Over 28% of all websites in the world are run on WordPress. If you use this platform for your blog or business website, you need to install a few must-have WordPress plugins to help you make the most of it.

Having a clean and simple website on WP without any plugins is very impractical. They’re your allies in running a simple, yet fast and functional website and do almost all the work on their own.

Many people are not sure which plugins to choose. And since there are so many options, they often end up overwhelmed and with a cluttered dashboard.

Most WordPress plugins are free of charge but do offer additional features or premium versions for a price. But ultimately, you decide which are the right ones for your blog or website and eliminate the rest.

So keep reading to discover some of the best, most essential plugins for your WordPress blog.

1. Google XML Sitemaps

If you want Google to find your website, you need to install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

Your website SEO is one thing, but helping search engines locate, crawl on and ultimately rank your site should be one of your main priorities.

And you can do this by creating an XML sitemap to allow crawlers to read, analyze and retrieve your site’s content.

2. Yoast SEO

One of the most useful must have WordPress plugins is Yoast SEO. It’s the go-to plugin for optimizing your web copy and content for search engines.

SEO is a crucial part of your blog or business success online. It’s what tells search engines whether you post original, valuable content with tons of engagement and if people stay on your site or leave immediately.

If you’re not sure where to improve, Yoast SEO will tell you exactly how to optimize your blog posts, images, landing page, and add the right keywords to ensure higher SERP.

3. WP-Optimize

To make sure your database is at its highest performance capacity, you need WP-Optimize. It removes everything that’s unnecessary from your website such as spam comments, trashed items, pingbacks, stale/old data and more.

It runs automatically, so all you need to do is set up the frequency at which you’d like the plugin to work.

For example, you’re working on a long blog post and keep adding and removing content. WordPress saves the revisions but they build up in the database. WP-Optimize will delete old revisions and thus free up more space in the database.

It’ll also tell you if you have any wasted space on the website and how to fix it.

4. Akismet

Akismet is one of the most popular (and free) WP plugins designed to battle spam comments on your blog posts.

Unfortunately, nobody can control how many spam comments you’ll get in a day. But Akismet will go through all comments and filter out the spam ones so you don’t have to.

If you run a blog, engaging with your readers is very important for your growth. And nothing says “I care for my readers” more than replying in a clean, junk-free comment section.

5. Wordfence

Wordfence should be on top of the list of must-have WordPress plugins for your site.

The Internet is full of unethical hackers, you want your website to be safe and protected. This plugin will do that for you – and more.

You can choose between a free or a premium API version depending on the level of protection and features you need.

Wordfence scans your site for malicious attacks and vulnerabilities and monitors the metrics that could make it a potential target for hackers.

6. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a great plugin for bloggers who need to organize and schedule their content ahead of time.

Besides your blog posts, you can schedule your social media posts or collaborate with your team. Simply sync all your accounts with the plugin and let it do its magic.

While this is a paid plugin, it’s well worth the time, money and planning you’d otherwise put in scheduling content manually.

7. WP Smush

Website speed and loading time depend on a lot of factors, and image size and quality are one of them.

The more visual content you have on your site, the heavier it’ll be. Especially if your images are not optimized and compressed.

This is where WP Smush comes into play. It reduces the file size of your images without sacrificing quality. So your website will be faster as a result and the servers won’t be strained to load large images if all you need is a thumbnail.

8. Jetpack

Jetpack is among those must-have WordPress plugins that do multiple things at once.

Among other things, the plugin offers the following:

• Site statistics and analytics
• Advertising programs for Google AdSense, AOL, Facebook ads and Amazon
• Up and downtime monitoring
• Backups and restores
• Brute force attack protection

• Content creation tools
• Community and engagement tools
• Email subscription management
• Contact forms
• Comment logins using Google or social networks

Jetpack is free of charge, but if you need additional features for site monetization, SEO tools or added security, you can buy their paid version.

9. WP Super Cache

Your website speed matters more than you imagine. In fact, loading time must be under 2 seconds if you want to keep your visitors around.

To check how your site is doing, use Google’s own PageSpeed Insights tool. If the website underperforms, go ahead and install WP Super Cache.

The point is to serve your readers custom cached files according to their visit. And the plugin does this by serving static HTML files multiple times. This reduces the need to load all website files all over again for each visit and instead show an already cached version of the site.

Have you tried these must-have WordPress plugins for your website?

If you want your website to run smoothly and provide a quality user experience to your visitors, these plugins will help you out. Even if you decide to install all of them, they’ll work seamlessly within the system and won’t cause any problems with your website.

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