There are thousands of WordPress Plugins for small business owners to choose from, so it can be tricky to decipher the great from the not-so-great. Which is why we’ve put together a list of the 5 most essential WordPress plugins for your business website.
5 most essential WordPress plugins
1. WordPress SEO by Yoast
“Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.”
There are several WordPress Plugins for SEO. However, this easy to use WordPress plugin provides everything you need optimize your website content – for free. With over 6 million downloads so far, WordPress SEO is a plugin that many business owners are adding to their WordPress sites to attract more viewers and better their search rankings. Lack of search engine optimization knowledge no longer matters, SEO by Yoast makes SEO simple.
2. Akismet
“Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.”
Never worry about spam comments again. The Akismet plugin scans each comment submitted on your blog to determine if it’s spam or genuine. Set-up is easy and once you’ve registered your blog, you can tell spam comments goodbye. The plugin is free for general blogs but does cost a small fee when used for business purposes.
3. WordPress Live Chat
“Live Chat is the easy way to have a live chat in your WordPress blog.”
With this free WordPress plugin, small business owners can instantly reach out to visitors in real time via live chat. The live chat box also features custom color choices to fit the look of your website.
4. Wordbooker
“This plugin allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall and to any Facebook Fan Page / Group that you are an administrator for.”
Wordbooker is our favorite out of all the other Facebook WordPress plugins available. Save time by automatically updating your Facebook profile or page’s status when you write a new post. If you use the Featured Post function, it will even grab the image and use it as the thumbnail next to the post blurb in your timeline.
5. Google Analytics Dashboard
“This plugin will give you access to your Google Analytics data directly inside your WordPress blog.”
The Google Analytics Plugin enables you to track your blog easily and receive plenty of metadata, such as views per author, views per category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks, and page views. Essentially, it tells you what your audience is most interested in reading or viewing on your site—data that gives you an idea of the kind of audience you’re currently reaching with your marketing plan.
