Take your site to the next level,
with our Top 5 WordPress Plugins
First created in 2018. Still going years later. HERE’s your 2022 Update!
Plugins can really enhance the power and functionality of your website. What previously you would have had to pay a developer for you can now often achieve with a simple download.
However, it is also somewhat common knowledge that going overboard on plugins can slow down your website, which is bad for your search engine ranking, but it also opens you up to getting hacked. Ew, nobody wants that.
What are WordPress plugins and what do they do?
WordPress as a base system is quite powerful, but without custom coding it still has a few things it can’t do on its own, which is where plugins come in.
Plugins, are like apps. They enhance the functionality of a WordPress site on a very modular basis.
For example, we are yet to see a WordPress website where the contact form wasn’t powered by a plugin. Additionally, you’ll probably find most sites also often have a caching, security, and a SEO plugin. It eliminates hours, or potentially days, of work, saving you on cost and money.
Our Top 5 WordPress Plugins
We’ve compiled a short list of our current Top 5 WordPress Plugins that will enhance the effectiveness of your digital marketing. Whether it’s ranking higher, loading quicker or just making life easier, these are well worth it. We’ve chosen these plugins based on how often we’re using them across websites we build ourselves.
While technically not a plugin, and well done for picking that up ( which I’m sure you would have) we have added SEMRush to this list because of the power it has to transform your SEO for almost any website, but in particular WordPress sites..
Table of Contents of our Top 5 WordPress Plugins:
WP Rocket (Paid Plugin)
Caching plugin – Speed up your website
WP Rocket is a premium caching plugin. Caching is the process of temporarily storing information so that it may be accessed again, easier in the future. In layman’s terms, it makes your website load faster.
Faster loading speeds have been proven, over and over again, to increase the ranking of your website. Not to mention, it leads to a higher conversion rate of your website visitors because they aren’t getting frustrated by a slow browsing experience.
The plugin is relatively simple to install and often works straight out of the box without configuration. Sure, you can squeeze more performance out of it if you know what you’re doing, but it will do the job without adjustments.
Gravity Forms (Paid Plugin)
Contact Form – Super powerful contact forms with conditional logic
Considering most websites are designed to generate new leads, mostly through people contacting your business, you want a contact form platform that you can rely on.
We’ve seen it too often where free contact form plugins have stopped working without notice, leading to days, or even weeks, of new leads getting lost in the ether.
With its ease of integration into Google Analytics goal tracking, premium customer support and an easy drag-and-drop form builder, we love using Gravity forms at 3am.
Xagio formerly Project Supremacy
SEO Plugin – By far the most powerful we’ve used
Back in the day when we first started out Yoast SEO was one of the most popular free WordPress SEO plugins, unfortunately back in 2018 a whole bunch of things went wrong so we started looking for more reliable alternatives.
We stumbled across Xagio, and life hasnt be amazing since! It has to be, hands down, one of the most powerful SEO plugins out there. It allows you to easily change your web pages’ appearance on the search engines but also allows you to do so much more.
From changing your meta description to ensuring you have a clear information hierarchy on each page, Yoast gets installed on basically every website we ever build. On-page SEO becomes a lot easier with this plugin guiding you.
Don’t take it as gospel though, it is just a guideline to assist you. Critical thinking must be applied.
SEMRush
Not a plugin but fantastic for SEO, content writing & competitor research
While not strictly a WordPress plugin, SEMRush is one of our go to tools for amazing Search Engine Optimisation, competitor analysis, keyword research, as well as helping us with Google Ads targeting and optimisation.
It even includes a social media posting and scheduling tool that will make your social media calendar an absolute breeze, while allowing you to discover your competitors’ most powerful hashtags.
We recommend you check out a free trial of SEMRush to see if it’s for you and if you need a hand understanding the overwhelming amount of data you can collect on your website, and that of your competitors, give us a call.
Wordfence
A security plugin to keep your site as safe as possible
Wordfence is a free security plugin that will monitor the general health and security of your website. From malicious attempts to repeatedly access secure areas of your site, such as the login page.
The pro version of the plugin will allow you to blacklist IP addresses and countries as well, which will come in really handy if you’re constantly being bombarded by overseas bots.
In general though, this shouldn’t be required as the free version itself is powerful enough. So powerful in fact, that we usually include it as a standard with all of the websites we manage or build.
Still Relevant Plugins
It has been almost five years since we first composed this blog post putting together some of our most favourite WordPress plugins to help you make your life easier in managing your business website. Since then there’s been huge advances in what has been released, but also in how social media and other third-party platforms allow you to integrate with them.
As such, the below plugins are still relevant but you might find they have been replaced by more powerful ones.
Facebook Pixel (Free Plugin)
There used to be a time when you used to have to manually adjust your website’s files, find your </head> section and place some of Facebook’s generated code into it. All of that, especially for the rookie developer, could turn nasty very quickly. From having a fully operational website, you now had nothing at all or ugly lines of code across the top of your site.
Introducing the Facebook Pixel plugin. We have spoken about the Facebook pixel on our previous “Startup Checklist” post but essentially this little pixel allows you to take your Facebook advertising to the professional level.
It tracks Facebook users and how they use and engage with your website. From there we can retarget them, find people similar to them, and so much more. With the Facebook Pixel plugin, you can install basic tracking and events with a few clicks. Please note: This plugin should be generated through your Facebook Business account.
Duplicator (Free Plugin)
Duplicator, as the name suggests, allows you to duplicate your website content onto new pages. Copy/pasting is one of the web designer’s most powerful tools, but being able to duplicate entire pages or posts with just one click, saves a lot of time.
Why try to recreate landing pages with proven success, when you have a template right in front of you. Just hit, duplicate! A great tool for any web designer.
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About 3am Ideas
We are Australia’s digital marketing agency for small businesses and startups. We provide an ROI driven service to our clients. We are especially dedicated to our Business Startup, Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation packages.
We always aim to work intimately with our clients because collaboration guarantees best results. From startups with big ideas or established small & medium sized businesses wanting to take the next step. Gain control over your online presence.