WordPress is indeed a great platform to build quality and feature rich website, thanks to its easy to use interface and flexible structure. Though it is a powerful CMS, it cannot always do everything. Well, considering the popularity of WordPress and competition in the market, it is actually a good thing. After all, if it were able to do everything, every WordPress user would have stuck with the same thing. And probably every WordPress powered website looked same. But this doesn’t mean that you cannot extend the functionality of your WordPress site or customize it as per your needs.

Fortunately, WordPress has a huge plugin directory that features an assortment of a variety of plugins that help you improve the functionality of your site. However, since there are hundreds of thousands of plugins, it may seem difficult for you to choose the right one for you. Therefore, we have compiled a list of WordPress plugins that are essential for almost every online business to establish a successful WordPress powered site.

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast
   
   One of the best ways to drive constant traffic to your website is through search engine results. If your website is in the top 10 results of the Google results page, your website has higher chances of being clicked by the user. In order to rank higher in the search engines, it is important to integrate right SEO techniques and methods. WordPress SEO by Yoast is a plugin that helps you write better content, choose right keywords for your content and add meta details to your site. The plugin optimizes your website for search engines and enables you to rank higher.

   Impressive features of Yoast SEO:

   • Available in more than 24 different languages
   • Lets you import or export functionality for multiple blogs
   • Compatible with multiple sites
   • Comes integrated with social media buttons to optimize your site for social media networks
   • Equipped with inbuilt file editor to allow you to edit robots.txt and .htaccess file
   • Integrated with page analysis functionality that checks certain things that you often forget to check such as length of your post, headings and subheadings within your post and so much more.
2. Floating Social Bar
   
   Floating Social Bar is one of the best plugins to optimize your website for social media networks. The plugin features social media sharing buttons that allow your visitors to share your content on their social media accounts. It is a lightweight yet powerful plugin that integrates a horizontal floating share bar into your post types, pages and blog posts.

   Impressive features of Floating Social Bar:

   • Supports every major social media site including Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter
   • Has intuitive user interface that allows you to drag and drop the social media buttons on your web page
   • 100% fully responsive and highly customizable
3. W3 Total Cache
   
   W3 Total Cache is a great caching WordPress plugin that improves user experience on your site. The plugin speeds up your website by loading the web pages faster, offering transparent content delivery network, increasing server performance and decreasing the download times. The smooth transition from one page to another improves the user experience and efficiency. Many big brands including css-tricks.com, webdesignerdepot.com, ilovetypography.com, kiss925.com, yoast.com, mashable.com, mattcutts.com etc. have used this plugin for their WordPress powered website.

   Impressive features of W3 Total Cache:

   • Caching of feeds, Javascript, and CSS on CDN, On disk or in memory
   • Comes equipped with content delivery network (CDN) management
   • Caching of search results page, database objects, posts, and pages.
   • Offers non-blocking JavaScript embedding
4. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
   
   Google Analytics Dashboard is a great plugin to display Google analytics report in your WordPress dashboard. It allows you to track your website traffic and other crucial data. All you have to do is embed a few lines of code into your website and you are all set to monitor the user involvement on your web pages. It allows you to track traffic source, real-time visitors, real-time acquisition channels, real-time traffic sources details and so much more.

   Impressive features of Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

   • Is multisite compatible
   • Lets you use custom dimensions to monitor your statistics
   • Equipped with event tracking system that allows you to track events such as fragment identifiers, affiliate links, outbound links, emails and downloads
   • Offers enhanced link attribution
   • Comes with page speed sampling rate control
   • Exclude user roles from tracking
5. Akismet
   
   If you run a website, chances are, you have come across spam comments. The more successful your website becomes, the more spam comments it is likely to receive. Comment spam not only ruins your website rankings but also persuade Google to penalize your site for allowing bad links on it. Therefore, it becomes important to moderate your website for spam comments and remove them as soon as you encounter them.

   Akismet is one plugin that helps you combat spam comments without having to spend a fortunate. It is a free plugin and checks all comments posted on your site. Akismet basically filters out spam comments and puts it in the spam section.

   Impressive features of Akismet:

   • Adds a status history with every comment and lets you easily track which comments were marked spam and which were cleared by it
   • Automatically checks every comment and filters out the spam comments
   • Allows moderators to track the number of approved comments
   • Equipped with a discard feature that simply blocks the worst spam and improve the speed of your site.

 

Author Bio : Mary Scott is a WordPress Developer by profession and writer by hobby. She works for Stellen Infotech, expert in providing all solutions related to WordPress Plugin Development to global clients. Currently, She has an impressive count of WordPress related articles under her name.