(UPDATED July 2021) What are plugins, you ask? And what are the best plugins for WordPress 2021? A plugin on a WordPress site enhances the functionality of your site for yourself and readers. During the Mum Blogging Masterclass, someone asked whether the plugins were free. Yes, most of them are. Many plugin developers ask for a donation, but it’s entirely up to you whether you give one.

So, how do you access them? Head to Plugins on the sidebar of your WordPress blog Dashboard and click on Add New.

Here are some plugins I’d suggest you might like to add:

Akismet

It’s one of the best ways to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. A word of caution though, sometimes it sends non-spam comments to the spam folder, so it pays to keep an eye on this.

All in One SEO Pack, Yoast for WP or Squirrly:

Up until recently, I used All In One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin and give it much of the credit for helping me rank in  Google for certain keywords. With a little help from some search engine optimisation basics too. However, I now use Squirrly, which has far more features than AIOSEO.

ALTERNATIVE: An alternate plugin that many use and that the majority of my clients use is Yoast. At their core, all three offer the same thing. However, those new to search engine optimisation often prefer Yoast because of how easy it makes the process.

UpDraft Plus

This will do automated backups of your WordPress site and allow you to restore old versions if needed. It will allow you to back up locally or save to Dropbox, Amazon S3 and other cloud based file storage facilities. Simple, but effective. If you’re wondering what are the best plugins for WordPress, this is a must.

Beaver Builder

Used as a theme or plugin, this is a drag and drop page builder. And one I love. Due to SEO reasons, I wasn’t keen on changing the Genesis theme I have on this website. However, I was frustrated with the lack of design ability when you don’t know a lot of code. This allows me to build beautiful designs, without needing to know code. Or change any of the website framework.

ALTERNATIVE: An alternative to Beaver Builder is Thrive Theme’s Thrive Architect.

Jetpack by WordPress.com

This allows you to track analytics inside the blog itself. Although, you will notice a discrepancy between Jetpack and Google Analytics. Most people still refer to their Google Analytics in general.

PopUpAlly Pro

To capture email addresses on your website to build your database, you can use PopUpAlly. I use PopUpAlly Pro, but you can get away with using the free version. It allows for advanced pop ups, like exit pop ups, scrolling pop ups and more without the need to know any code. Super simple to use. ALTERNATIVE: If you’re not into pop ups and would prefer a landing page builder with everything build into it, plus the ability to embed opt-in buttons on your blogs or self-hosted landing pages, I use Leadpages. Leadpages also has a plugin that connects your Leadpages to your WordPress site, so you can use your own website URL for landing pages rather than the LeadPages URL. The plugin is called Leadpages Connector

ShortPixel Adaptive Images and ShortPixel Image Optimizer

Images on your website can impact your website and pages’ speed. Often, we get into bad habits early of uploading images that haven’t been properly resized or uploading pngs instead of jpegs. This DOES make a difference. These tools will not only help you resize and reformat the images, but they’ll optimise them so the quality is still high while the size is super low. It can also change them into formats that are now more acceptable for web pages.

Social Warfare

What are the best plugins for WordPress when it comes to social media? I’ve tried a lot and Social Warfare does multiple things, which makes it a winner for me. These are all the little social media icons along the top of the post that allow you and readers to share your post easily via platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Delicious etc. Hint hint! I have Social Warfare Pro – the paid version – primarily because I wanted the ability to customise the colours to match my branding.

Wordfence Security

If you’re looking for a good security plugin for your site and a company that provides great customer service if ever you need it, then I’ve found this plugin especially helpful. It provides ongoing reports, updates and alerts so I’m fully informed at all times.

WPForms

Every blogger or business person should have a Contact page to allow readers, PRs, brands, customers and others to contact you easily. Along with having a contact form, I also think it’s important to provide your direct email address on the page along with it. 

My Discovery Call forms and bookings are instead done through Infusionsoft, my email marketing and CRM system. That also applies to capturing email leads for opt-in offers that I nurture through an automated email sequence.

WP Rocket

If you’re looking to improve the speed of your website, WP Rocket is a great choice. Even using it’s default settings will see a huge shift in your page load speed. 

Now you know what are the best plugins for WordPress 2021. If you’re looking to search around for others plugins, just take note of the user rating on the plugin. Not all are safe – they can do nasty things to your site. I have a few other plugins I use, but these are the main ones that are the best plugins for WordPress in 2021.

Have you heard of any of these plugins? Are there others you would add?

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