Nick Patel — March 20, 2017 Follow @NickMarcomWordPress is an open source platform that lets you create beautiful websites online and it covers a notch more than a quadrant of the web from PlayStation.blog to MTV News.
WordPress is not only open source, but it also has an easy user interface and the best part about it is that it is free. Most of the business owners face problems when it comes to managing a website from deciding keywords to selling goods.
The advantage of having a website built on WordPress is that we have the edge over easy website management because WordPress provides plugins that count up to more than 49,200 that have been downloaded more than 1,603,742,233 times as of March 2017. And as we speak here, it might even be launching a new one.
A list of most important plugins for business in 2017 are given below.
1. Akismet
Let’s face it, no one likes to sit back and look at each and every comment received and then decide if it is a spam comment or not when you could sit back and come up with new ideas to boost your business. A plugin that eases out your efforts when it comes to segregating the spam comments from the good ones is Akismet.
This plugin will give a checking glance to your comments and contact form submission for spam comments and even though it will filter out the spam comments, it will keep track of those comments in the history.
2. Yoast SEO
SEO is a neat little strategy that drives more traffic to your website. But easy as it sounds, it isn’t that easy when it comes to the implementation process.
However, once you have the Yoast SEO, it is easy. This plugin will handle all the optimization and will even help you create content that will boost the SEO. This plugin will make you choose the main keywords that are most searched for and then use those keywords in the content. Yoast SEO will provide you with the functionality to fix the SEO title and meta description of each post. Other than that, it will clean up the permalinks while allowing the Google Custom Search.
3. Wordfence
Wordfence is the most popular and sought after security plugin in WordPress. Downloading and installing this plugin will offer you premium API that will sequentially provide premium support, country blocking, scheduled scans, password auditing, real time updates to the Threat Defense Feed, Two Factor Authentication and it will even check if the IP address of the website is being used to spamvertize.
Wordfence provides you a bunch load of security settings that covers a long list and you are given the choice to disable or control any feature in the Options panel.
4. WooCommerce
WooCommerce, a then customizable plugin and a now eCommerce platform that allows you to build beautiful eCommerce websites, is emerging as the best eCommerce platform with over 679705 websites built on it.
The best thing about this plugin is that it provides you with complete ownership and is not only open source but also has an easy user interface just like WordPress. It is the only website that provides you the advantage of an integrated blog. Other than that, it also allows you to place innumerable products on your website, download any kind of digital, physical or downloadable product and choose from various payment gateways.
5. W3 Total Cache
Page caching creates static cache pages for each page so that there is a decrease in page loading time.
W3 Total Cache is a plugin that will give better user experience and will also improve the SEO for your website by improving the website performance, reducing download time by attributes like Content Delivery Network integration. It supports page cache, database cache, browser cache, object cache, CDN integration, etc. But other than that, it is also the sole web agnostic WordPress Performance Optimization plugin that web developers and hosts recommend.
6. AMP for WP
The world is slowly shifting towards technologies that fit the palm and yet give easy and faster access to internet. In this era, where everything is simply a touch away, mobile compatibility is one factor you cannot risk overlooking. But again, what use is a mobile compatible website that won’t load quickly?
AMP for WP will load your pages 4X faster and will bring you better visibility rates, high engagement rates with higher CTR, increase in monthly new users and return of users and decrease in number of page requests.
7. OptinMonster
A pop up is the kind of strategy that will straight away bring you qualified leads in abundance or be the reason your business faces doomsday. Various factors affect a pop up like typography, style, keywords, color, placement, etc.
The OptinMonster plugin takes care of it all and will help you in creating attractive pop-ups and optin forms. OptinMonster will turn the visitors that leave your website into qualified leads because it will create pop-ups that will only attract targeted customers and not just anyone and everyone. It may not bring a huge increase in the incoming traffic but it will show a noteworthy increase in qualified lead generation.
8. Jetpack by WordPress.com
Jetpack is one of the plugins of WordPress that ensures website security, increase in traffic and reader engagement. Jetpack will also consist of website statistics and analysis and will also automatically share on Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Reddit.
Additionally, this plugin also provides Search Engine Optimization Tools for Google, Twitter and Bing. Other than this, it helps in checking all your spelling and grammar by a single click and it supports the shortcode convenience in all the blogs on WordPress.com blogs.
9. Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is an attractive plugin that automatically lets you handle several contact forms. This plugin also allows you to customize those forms as well as the mail contents with a single markup.
Furthermore, the Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin also supports Ajax powered submitting, Akismet spam filtering, CAPTCHA etc.
10. BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is a premium WordPress plugin that promises easy database backups. It provides you the option to schedule your backups, create backup profiles, restore the entire backup or part of it from your dashboard, restore individual files and restore the number of backups. Other than these, it provides various other features.
The ten plugins mentioned above are the must have plugins of 2017 that will boost your website performance, keep it secured and generate qualified leads. However, if you think something should be added to this list, we would love to know what plugin missed our eye!
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