There are over 810 million WordPress websites, which make up 43.4% of all websites. As a content management system (CMS), WordPress makes creating your own website easy and saves you much more time than coding it yourself.
Part of WordPress’s power comes from adding plugins, which not only help with your site’s functionality but can also make it more interactive. For example, WordPress is not an e-commerce platform out of the box, but you can install an e-commerce plugin like WooCommerce. This plugin comes ready-made with all the functionality you need to run an online store.
As a digital marketing agency specializing in search engine optimization, we love working on clients’ websites built in WordPress. The plugin options mixed with its customization and flexibility make WordPress the perfect platform for search engine optimization (SEO) and your other marketing efforts. With digital marketing in mind, here are some free and paid plugins we consider essential when managing your WordPress website:
On-Page SEO Plugins
We believe starting with a good SEO plugin is best. Though many options are available, we recommend All-In-One SEO (AIO) or Yoast SEO. Both plugins can create XML sitemaps and robots.txt files, which tell search engine crawlers what pages exist on your site, how those pages are organized, and which of those pages should be crawled or ignored.
They also have fields for adding title tags and meta descriptions.
These meta tags are vital to your site’s SEO. Both plugins allow you to edit these tags easily, but the plugins have slightly different approaches. With Yoast, you edit a page’s title tag and meta description on each individual page, while AIO allows you to apply the tags of multiple pages in bulk.
Though AIO’s bulk edit feature is convenient, Yoast has built-in SEO suggestions such as character count warnings, which is great for website managers who may need more guidance optimizing their site for search. Between the two, we recommend Yoast.
Cost: free
Redirect Plugins
When your website URL changes or you delete an old page or post, users may encounter the dreaded 404 error, which happens when a page on your site does not exist. Not only can this frustrate users navigating your site, but Google sees these errors as a negative ranking factor. A redirection plugin is the solution to these issues.
We recommend 301 Redirections & Redirection. These tools allow you to enter the page URL that no longer exists and choose an alternative page to bring users to. They also identify 404 errors on your site and can be used to track 301 redirects from third-party sites to your WordPress site.
Cost: free
Contact Form Plugins
Contact forms are a common element on business websites, and tracking submissions from these forms is one way to measure the impact of your digital marketing strategies. The two contact form plugins we typically see are Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms.
Contact Form 7 has the advantage of being free but offers much less functionality than Gravity Forms. For starters, it has limited form editing and styling capabilities. If you plan to send users to a thank you page after their form submission, you’ll also need to install the additional Contact Form 7 Redirection Plugin. And if you plan to track form submissions via Google Tag Manager, it requires extra coding.
We recommend Gravity Forms. Even though it is a paid plugin, Gravity Forms has various customizations and integrations built-in that Contact Form 7 doesn’t offer. It’s worth the investment.
Gravity Forms also integrates with outside marketing platforms, like Zapier and Constant Contact, and is easy to track through Google Tag Manager. All of its forms are built with reCaptcha, which automatically filters out spam form submissions.
It also allows for more flexibility regarding how your website reacts when a user hits “Submit” on a contact form (as pictured above). You can send them to a specific thank you page, send them a confirmation email, display an on-page confirmation message, and even trigger a PDF download in their browser.
Contact Form 7 Cost: free
Gravity Forms Cost: $59/year
Code Plugins
To track website activity, you need to apply Google Analytics code, Facebook Pixel, and other scripts in specific locations on your website. If these codes are added incorrectly, it can lead to faulty or non-existent tracking. In the worst cases, it can totally break your site.
Plugins like Header Footer Code Manager minimize risk by designating specific fields where you can insert codes without needing to edit your website code directly. Depending on your website theme, you may not need a plugin to handle codes, as certain themes come with custom widgets that allow you to add custom HTML code.
Cost: free
Additional Plugins
Although we wouldn’t consider the following plugins “SEO essential,” they are still useful:
- Smush – This free plugin compresses images on your site while preserving their quality, leading to much quicker loading times. Since 2021, Google has used Core Web Vitals (or CWV) as a ranking factor, taking into account how quickly your site loads when it comes to your ranking and visibility.
- WP Super Cache/WP Rocket – Speaking of loading times, caching your site’s pages converts them to simple HTML when being served to site visitors, allowing content to load much more quickly.
- Jetpack – A security plugin, Jetpack helps defend against malware attacks, spam, and other threats to your site.
- Schema & Structured Data – Schema is a set of data that tells Google what type of content is on your site. It can also lead to your content showing in Google’s Rich Results Snippet (those unique breakouts you see at the top of a search results page). A plugin like this allows those without JSON knowledge to easily add these codes on pages throughout your site.
Important Note: Talk to your developer before installing any plugins. WordPress plugins are powerful, but they are not without risk. Your developer should check which version of WordPress your site is running to ensure compatibility. They’ll also be able to confirm a plugin is trustworthy and check for any errors a new plugin may cause.
If you’re ready to drive more traffic and leads from your WordPress site, SEOM can help. Contact us today for a free digital marketing consultation.
September 27, 2024