Chances are that at least one site that you’ve viewed today is run by WordPress. This powerful content management system (CMS) enables websites to be built into some of the absolute best sites on the web. You may have even visited one today without even knowing it! (Hint: This blog is run on a WordPress site!) But don’t just take my word for it, some of the most notable names and businesses powered by WordPress are people like Jay Z, Katy Perry, and companies like Forbes, The New York Times, and SONY. Their full list of top names using WordPress can be found here.
Since there is an incredible amount of traffic on the Internet these days, there is a definite need to stand out above everyone else. With this awesome tool, you now have the ability to quickly and easily customize your website. Thankfully, even for the less technical savvy, building a powerful WordPress site need not be difficult at all! Using these 10 plugins will allow you to have full customization and added functionality. You’ll be able to take your website to the next level and stand out among all the rest!
Now, for our list of 10 plugins that will be real game-changers for you and your business.
1. Scribe
This plugin is an incredibly sophisticated tool. It’s primary purpose is to aid you in your content marketing research. Whether your goal is to rank higher in search engines through SEO or simply meet the needs of an even wider audience, scribe has you covered!
Scribe helps to ensure that your content is aligned with only the most popular and relevant search queries. Whether the terms or keywords you are attempting to own are evergreen or just now trending, scribe tells you where you may consider refining the focus of your attention.
One of the coolest parts of this tool, however, is its ability to connect your work to other authors and influencers in similar industries. Whether it’s by your business niche, your product and service or even by the title of your article, Scribe helps you identify how your content compares to similar work. With this information, you are able to collaborate with these influencers and see what’s already working well for them.
2. Link Patrol
The team at Search Engine Journal built this awesome tool that has the overall user experience as their priority. Link Patrol is an intuitive helpful tool who’s goal is to free the internet of the threat of spam. Specifically, this tool enables site owners to find problems with their outgoing links.
Often times, outgoing links can be a real problem, whether they’re found in a comment or in an ad from one of your partners. These links can cause a negative user experience. LinkPatrol helps solve this problem by bringing the spam to your attention. This will ensure you’re ability to identify these harmful links and improve the overall experience for your visitors.
3. OptinMonster
Email marketing is incredibly valuable for the success of your business. This is especially true at any stage you and your business may be in at the time. By building a list of email addresses, you have direct access to their attention. This is unlike most other forms of traditional advertising.
You can know that these leads are highly qualified. And qualified leads are more likely to convert to a sale over other leads because they have already voluntarily showed interest in what you have to offer. They’ve opted in. They will be more likely to read your article or buy your product because they already raised their hand to tell you they like what you have to offer.
Building a list of emails has never been easier now with the help of this awesome tool, OptinMonster. It allows you to easily build opt-in forms for key areas of your website that work seamlessly with WordPress. You’ll also be able to upgrade to extra features including insight to analytics, A/B tests, and targeting capabilities.
This is an ongoing process. It demands a strategy for the long game as you’ll be needing to continually build your list. For this reason, we’ve detailed in-depth tutorials for gaining new email subscribers in our videos Grow Your Email List Fast With SumoMe Scrollbox and Double Your Email Subscribers With SumoMe List Builder.
4. Polldaddy
This plugin enables you to survey your audience in order to better understand just about any aspect of your business you can think of. Knowing the exact thoughts of your audience is incredibly important for the continual shaping of your business and its many strategies.
With this tool, you’ll be able to create as simple or as in-depth of a survey as you’d like. There are many styles and features to choose from in order to gain a variety of insights. When done properly, a survey can inform incredibly valuable information for you to utilize. You’ll be better able to make your next business decision with the help of Polldaddy.
5. SumoMe Share
This plugin is a simple little tool that helps to build your social media presence online! It makes it incredibly simple for your site’s visitors to share your content to their own audiences. This, then, spreads your work exponentially across new communities.
SumoMe Share is essentially a set of simple sharing buttons that offers visitors 1-click instant sharing ability of your content to their social pages. They’ll be able to share your content to their pages on all the major platforms including Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.
Having others share your content means a lot! It means that not only will you benefit from that added exposure, but it’s a type of exposure that reaches new viewers by someone they already like and trust. It’s word of mouth marketing that is both free and effortless!
For a full in-depth video tutorial of SumoMe Share, check out our video here! We’ll guide you through the process and get you up and running in no time!
6. WooCommerce
Each individual WordPress website has the ability to do nearly anything! This, of course, includes Ecommerce. You’ll be able to turn your visitors into customers by offering your products or services online for them to purchase.
This plugin really does stand over others like it in that it enables you to sell nearly anything! You are able to manage options for payment, shipping, taxes, marketing, and in-depth reports. It helps you make a stronger sales strategy so you can make the most of each and every visitor!
WooCommerce is one of many Ecommerce plugins we suggest to take a look at. We detail this powerful tool along with 6 others in our article Our Top 7 Most Effective E-Commerce Plugins for WordPress. Check it out here!
7. WPtouch
WPtouch is an extremely important plugin to be sure to utilize for your WordPress site. This tool helps solve your need to have a website that is optimized for mobile. This is increasingly important as we now live in a world where mobile web browsing is becoming the new standard.
This tool enables your site to have a responsive design to both tablet and mobile viewing experiences. This responsive browsing experience can be customized even further with this tool’s advanced features. A definite must for your WordPress site! For more on how to make your website mobile-friendly in the next 5 minutes, check out our tips here!
8. bbPress
bbPress is a forum software made the WordPress way. Including this plugin into your WordPress site will enable your audience an open line of communication for finding help with their many questions. bbPress solves the problem for those who have ever been frustrated with a forum or bulletin board software that was slow, bloated and always ended up with a hacked server. bbPress is focused on ease of integration, ease of use, web standards, and speed.
They’re keeping things as small and light as possible while still allowing for great add-on features through WordPress’s extensive plugin system. What does all that mean? bbPress is lean, mean, and ready to take on any job you throw at it.
For more on bbPress, check out our full video tutorial here!
9. ChartBeat
This simple plugin enables you to better understand your audience through simple, yet intuitive analytics. You’re able to easily view data points such as engagement time and rates of return. This can help you much further than what simple page views can depict. You’ll be better able to respond ot reader activity with ways to keep your viewers on your pages longer, visiting even more pages and converting ultimately to a conversion.
10. Yoast SEO
Yoast’s SEO plugin, simply put, helps you write better content and perform better online. It gives you a snippet preview of what your post will look like in search results and helps communicate this to Google. This is important because you are able to see what will be displayed when someone is searching for your topic. You’ll be able to see whether your title is too long or too short, if your meta description makes sense in the context of a search result, and which exact keywords you’re really targeting all in one place.
Using this plugin will help you not only increase your search relevancy, but it will increase the click through rate (CTR) for organic search results. More people will be more likely to click on your page because you’re now really providing a more targeted and relevant answer to someone’s search query. Check out our full guided tutorial for Yoast’s SEO Plugin here!
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What about you? Is there a game-changing plugin or tool that you use with your WordPress site or online business? We’d love to hear about it in the comments section below! Thanks!
