If you want to turbo charge your wordpress to rank to the top of google, bing or yahoo in 2017 – these are some of the WP plugins that you cannot afford to miss.
Here are seven of my favourite plugins available for WordPress. each of them comes with a Free version (lite) and a Pro version, which will cost money.
List of top WordPress Plugins for 2017
Nothing rivals Yoast SEO as the first Plug In to add to every site. For a start, it provides feedback on the SEO of your post. It tells you what you’re doing right and what needs improvement.
Y0ast SEO will also help with promoting your site on Facebook. By using the settings for each post you can set the Facebook title, image and description that will appear if you post it as a link.
One of the plug ins that your WordPress website will have automatically loaded when you install is Askimet.
It is designed to help protect your site from all those pesky spam comments that plague the internet.
Although the plugin is free, there is a premium option that adds security features, unrelated to comment spam, to your site.
Rich Snippets is a free Plug In that will help with how your site will look when it appears in search results.
You can add things like star ratings and reviews and particular images that will make your search result stand out. Simple but useful.
Wordfence Security Plugin
Having your website hacked is a pretty awful experience even if it doesn’t end up costing you a whole lot of money. When it happened to one of my sites a few years ago, the feeling was uncannily similar to the feeling after having my house burgled. Even if everything is covered by insurance it’s that feeling of violation.
At worst, a hacker could end up wiping away all your good work on your site and steal data that you’ve collected, including passwords.
So you must keep your website secure and Wordfence Security is one of the best defences going around.
The plugin provides Firewall protection and will constantly scan for malware of any kind. You can also see what is happening on your site at any given time, as the plug in monitors in real time all visitors whether they be humans or bots.
The real-time traffic feature helps in identifying any threats and let’s you take immediate action when required.
Jetpack is a multi-purpose Plug in that simultaneously helps grow your site’s traffic while also providing security for your website.
The Plug in will look after everything from image optimisation (for speed) to the appearance of your website – all the time providing you with the tools and stats to see what is working and what isn’t.
Jetpack automatically creates sitemaps. Site maps are, as the name suggest, literally a ‘map’ or index of your website. A site map makes it easier for search engines to work out what your site is about and how to find it. The plug in also automatically shares your content to search engines. The net effect of both of these is an increase your site’s search traffic.
There are also a number of other features that aid with the security of your website by helping prevent DDOS attacks, unauthorised log-ins and other potential security threats. You’ll also receive notification should any potential problem arise – such as your site being down for any reason.
When you post links to your website in emails, in forums or on social media sometimes the links end up being so long and messy that they can be cumbersome to post and can detract from their credibility. This is particularly true of affiliate links which will typically carry a long string of code after the main domain.
Pretty links allows you to create shorter (ie ‘pretty’) links to help clean this all up.
For example, imagine you wanted to promote a competition you were holding and the entry form and details were in a post with a url of www.mysite.com/pages/posts/how-to-enter-our-awesome-competion.
Pretty Links allows you to create a link such mysite.com/enter which is far better looking and easier to manage.In addition to the link shortening, you can track all the ‘hits’ on each link to work out where they came from and other details.
The pro version adds extra functions such as automatic link creation and link cloaking.
Elementor Page Builder
I recently discovered this plugin and couldn’t believe I haven’t been using it for years. Elementor allows you to build WordPress pages using “drag and drop”.
You decide which parts of the page will have 1, 2 or 3 columns and from there drag elements into place.
Some of the twenty-eight available widgets you can use include pictures, testimonials, videos, google maps, html boxes, allowing you to fully customise your page.
Elementor can be set up for use on a page or a post and is incredibly easy to use. The Pro version adds extra features that give you more control and options over your page design, though the free version is good enough for most projects.
Summary
There are just so many plug ins available it’s simply impossible to review them all. Just remember that whenever you get stuck on how to do something on your website (eg put code into the header or create a pricing table) then you just have to go searching the plug ins and you’re almost certain to find what you’re looking for.
