Best SEO Plugins for WordPress Increase Performance by 200%

According to statistics, 33% of the millions of websites operating worldwide use WordPress. So what are plugins in WordPress, and which are the essential plugins to install when setting up a new website with WordPress?

What are plugins for WordPress?

Plugins for WordPress are one or multiple pieces of code added to the WordPress website source code. Plugins, also known as applications or extensions, help add additional functionality to your website. Plugins allow you to achieve desired functionality or design on this platform.

Using plugins in WordPress is not difficult. However, before using any plugins, it is essential to research their functions to determine if they are truly necessary.

Guide to installing essential plugins for WordPress

Installing essential plugins for WordPress is quite simple and can be done in two ways. First, you can directly install them from the plugin library, or secondly, you can upload the .zip plugin file from your computer.

Method 1: Installing plugins directly from the WordPress library

• Go to the plugins section on the WordPress admin page and click the “Add new” button.

• Type the name of the plugin you want to install in the search box and press enter. The plugin will appear, and you can click “Install now” to proceed with the installation.

• The installation process will be completed in a few seconds, and the system will display a success message. Then, click on the “Activate” button to activate the plugin.

Method 2: Installing .zip plugin files from your computer

• First, go to the Plugins section, and click “Add New.” Then, click the “Upload Plugin” button and start uploading the plugin from your computer.
• Select the .zip file from your computer and click “Install Now.”
• Click the “Activate Plugin” button to activate the plugin and complete the installation.

10 Essential Plugins for WordPress

WooCommerce: Sales support

At the top of the list of essential plugins is WooCommerce. This application is trusted by one-third of e-commerce websites. It helps users simply sell physical products and services. Additionally, WooCommerce has a large library of extensions with various pricing options.

Suppose you want to create an online store. In that case, WooCommerce is a powerful tool that provides all the necessary features, such as product pages, shopping carts, payments, and support for multiple payment gateways.

Key features of WooCommerce:

• Numerous extensions and plugins are available for WordPress.
• Easy installation.
• Support for multiple payment methods.
• User-friendly structure.

Yoast SEO: Search engine optimization

When it comes to website development, SEO is crucial, and Yoast SEO is an excellent plugin for supporting that task. Yoast SEO offers free and premium versions, but the free version is sufficient for basic SEO features.

Key features of Yoast SEO:

• On-page optimization: It helps optimize all the elements of a page directly on the content editing interface, such as keywords, titles, meta descriptions…and simulates how the page will appear in search results (Snippet Preview). You can also customize the page title and description when displayed on social media platforms, and optimize on-page elements for category and tag pages.
• Breadcrumbs creation and customization: Breadcrumbs are a navigation aid added to a page to enhance user experience. Breadcrumbs provide hierarchical links that help users know which page they are on and navigate between pages conveniently.
• Sitemap, robots.txt, and .htaccess creation and editing: These three files significantly impact SEO. Yoast SEO allows you to create and edit them easily on the website’s admin page without coding knowledge.

WP Super Cache & Autoptimize: WordPress speed optimization

By creating a cache for small and medium-sized websites using HTML cache methods, WP Super Cache is one of the most essential free plugins for speeding up WordPress websites.

Autoptimize helps speed up page loading by compressing, combining, and optimizing CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files. These factors can help you achieve a higher score with the PageSpeed Insights tool for website speed testing. The main features of W3 Total Cache include:

• Easy compatibility with various types of hosting and servers.
• Caching the majority of website elements in WordPress.
• Suitable for website owners who need to improve site loading speed.

Jetpack: All-in-One Toolkit

Jetpack is a plugin that provides essential features for a WordPress website and is developed by WordPress. Some useful features of this plugin include page view statistics, traffic analysis, traffic sources, spell-checking, social sharing buttons, and image presentation with Carousel… However, this plugin cannot be installed on a local host and requires a WordPress.com account for activation.

The main features of Jetpack are:

• Analysis and reporting of website statistics and performance.
• Website security.
• Monitoring of downtime and uptime.
• Allow visitors to interact with the website or its content through social media, advanced commenting features, and beautiful contact forms.

Akismet: Spam Filter

The web is filled with about 80% spam comments and many fake registrations on your website. Aside from negatively affecting the appearance of your website, spam poses significant security risks, especially for WordPress. Hackers can inject malicious code into comments, rendering your website permanently unrecoverable.

Akismet is an essential plugin for WordPress due to its powerful spam protection capabilities. Akismet automatically detects and cleans up messages, comments, and registrations generated by tools, software, bots, and more.

Advanced TinyMCE: Extended Editor

To optimize a website, WordPress has disabled some features in the editor, such as font size, italics, underlining, numbered lists… 

The Advanced TinyMCE plugin solves this problem by providing a fully extended editor with familiar editing functions similar to Microsoft Word.

kk Star Ratings: Display 5-Star Ratings

kk Star Ratings is a free plugin that receives regular updates and is compatible with most WordPress versions. It offers a straightforward setup process. With just a few steps, you can enable your website to display 5-star ratings on Google search results.

Ad Inserter: Easy Advertisement Insertion

Ad Inserter is one of the most satisfying plugins for inserting advertisements or even shortcodes from other plugins. It has nearly perfect 5-star ratings, which is not surprising considering its excellent features, even in the free version.

With Ad Inserter, you can easily insert code snippets and AdSense ads in suitable positions, such as before content, after content, in the middle of content, before and after comments, and more.

Google Site Kit: Website Activity Monitoring

Evaluating business effectiveness and monitoring website activity are crucial tasks from the moment your website is established and operated. Google Site Kit helps you track all site activities, including impressions, clicks, Google Search Console position, traffic, and bounce rate from Google Analytics and displays the results on the WordPress dashboard.

The main features of the plugin are:

• Real-time reporting of visitor information.
• Easy tracking of important site events.
• Access to basic Google Analytics reports.
• The appropriate users for the plugin are website administrators and marketing professionals.

Imagify Image Optimizer

This WordPress plugin helps reduce the file size of images in your post content without significantly impacting page loading speed. The plugin automatically scans and optimizes images in the WordPress Media Library. However, the free package limits the number of images you can optimize, so if you have a higher demand, purchasing the premium package is recommended.

Key features:

• Image compression and optimization.
• Easy restoration of images to their original file size after deletion.
• Automatic image compression in the media library.

In conclusion, while using a WordPress website, it is necessary to install plugins to enhance website functionality and make management and usage easier. In addition to the essential plugins mentioned above, you can also explore other popular plugins constantly updated by the online community.

It’s important to remember that you should only install plugins that are truly necessary for WordPress. Installing too many plugins can make your website cumbersome and reduce its loading speed.