Our Favorite WordPress Plugins

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Did you know that 70% – 80% of people research a company online before making a purchase or hiring a service? Needless to say, there’s a lot of value in having a well-developed website with optimal functionality and a speedy loading time. Useful WordPress plugins can drastically improve a user’s experience by making the website more user-friendly. In the same breath, WordPress plugins are valuable as web developer tools as they make technical functionality easy to incorporate into a website.

How WordPress Plugins Work As Web Developer Tools

In many ways, WordPress plugins are the building blocks to professional website design. There are several types of plugins, each serving a unique purpose and functionality. These pieces of software contain a group of functions that are added to a WordPress website and add a new functionality.

Plugins are designed to integrate with the WordPress content management system. They can be installed or uninstalled when needed. Although, it is important to be careful when building a website to make sure that the plugin is compatible with your version of WordPress and with other installed plugins.

There are thousands of free and paid-for plugins, each serving its own purpose. With that being said, there are a few plugins that the professionals at Connectica rank above others.

8 Effective WordPress Plugins

While each WordPress plugin serves a purpose, there are a few that are in our toolbox of reliable and effective plugins.

1. iThemes Security

When you consider all of the data that is stored on your website and the role it plays in representing your brand, it’s important to keep it secure. iThemes Security is the number one WordPress security plugin. It helps to protect against brute force attacks and detects bots and other attempts at searching for vulnerabilities.

Additionally, it also obscures common WordPress security vulnerabilities. Lastly, iThemes security makes regular backups of your WordPress database. This helps you get back online in the case of a cyber-attack.

2. WP Rocket

Page speed is an important factor in how your website ranks on search engines.

WP Rocket is a powerful plugin. This plugin increases your website’s speed. It caches the content which makes pages’ load times are faster. Best of all, it’s all achieved without any coding needed.

3. Smush Image Compression

Another effective way to speed up your website and improve your search rankings is to optimize your images. That’s where Smush comes in, a plugin that optimizes images through lazy load, resizing, and compressing images.

Smush compresses the images while preserving the image quality. The plugin also includes a detector that highlights images that can be sized better.

4. Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall

Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall are effective in scanning and detecting malware and helps to fix them. The main purpose of the plugin is to detect any form of malware, virus, or threat on your website and alert you that you have a potential threat.

There is also a pro version of this plugin that is extra-effective. This version protects other particularly vulnerable plugins, such as Revolution Slider.

5. Boxzilla

There are certain elements of a website that can take it from being a good website to being a great website. Boxzilla is one of these plugins, allowing you to add a pop-up or slide-in boxes. This adds a unique dynamic to your website as boxes slide or fade in, containing your choice of content.

These movements are customizable with various animations to choose from. This is a powerful plugin for increasing engagement and communicating targeted messages.

6. Clicky Analytics

Data is a valuable tool to increase ROI and target business efforts. Clicky Analytics is a plugin that offers real-time web analytics in a variety of useful ways.

Through detailed reports on segments, heatmaps by page, visitor and segment, on-site analytics, and more, you’re able to identify your website’s strengths and weaknesses.

7. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is one of the number one plugins on WordPress to improve a website’s optimization. With Yoast, it’s possible to optimize a page or blog post to find the right keywords, avoid dead links and improve readability.

“Yoast SEO is one of the most important tools you should be using for your website,” says Connectica SEO specialist, Kristina Oehler. “It’s an easy and effective way to measure your sites ranking capabilities on all major search engines without a major expense.”

The free version of the Yoast SEO plugin works wonders for giving your website the SEO boost that it needs. Additionally, there is a paid version. This offers additional features and training material.

8. infoSNIPER

infoSNIPER adds geo-location, mapping, and proximity search functionality to your website. Furthermore, this is useful in understanding where your website users originate from. This allows you to better communicate with your audience.

This plugin allows you to track all the users by their location and data is shown in custom display options. Specifically, the information is sorted into categories of users, bots, potential threats, and admins.

Professional Website Design and SEO Services

Building a beautiful website is only half of the job. The next step is to maintain this digital platform, regularly update these useful plugins, and keep your SEO practices in tip-top shape. This is where we can help!

At Connectica, we understand that running a business takes a lot of dedicated time and attention. That’s why we offer our website design and SEO services to keep your online presence going strong, 24/7, 365 days a year!

Contact us at 877-816-2259 to find out more about how we can help to best showcase your company’s brand in the online world. Additionally, for more digital marketing tips and insights, follow Connectica on Facebook.