Have you ever installed WordPress and wondered what plugins you should be installing? You’re not alone. There are thousands of plugins you could install which means it can be challenging to choose. I’ve built my fair share of websites and tested a lot of plugins in the past. This has led me to creating my own list of go-to WordPress plugins. Here are some of the best WordPress plugins I’ve come across that I would recommend to anyone looking to build a site or blog with WordPress.

1 – Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin to help you optimize your site and improve your search engine rankings. It’s fully automated and easy to use, keeping your site optimized at all times.”

It is the most popular WordPress SEO plugin, and for good reason. Yoast SEO does a lot of what professional SEOs do, but with a few clicks. It helps you focus on creating great content and telling a story here on your WordPress website.

Yoast is a WordPress plugin that helps you deliver better content to your website’s visitors by giving you easy-to-access tools for writing great meta descriptions, titles, and tags. Whether you want to make more users click on your content or rank better in search engines—or both—Yoast SEO is for you.

With the use of this plugin, your WordPress content will be as search engine-friendly as possible. It includes an XML Sitemap which is important for Google to index your site. The plugin also checks your work and let’s you know if you’re missing some crucial SEO elements.

2 – All in one WP migration

Are you transferring your WordPress website from one domain or host to another? Are you looking for a solution that makes the migration seamless and easy? In this article, I’ll tell you about all in one wp migration plugin. This plugin makes migrating your WordPress website very simple. Not only does this plugin make it easy, but it also ensures that everything is transferred properly and safely, keeping you worry free during the move.

If you’re looking to move your WordPress site from one place to another, All in One WP Migration is perfect for you. It cuts down on the headache of migrating from one host or domain to another, by taking care of all the details. The plugin makes it incredibly easy to move your site with just a few mouse clicks.

3 – Akismet

Akismet is the leading comment spam fighting plugin for WordPress. It seamlessly integrates with your website to ensure that all user comments are legitimate, making it easy for you to review and approve each comment before it appears on your site.

Akismet protects your website from spam using the collective intelligence of millions of Akismet users and artificial intelligence. When a comment is detected, it’s sent to the user who entered it. If that user confirms that the comment includes spam content, then Akismet filters it, preventing bad comments from taking over your website.

4 – Smush

All the media files on your WordPress website are slowing down page loading time, but you can get rid of this problem by using Smush. This free WordPress plugin is designed to reduce the size of multiple images at once. With a clean and clutter-free interface, Smush helps you optimize images quickly. There are multiple image optimization techniques available such as lossless compression, lazy loading, etc.

Smush is a free lossless image compression plugin for WordPress. It can automatically compress JPG, PNG and SVG images without changing their quality. Compressed images are 75% to 400% smaller than the originals on average!

5 – Wordfence

Wordfence is a security plugin that protects your site from malicious attacks. It prevents unauthorized access by blocking login attempts and limiting login attempts to avoid brute-force attacks. Additionally, Wordfence offers two-factor authentication to ensure only the legitimate users have access to your website. The plugin also provides an alerting feature that sends out a message whenever a serious issue arises, helping you promptly address the problem.

Wordfence harnesses the power of your server to protect your site from malicious attacks. It defends against threats including brute-force attacks, DDoS attacks, and malware. It also improves your WordPress security by blocking fake Google crawlers and bots looking for vulnerabilities.