7 essential WordPress plugins for Rapid Growth

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system and it’s not without good reason either. WordPress websites offer a wide range of plugins, allowing greater control and customization of your website, making it ideal for bloggers and businesses to establish and expand their online presence by streamlining their work. Given that there are nearly 50,000 plugins available, it isn’t hard to stumble upon several plugins with the same or similar features, making it hard to make out which plugin is the most suitable for websites looking to expand their reach step by step. Research and trials have allowed us to come up with the following set of apps that can be considered essential during website development for blog and businesses.

Perhaps the most versatile plugin available for WordPress today, SumoMe is an absolute must-have for any blog or company looking to expand their reach with maximum efficiency. With tools aimed at increasing conversions in every conceivable way, SumoMe sets itself up as your website’s very own PR agent. From tools like Heat Maps – which shows you where users are clicking – to Highlighter, which makes it easier for users to tweet content, this dreamy plugin has it all. The prize tool, however, is List Builder which provides a pop-up box for email conversions and the beauty lies in the level of customisation offered, with options like the one for setting up a trigger point as users scroll through the content and making changes to the look and feel of the box and its content being the most useful.

Now in spite of very tough competition from free plugins like W3 Total Cache or Hyper Cache, there can be no argument that WP-Rocket is the most effective WordPress cache plugin on the market. Currently priced at a discounted $29.25 (Approx. ₹1900), the single site plan is otherwise priced at $39 (Approx. ₹2500) for a year, which is very economical for most businesses and bloggers because of the vast difference it makes to the speed of the website. A short and simple set-up ensures it isn’t imperative for a developer to install the plugin. The option to optimize your database is a huge plus as the impact it has on the website’s speed cannot be understated.

Finding itself as one of the most popular plugins, WordPress SEO by Yoast takes care of all your SEO activities for you. While it can only be installed on self-hosted WordPress websites, it is nevertheless an essential tool to have in your arsenal. With winning features like the page analysis tool, XML sitemaps functionality and Technical WordPress Search Engine Optimisation, Yoast SEO guides your entire optimization process, ensuring your content is best suited to boost your visibility. This plugin is ideal if your website is in dire need of WordPress SEO services and their freemium service only makes it more economical.

The popular choice among powerful websites, MaxCDN provides a seamless page loading experience through their content delivery network (CDN). With a global peering network established through over 50 PoP (Point of Presence) locations across the world, MaxCDN’s content delivery network is second to none. This plugin functions by distributing your website’s static content to every server in their global peering network. All of this makes MaxCDN one of those tools that can guarantee improved search engine rankings and higher conversions and one which would be essential for WordPress website development.

Buffer’s plugin for WordPress enables you to connect your website and your social media platforms for a more unified access to all your digital platforms. Buffer allows you to schedule posts through your website and share old or new posts on social media. Time saved is money earned and in a business, every penny counts. The added benefit of in-depth analytics will ensure you can modify the content to best suit your audience and schedule posts more effectively.

The ideal accounting tool for service-based companies, Freshbooks is nevertheless a good option for most small businesses conducting their business online. It stands out as one of the best options for an invoicing software thanks to its time tracking feature which eases the billing process by a stretch. Another handy feature, Freshbooks’ Expense Tracking allows you to categorize expenses to facilitate tax filing in the future. A client portal allows customers to view, print and pay their invoices at any time. It’s important to note, however, that this isn’t true accounting software. Freshbooks does not use double-entry accounting and nor does it provide important reports like account payable or a general ledger.

Slack is an ideal tool for companies with employees or offices in multiple time zones and locations. The plugin facilitates internal communication and team management and displays greater efficiency than an emailing system of communication. Real time communication ensures it’s a snug fit for multi-author WordPress websites as well. Slack’s winning feature, however, has to be its ability to integrate tools and thus improve collaboration on WordPress.