10 Must-Have Types of Plugins Every WordPress Site Needs

The 10 Types of Plugins Every WordPress Site Needs

What is a WordPress Plugin?

A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites.

In the process of using WordPress will have a time when you will encounter many sites with very special features, such as form of beautiful email collection, social sharing icons, shortened link, …

Sure they use plugins to add these features to their WordPress site.

In the management interface of WordPress, you will see one item is Plugins, there are small items to help you add and manage, edit the plugin:

• Installed Plugins 
• Add New 
• Editor: Modify the code of the plugin

To date, the total number of free plugins posted on the WordPress Plugin has reached tens of thousands. But not all plugins are good, there are many plugins have the same function.

A site should only install some common and useful plugins. The plugins on this are free but there is no support mode. Many plugins only allow users to use some kind of “experience” feature and we have to spend money to upgrade to Pro, Platinum, … to get advanced features and get support.

But there are many free plugins available but very good.

There are many third-party developers today that offer premium plugins with great functionality and very good support. That creates professional marketing tools for the website that you may use in the future.

Related post: How to Install WordPress Themes Tutorial

Top 10 Most Popular WordPress Plugin Types

1. WordPress Plugins for SEO

SEO is the job of putting keywords on the top of the search results, this is the desire with any web developer, because SEO is a way to get massive free traffic.

There are 2 popular free SEO plugins that are Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack. Both have features that make your site more search engine friendly such as title optimization, description, create sitemap, SEO score for post/page, social support.

There are also other typical plugins that take on specific functions that affect SEO like:

• Sitemap Generator: Google XML Sitemap
• Broken link checker 
• Plugin adds the nofollow attribute: Rel NoFollow Checkbox
• The plugin automatically generates internal links: SEO Smart Link
• Image SEO Plugin Support: SEO friendly Images

2. Plugins to boost your site’s social signals

When you surf the internet, most of you will find buttons to share to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, … or Facebook like, Google +, … Webmasters will place buttons like this for readers to like, share, create social signals, articles can spread and also affect SEO.

If you use WordPress, there are many plugins that can help you do this, free and paid, for example:

• Simple Share Buttons Adder
• Social Sharing, Smart Popup & Share Buttons by GetSocial.io
• AddToAny Share Buttons
• Monarch
• Easy Social Share Buttons

There are also plugins that support the creation of a fanpage-like panel so readers can click like on the site, or create a Social Profile for followers on Google+, Twitter Profile,… such as:

• Facebook Like Box Plugin
• New Google Plus Badge Widget
• Stylish Twitter Profile Box

3. WordPress Backup Plugins

Data backup is a very important task in website development, if for some reason your data is lost and you do not back up before, as if you lost the whole site, you have to do begin again.

So some plugins developers have created products to support backup and restore jobs. Some typical plugins:

• BackupBuddy
• Duplicator
• blogVault Real-time Backup

In addition, the server providers often have backup service attached, if you are using them, do not have to worry about installing additional plugins unless you are too careful.

4. WordPress Security Plugins

Hackers often operate on the internet for the purpose of sabotage or for profit. The protection for your site is essential.

In order to meet the needs of users, many security plugins have been released.

There are many security plugins that have different functions, but most of them are firewall security, change your wordpress login url, capcha support, anti-spam, two-layer security, malware scan, require you to change the password periodically, automatically generate random password to remember, automatically lock the login when the wrong multiple passwords, bot detection, anti-DDoS, etc.

Some typical plugins for security, such as:

• iThemes Security
• All in One WP Security
• Wordfence Security
• BulletProof Security
• Sucuri Security

5. Contact Form Plugins

Most websites have contact sections. The reader can contact the website owner to ask, to cooperate or to advertise, so you can see many forms of contact appear in the individual section of the website.

There are many WordPress Plugins that support this as:

• Contact Form 7
• Gravity Forms
• Ninja Forms
• Contact Bank

These contact forms will help you create a contact panel that includes your name, email and content so that your readers can fill in and send the contact, and then email you.

There are also some advanced contact platform plugins, such as Gravity Forms, Formidable Pro,… that support for polls, polls, and synchronization with email marketing services.

6. WordPress Slider Plugins

When you visit the internet you can see a lot of WordPress sites have a slide at the top of the website (latest posts slide). Especially service websites usually have photo slides.

It could be an available feature of the theme or using the plugin, there are many plugins dedicated to creating professional slides. For example:

• Revolution Slider
• Meteor Slides
• Slideshow
• Meta Slider

Often these plugins will allow you to upload photos and customize them. Then give you a shortcode that you can insert anywhere on your website that you want to display slides in there.

7. Page Builder Plugin

People will use these plugins to create a different page than the default page of the theme they are using, or create a home page, professional looking services page, some popular page builder plugins are:

• Visual Composer
• Beaver Builder
• SiteOrigin
• Themify Builder

These plugins have a drag-drop function to make building a page easier than ever, even to create beautiful landing pages.

8. Analytics And Statistics Plugins

If you are a professional website developer, you want to see which of your readers are most interested in your site, where they are most likely to click, where they come from, age, gender, device… then you must use the tracking and analytic plugins.

Some plugins support this task such as:

• JetPack: Developed by WordPress itself, this is a multitasking plugin, with many different functions. Tracking traffic, pageview, tracking where the source traffic comes from, what users have searched to get to the website are the features available in this plugin.
• Google Analytics by Yoast: See Google Analytic statistics right on your website, including demographic and interest reports, tracking outbound links, search pages, 404 pages, …
• Heatmap plugins: Do you wish that you had better insights into how your users interact with your website? Heatmap tools and plugins can help you visualize where users click, how far they scroll, and how they really use your site.

Also if you have trouble adding external tracking code for Facebook Pixel, Google Adwords, WooCommerce, … there are also support plugins, such as tracking Code Manager.

9. WordPress Shortcodes Plugins

Shortcodes in WordPress are little bits of code that allow you to do various things with little effort.

Shortcode is a simple and advanced way to add content that WordPress does not have available to add. The most popular shortcode plugin is Shortcodes Ultimate with over 50 shortcodes in various forms such as frame insertion, call-to-action button creation, make slide, box, label, note,…

There are also other plugins like Easy Bootstrap Shortcode, Symple Shortcodes, GT Shortcodes,…

10. Advertising Management Plugins

Advertising is one of the most popular ways to make a profit when making a website. You can place ads for Google Adsense or other advertising partners, or advertise your own products or services.

Or marketing is the form where you navigate the visitor to a landing page selling the product, or fill out a form to collect email, …

There are many plugins that support you in advertising and marketing, for example:

• Easy Plugin for AdSense: Support for Google Adsense
• Advanced Advertising System: Support for placing ads, suitable if your website is advertised. You can schedule ads according to previous agreements such as set CPC, CPM, create multiple campaigns, set budget, …
• Pop-up, banner, email marketing plugins: Ninja Popup, Optin Monster, Plugmatter.

Conclusion

As you can see, all of the basic and advanced functions for WordPress sites are supported by the plugin. You do not need to be a good coder to make a website or add functionality, this is a great advantage of open source WordPress.

If you are new, start with basic plugins like Yoast SEO, contact form 7, Social plugins. After a while, use advanced, security, backup plugins for your site.

If your website has a lot of visitors, think of placing ads by Google, renting ads or trading your own products or services. All have plugins to support you with these tasks.

Hope you get useful information!

[sociallocker]Free Bonuses[/sociallocker]