque,
Smooth handling,
Bulk Optimizer for multiple content types.

Short Pixel

Short Pixel is another image optimizer that reduces the sizes of your images without losing their quality. The plugin compresses all JPG variations, PNG, GIF, and PDF documents. Among the product features, there are the next:

Integration with Cloudflare,
WPML Compatibility,
Retina Compatibility,
Scale down images, etc.

Imagify

This classic image optimizer comes with all must-haves a beginner might need. And the best thing about the plugin is that you can use it directly in WordPress. With the add-ons’ help, you would optimize the site images in a click. Just enable Imagify to see that all the pics were automatically optimized.

Security Plugins

Easy HTTPS Redirection (SSL)

The name of the plugin already speaks for itself. Would you like search engines to scan your content as a trustworthy one? The plugin would help you to automatically set up a redirection to the secure URL’s version. You can do it for the entire domain or selectively choose pages to redirect.

All-in-One WP Security & Firewall

When it comes to essential WordPress plugins, All-in-One WP Security & Firewall is a must-see. The tool takes care of the project’s security and takes it to a whole new level. You don’t need to be an experienced website owner to reduce the security risk. It would be easy to check the website(s) for vulnerabilities, implement the recently recommended WordPress security practices, and more.

MalCare

This free security plugin is the right choice to secure the website without running out of budget. Here are the main advantages of working with the plugin:

MalCare doesn’t slow down the site.
It is a cloud-based plugin with a built-in malware scanner.
Detects malware ASAP.
Finds all malware types.
Does not influence the website.

Time-Saving WordPress Plugins

Without a doubt, WordPress is a creator-friendly platform by itself. Still, it is always nice to further the working flow, so below, you can see a few add-ons useful for eCommerce websites.

Duplicate Variations

This straightforward WooCommerce plugin allows duplication of products and their variations in a few clicks. All you need to do is select the required item and press a magic button, which creates a clone.

Variation Swatches Program

Would you like to get quick control of all the shop's products and manage them easily? This eCommerce plugin has numerous ready-made styles to make your product pages look outstanding.

Super QR Generator

This eCommerce must-have plugin generates QR code for custom links, pages’ URLs, social media, numbers, product categories, etc. It makes it easy to let prospects find the needed page or product quickly.

In Closing

As you can see, WordPress has lots of plugins for beginners, but even the most experienced users can find some helpful add-ons for their sites. Do you think you already know everything about working with WordPress? Don’t hesitate to get the advanced WordPress certification in this case. It shows you have passed additional testing to bring your skills to the next level.