If you own a WordPress site, you already know the resources and possibilities of this CMS. Based on them and your needs, maybe you are being tempted to try different plugins. 

Why not? Plugins are really useful tools (software) for expanding or adding functions to websites without writing or editing code. Currently, whatever you need can be implemented with a plug-in. Enhancing SEO, boosting site speed, backup, improving security, including forms, getting donations, selling products, etc.

There are plenty of free available plug-ins for a WordPress site. Plus, paid options too. 

Today, we’re going to recommend you 5 really useful WordPress plugins you should try on your website.

WP Rocket

Users always appreciate not waiting so much when visiting your site. Besides this, loading speed is a vital factor for ranking better on search engines.

One of the most effective solutions to boost the speed of a site is adding cache. Like this, your site’s content (static items) can be saved to be shown faster when requested by users.

So this is what WP Rocket offers: It adds cache to your website to increase its speed and reduce the time to be fully loaded. 

Yoast

An effective content’s optimizer of your website’s pages and posts. It has features to help you building titles and meta descriptions following SEO best recommendations and practices. It includes two vital analysis for content: keywords and readability, to get the most attractive content aligned to SEO recommendations.

It previews page or post on search engines, detects indexable issues on the website, and more.

Managing quality SEO content is critical to rank on search engines and to retain the audience’s attention. So an extra hand with an SEO strategy is worthy of trying.

Wordfence

Shady people develop more tricks every time. So, it is a good decision to be extra protected against their attacks.

The endpoint firewall of this plugin has shown efficiency in blocking malicious traffic, IP addresses, code or content, and malware signatures. Protection gets robust thanks to the included security scanner that also verifies themes, plugins, files, detect malware, malicious URLs (redirects you didn’t put), virus code, SEO spam, questionable content, and more.

It checks the site to warn you about vulnerabilities, possible security issues, etc.

WooCommerce

Currently, many people want to sell physical products or any type of services on their websites. With WooCommerce, you can enable your website to sell everything: all kinds of physical and digital products. It offers a really wide variety of customization choices.

Shipping methods, setting of currencies, payment gateways, sorting and filtering, showing reviews, inventories, adding multiple pics per product, etc. Just one plug-in and you can add all the eCommerce functionality to your easy to use WordPress site.

Smush

No doubt, inserting attractive images is a clever resource to catch the audience’s attention. But images must be optimized; otherwise, they slow down the site’s speed. To optimize images can take a lot of time when building or updating the content of a website.

Smush can definitely help with this needed optimization (image’s format, size, position…). Defining a maximum height and width, it can compress up to 50 images keeping quality, just with a click. It quickly detects big images that are affecting the speed. It optimizes GIF, PNG, JPEG, and even next-gen images by scanning all of them (the ones already uploaded and the new ones you insert). It can be configured to work in a single site or multiple if you have more than one.

Conclusion

Competition online is fierce. To constantly enhance and to expand websites’ possibilities is a must. Plug-ins are very useful tools. Just choose smartly! There are thousands, but that doesn’t mean you have to include all or many without a good reason to do it. The excess of them can also slow down your WordPress site.