Essential WordPress plugins we use for every website build
Our website builds are unique thanks to our refined strategy and analysis process. They meet the bespoke requirements of your business but even then we have a selection of essential WordPress plugins we use for most of our projects. Written by Dawid ZimnyYoast SEO
Search engine optimisation is crucial for the success of every business website. With over 5 million active installations, Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. The plugin allows your team to cover the basics of SEO to maintain the visibility of your business in search engines.
The free version helps you to avoid duplicate content with Yoast’s URL management, allows easy title and meta description edition and equips you with tools to check the readability score of your website. Yoast also works to the benefit of your website navigation by providing you with a shortcode for breadcrumbs.
The number of features makes the free plugin sufficient for many use cases, but Yoast SEO Premium opens up a lot of possibilities. The paid version of the plugin includes 1 year of premium support and allows you to optimise your content for synonyms and related keyphrases. Team Yoast also thought about the specific needs of different businesses, from local to
We also love the duplicate post extension of Yoast.
Gravity Forms
Web forms are one of the key features of a website. They can serve as a lead generation tool or means of contact for your clients. There are multiple popular contact form plugins but Gravity Forms is one of our essential WordPress plugins due to the amount of integration it offers.
Gravity Forms is a premium plugin and is much more than just a contact form creator. The forms you create are responsive and the tool allows file uploads. Your visitors can save partially completed forms to return to them later and you can perform advanced calculations based on submitted values.
We picked Gravity Forms as our go-to contact form plugin because of the integrations it offers. You can see a sneak peek below or check out the list of add-ons on their website.
Wait… you only use three plugins?!
That’s right! Well, technically four:
- Yoast SEO
- Duplicate Post extension for Yoast
- Gravity Forms
- Redirection
In our latest project, we didn’t even use Gravity Forms, so sometimes this is down to just three!
But, as you’ve noticed, we’ve mentioned a plugin that wasn’t on the list… That’s because we have a few honourable mentions.
“Just one more plugin, boss…” 🥺
Honourable mentions
Redirection
Redirection is a seamless redirect manager. It helps you track errors by logging all the redirects happening on your site. Fixing these issues will boost your domain authority on Google.
Download the free Redirection plugin.
Advanced Custom Fields
ACF is a freemium plugin allowing you to customise your WordPress edit screens. You can add your custom fields everywhere within the platform. The PRO version includes additional field types.
The plugin has an add-on for Yoast SEO that takes all your custom fields into consideration in SEO and content analysis done by Yoast.
As an added bonus, it has been recently acquired by one of our partners, WP Engine.
Check out the free Advanced Custom Fields plugin.
Antispam Bee
The name of the plugin speaks for itself. It’s an easy-to-use tool to fight spam in your comments section. The plugin doesn’t need any configuration and is GDPR compliant. You can manage the blocked comments, including the possibility to restore them if you notice any false positives.
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Originally published Dec 20, 2018 9:17:40 AM, updated August 13 2023.
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