WordPress is the best platform for creating a website for non-programmers and by installing some of the best & essential WordPress Plugins of 2022, you can make your website better.
In this post, I have shared the best free WordPress Plugins and some paid WordPress plugins that are essential WordPress plugins for bloggers & business websites. The list is made based on my practical experience. I have covered all the necessary plugins whether it is SEO, image compression, security, or speed optimization plugins. Try these plugins and see yourself.
23 Essential WordPress Plugins for Bloggers & Business In 2022
Best SEO Plugin
1) Yoast SEO ( Free/ Paid) (By Team Yoast)
Yoast SEO is one of the top WordPress plugins of 2018 for SEO. It is all in one SEO plugin which provides from on-page content analysis to XML sitemap. It also helps in verifying your website from google, bing, etc.
When we are writing any post after the completion of the post-it gives suggestions on the post like keyword density, focus keyword, etc. and it also helps in creating a snippet.
You can also create and customize XML SITEMAP like you can select the pages that you want in the sitemap. For example: if you don’t want media(attachment) in your sitemap, then you can select not in the sitemap option.
There is also a PREMIUM option where you can get more features like adding multiple keywords, no more dead links, internal linking suggestions, social media preview, etc. the price for Yoast SEO premium starts from $69.
Key features:
- Custom meta title and description
- Create XML sitemap
- Set focus keyword
Best Redirection Plugin
2. All 404 Redirect to Homepage (Free) (By Fakhri Alsadi)
This plugin helps to redirect all 404 errors to the Home Page. It helps in avoiding 404 errors as it affects website SEO.
If someone has typed any wrong URL or any page or post that has been deleted, It will automatically redirect it to the homepage of the website.
Just install and activate the plugin and go to setting ~ All 404 Redirect to Homepage and save option.
Key features:
- Set a custom redirect Page for every 404 path.
- You can choose which redirect method to be used for your site.
- Helps in maintaining your SERP ranking.
3. Safe Redirect Manager (Free) (By Taylor Lovett)
When you change the URL of a page, then there are more chances of getting 404 errors which ultimately affect your SERP ranking. But can redirect the page from the old URL to the new URL using the Safe Redirect Manager plugin.
You can choose the type of redirection you want 301,302,303,307,403 or 404. After changing any page URL just click on create redirection rule and insert the old URL On the next column Insert the new URL, choose the type of redirection you want for this page and click save.
Key Features:
- Helps in a redirection of any post or page.
- Multiple redirection options
- Simple and easy to use
Best All in One Plugin
4. Jetpack (free/paid) (By Automattic)
Jetpack is a powerful plugin that offers multiple features like security, and website traffic growth. image compression, post sharing button on social media sites, etc. This essential plugin is ignored by various WordPress website users but it offers multiple services in one.
Some premium features like spam filtering, backups, and security scanning.
Key features:
- Improve website security
- Website traffic analytics
- Post sharing and monitoring
- Showing related post
- Contact form
Best Spam Comment Protection Plugin
- AKISMET ANTI-SPAM (free/paid) (By Automattic)
As the names tell, it protects your website from spamming comments. This plugin automatically checks all the comments and finds the comments that look like spam. This is an essential WordPress plugin for bloggers to protect their site from spam comments.
This is a free plugin and it is best, especially for bloggers. After activating Akismet, you have to sign in and get the API key.
Key feature:
- Block Spam Comments
6.Wps Hide Login (Free) (By Remy Perona for WPServeur)
This plugin helps you to change your WordPress admin page URL and improves the security of your website. You can set your own custom URL. It is a very essential WordPress plugin to improve your site security. You can also check out our post on How to Change Your WordPress Login Page URL.
Key Features:
- Create a custom login URL
- No coding skills required
- Improves security
Best Cache Plugin
7. W3 Total Cache (free/paid) ( By BoldGrid )
As Search Engines give more weight-age to the fastest loading sites, so this plugin helps you in reducing the loading time of a WordPress website which is an important factor for ranking in the Search Engine Result Page.
It improves the loading time of your WordPress Website and can also link with Content Delivery Network(CDN) integration such as Cloudflare, and MaxCDN to reduce loading time.
Key Features:
- Accelerated Mobile Pages(AMP) Support.
- Caching of Pages And posts in memory.
- Caching of CSS and JavaScript In memory.
- Supports CDN
- Improves loading time
After Activating go to the Setting tab.
In-Page the Cache option check Enable option and in the Page Cache method Select Disk: Enhanced And click on save All Setting.
Next in Minify Option
Minify: check the Enable option.
Minify Mode: select Manual.
Minify Cache Method: Disk.
And click on Save All Setting.
This will help in reducing the Loading Speed of your Website
To check your Website Loading Speed Click here.
W3 Total Cache Alternatives:
- WP Fastest Cache ( Free/Paid ) ( By Emre Vona )
Wp Super Cache ( Free/ Paid) ( By Automattic )
Best Security Plugin
8. Wordfence (Free/Paid) (By Wordfence)
To secure your wp website Wordfence plugin is one of the essential WordPress plugins of 2022. This is the most popular security plugin and is also updated regularly.
Key Features:
- WordPress firewall
- Blocking features
- Security scanning
- WordPress login security
You can also upgrade to premium, which will cost $99 per year for 1 key. If you buy for a longer duration each key helps you to reduce yearly costs.
Wordfence Alternative:
- Sucuri Security ( Free/Paid ) (By Sucuri )
Best Speed Optimization Plugin
9. Autoptimize (Free) (By Frank Goossens)
If you want to reduce the loading time of your WordPress website then the Autoptimize plugin will help you to achieve this. It reduces the loading time without affecting the design of the website.
Key Features:
- Minify HTML
- Minify CSS
- Minify javascript
- Async and deter Javascript & CSS
- Reduce site loading time
Note: You can use both w3 total cache and autoptimize plugin but say you are minifying javascript by w3 total cache then don’t minify with autoptimize because minifying the same thing from both the plugins can break your website design.
You can also check out our complete blog post on How to Speed UP Your WordPress Website With 100% Gtmetrix Score.
Best Image Compression Plugin
10.Wp Smush (Free/Paid) (By Wpmu Dev)
The second important to speed up your wp website is to reduce the image size because if you use a high-resolution image without compression, then it will take more time to load. The solution to speeding up image loading is Wp Smush Plugin. This Plugin compresses the images and helps in reducing the loading time of the website.
Use jpg images instead of png images because png images are in a larger size and even after compressing the image does not get compressed to the actual compressed size.
When you upload an image, it automatically starts compressing and reduces the size. if the images are added before the plugin was installed, then you can compress up to 50 images once at a time (for the free version). For the paid version, it compresses more than the free version.
Key Features:
- Bulk image compression
- Resize images
- Support jpg, png, gif, wedp images
11. WP-Optimize (Free) (By David Anderson, Ruhani, Team Updraft )
To clean your WordPress database WP-Optimize Plugin is very helpful. It removes unnecessary data like trashed, span comments, etc. with a button press and makes your site lite weight which also helps to load faster. This is one of the essential WordPress plugins for bloggers & businesses.
Key Features:
- Automatically cleans-ups the database weekly.
- Removes all unwanted data from spam comments/trashed/unapproved.
- Easy to use.
12. Wti Like Post (Free) (By Webtechideas)
To get feedback easily from your visitor about your blog post, you can implement the like(thumbs up) and dislike(thumbs down) option at the end of your post. You can customize the setting as you want like whether the visitor has to log in or not to give their feedback. You can also set how many times a visitor can give a vote in a session.
Best Contact Form plugin
13. Contact Form 7 (Free) (By Takayuki Miyoshi)
The contact form is the most important thing for every business site and contact form 7 is the top-rated form plugin. You can easily customize the form whether you want to include any new option or you want to remove an option, which can be easily done in this plugin & is essential for blogs & businesses. You can also create multiple forms.
Key Features:
- Confirm form support
- Offers customization
Best Social Sharing Plugin
14. Kiwi Social Share – Social Media Share Buttons & Icons (Free/Paid)
If you have a blog on your WordPress website & want to promote it via social media files, then Kiwi social share is for you. These WordPress plugins will add buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, Reddit, etc. above or below the post or both. This plugin helps your visitor to share your content easily on top social media sites with just one click.
This plugin also has a paid version every you can some other social media sites sharing button.
Best Analytics Plugin
15.Google Analytics for WordPress by Monster Insights (Free/Paid) (By Monster Insights)
If you want to track your site traffic, from where visitors are coming to your website, how much time they are spending, etc. To track these actions you have to generate google analytics code and paste the code into your website with the help of these plugins.
After 24 hours of pasting the Google Analytics code, you can view the report in your WordPress dashboard.
Key features:
- Real-time report
- Supports E-commerce Tracking
Best E-commerce Plugin
16.WooCommerce (Free/Paid) (By Automattic)
Woocommerce is an essential WordPress plugin for every e-commerce website based on WordPress. You can sell anything whether you want to sell physical goods or digital goods or even you can sell affiliate goods with the help of these plugins. It also has payment options with many different payment gateways.
Key Features:
- Easy to set up an E-commerce site
- Supports various payment options
Best Email Subscription Plugin
17. WP- Subscribe (Free) (By My Theme Shop)
Email subscriptions help you interact with your audience and by installing wp subscribe you can collect the visitor email addresses.
This plugin currently supports MailChimp, Aweber, and Feedburner. Use this plugin to grow your email subscriber & it’s essential for both blogs & business websites.
Just select the service provider and connect your account by inserting the API Key and selecting the list where you want to save the emails.
Key Features:
- Supports double opt-in notification.
- Lite weight plugin
- Easy to set up
Best Facebook Pixel Plugin
18. Pixel Your Site (Free/Paid) (By Pixel Your Site)
Pixel your site helps you to insert Facebook Pixel code into your WordPress site that helps to track conversion.
Just install and activate the plugin insert the pixel id and select where you want to place the header or footer and save the setting.
19. Really Simple SSL (Free) (By Rogier Lankhorst)
Purchased an SSL certificate and wants to convert all your URL from HTTP to HTTPS, then you can use a really simple SSL plugin to convert all your URL with just a click.
Get Free SSL Certificate With CDN Using Cloudflare
Install and activate the plugin and you will see a notice where you will be asked to enable SSL.
Note: if you don’t have SSL then this plugin will not work.
Key Features:
- Easy to convert URLs from HTTP to HTTPS.
- Lite weight plugin
20. All In One Schema Rich Snippets (Free) (By Brainstorm Force)
Wants to increase the click-through rate of a page then use the All In One Schema Rich Snippets plugin which will you to achieve a higher CTR and will let you stand out from the competition.
Rich snippets are just small pieces of information to display in a search result. This plugin has made it simple to create a rich snippet.
Install and activate the plugin and create rich snippets of pages and posts where you have to enter details like type of the page, your site logo, post title, and description, featured image, etc.
21. Accelerated Mobile Pages – (AMP) (Free/Paid)
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is Google Project which aims to provide the first loading time to the website. Websites with AMP pages load within 1 sec which ultimately gives a better user experience to the visitors. These WordPress plugins will help you to create AMP pages for your website.
Choose the theme for your AMP pages & easily customize your AMP pages. You can also add AMP Ad sense, Google Analytics Tracking for AMP pages, Call to action, etc.
22. WP Mail SMTP (Free)
Does your WordPress site not send emails to Webmail?
Well, the WP Mail SMTP plugin will help you to fix this error. This plugin fixes email deliverability by reconfiguring WordPress to use a proper SMTP(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), provider.
23. OneSignal Push Notifications (Free)
Every website wants its visitors to come back to its website again & again. Collecting the user’s email is another way but there are some people who don’t want to share. So, sending push notifications will also drive traffic to your website. Whether you update your old post or you have added a new post, using the OneSingal push notification plugin you can easily send push notifications to your visitors.
Conclusion: Essential WordPress Plugins list For Bloggers & Businesses 2022
So, this is the complete list of essential & best WordPress plugins for bloggers & businesses in 2022. If you have any queries or any plugin that I have missed then fill free to comment below.
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