12 Best WordPress Plugins For Blogs & Business Websites in 2024

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Best WordPress Plugins
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  • Looking for the best WordPress plugins?
  • Wondering which all plugins you should be installing from day 1?
WordPress PluginsPurpose
RankMath Plugin (Recommended)SEO Plugin
Yoast SEO (Freemium)SEO plugin
WP Forms (Freemium)Contact form/Forms
Contact Form 7Contact Form
WP-Rocket (Paid/Recommended)Cache Plugin
PerfmattersPerformance Optimization
ShortPixelsImage Optimization
Jetpack (Freemium)Multi-purpose
Akismet (Freemium)Prevent Spam comments
WP-DBManager (Free)Database optimization/DB-Backup
PushEngage (Paid)Push notifications
Social SnapSocial Media sharing
WordFenceSecurity Plugin
Lasso (New & recommended)Link Cloaking Plugin
ThirstyAffiliates (Freemium)Affiliate link cloaking plugin
Broken Link CheckerSEO/find broken links

These are some of the best WordPress plugins as of 2024.

Note: You need only one plugin for a specific task. For example, for caching, you can either use WP-Rocket, WP SuperCache, or W3 Total cache. In case you have questions, use the comment box below.

So you just created a new blog and wondering what the best WordPress plugins you should install are?

If your answer is yes, then you are in luck today.

Here I’m sharing the list of best plugins for WordPress that you should be installing from day 1.

Plugins, as we all know, extend WordPress’s capabilities.

But with the plethora of plugins available online, the biggest problem is choosing the right WordPress plugins to use for your WordPress website.

You likely have many plugins on your site, but does your WordPress blog have the essential plugins?

Let me take this opportunity to point out a few plugins that will improve your site’s user experience and make WordPress admin tasks way easier.

These top WordPress plugins are handy for every blogger and webmaster on the WordPress platform.

Best WordPress Plugins For Every WordPress Blog & Website

Without wasting any more time, let us look at the best WordPress plugins for your blog.

1. Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin

Yoast SEO
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Having an SEO plugin is essential for any WordPress blog to rank higher in search engines. This helps you to drive free traffic from search engines.

This plugin is a must-have for every WordPress blog out there. I have never seen any other free SEO plugin come even close to being as powerful and effective.

Need I say more?

With this one plugin, you can cover all of your on-site and on-page SEO.

This plugin comes in free & pro versions.

 Watch the below video to learn how to set up the plugin:

Subscribe on YouTube

2. WP Rocket 

WP-Rocket
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Wouldn’t it be great if your site loads super fast? 

WordPress is a memory-hogging CMS. To ensure WordPress doesn’t make your web server crash, use a cache plugin along with powerful servers such as Bluehost or Kinsta.

There are many excellent WordPress cache plugins out there, but WP Rocket tops every one of them for its simplicity and effectiveness. What more, it works great even on shared hosting!

Whenever a user browses your blog post, WordPress has to fetch that post from the WordPress database. Now, this process needs far too many PHP calls and thus puts a lot of strain on your hosting server.

Picture this:

One hundred visitors try visiting your blog. In this case, WordPress runs 100x PHP calls to serve these web pages to everyone.

When you use a cache plugin, it creates a static HTML file of the web page & and allows WordPress to serve a page from this cache. This reduces the server load drastically & allows your pages to be served within a few seconds.

The plugin is easy to configure and it offers features that no other similar plugin offers.

You can download the plugin from the link below and read detailed review of WP Rocket plugin.

3. Jetpack

JetPack Plugin
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A multi-featured plugin, Jetpack is which is power-packed with many features.

This plugin is made by the people behind WordPress and is one of the most well-maintained WordPress plugins you will ever encounter.

Here are a few things that you will be able to do with the Jetpack WordPress plugin:

  • Add a contact form.
  • Track page views & search queries with powerful analytics.
  • Monitor downtime and get notified when your site is down.
  • Prevent hackers from brute forcing your blog’s login page.
  • Provide social sharing buttons to let your reader share your blog posts.
  • Auto-publicize your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus after you publish any blog post.
  • Show related posts to increase engagement & lower down bounce rate.
  • Provide subscription options so that users can subscribe to your blog updates.
  • Create a sitemap. However, I recommend you use the sitemap feature by Yoast SEO.
  • Take daily backups of your blog using VaultPress
  • Get a free CDN with Photon.

There are many more things that you will get with Jetpack.

Once you start using Jetpack, you can ditch many other plugins from your blog and reduce the number of plugins used.

Here are a few guides & tutorials to learn more about the Jetpack plugin:

4. Akismet

Free your blog from comment spam!

Akismet WordPress Plugin
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WordPress comment spam is something that you will face from day one.

When you start a WordPress blog, and you get some cheesy lines in the comments, you should not get excited. It is most likely a spam comment. For example:

  • “I love your blog. You’ve got an excellent writing style.”
  • “Your writing style is excellent and I have subscribed to your blog.”
  • “Wow! This is so informative!”

Check the URL, and you will realize that it leads to some spammy affiliate site.

Akismet is an official WordPress plugin from Automattic to prevent spam comments in WordPress.

It is the first plugin that you should install on any new blog. Your new blog will have the WordPress commenting feature, and if you don’t use this plugin, your blog will be spammed. The spammers only want to throw their links on your articles and don’t want to join the discussion.

This plugin will automatically move those comments that it considers spam into the trash can (deleting them permanently after a period of time).

It is a must-have.

Subscribe on YouTube

You need to grab a WordPress.com API, which you can get by creating a free profile on WordPress.com.

5. PushEngage

PushEngage WordPress Plugin
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PushEngage is a unique plugin for driving more traffic to your blog. It adds a new way for your readers to subscribe to your blog. It adds web push technology, and readers using Chrome, Safari, or Firefox browsers will get a notification to subscribe to your blog updates.

After that, whenever you publish a new blog post, your subscribers will get push notifications alerting them of a new post. You can also send manual push notifications to drive traffic to any specific blog post, landing page, or even an advertisers site.

Here is the complete tutorial on how to use this plugin.

6. Social Snap

SocialSnap WordPress Plugin
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Social bookmarking has become a major ranking factor for SEO.

One thumb rule for getting more shares is placing your social sharing buttons in prominent places. When readers see these options at the right time, they’re more likely to share your article.

Social Snap is by far the top social media sharing plugin. It lets you add sharing buttons on both your desktop and mobile sites.

It supports all modern platforms like:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Whatsapp
  • Telegram
  • Pinterest (direct on the image)
  • Reddit … and many more

7. Contact Form 7

When you search for contact form plugins, you will be bombarded with many options.

There are many premium ones (like Gravity), but Contact Form 7 is the simplest plugin to configure.

It’s also useful because it shows things like referral source which is very useful for knowing how your visitor navigated through your site before using the contact form.

One great thing about Contact Form 7 is the ability to customize it according to your needs. The form can be created, and every entry from it will be sent to your email.

You can also create multiple forms with multiple tables.

Note: If you are using the Jetpack plugin, you don’t need to use this plugin. You can add a Contact Form using Jetpack.

8. WordFence Plugin

WordFence security plugin
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There is no better time for securing your WordPress blog.

There are many security-related WordPress plugins out there, and you can use any of them.

But, WordFence is one of the top security plugins that can ensure your blog stays safe from hackers.

The features of this plugin are overwhelming, but essentially, this plugin ensures your blog doesn’t get hacked.

They roll out updates now and then to tackle the latest hacking and cracking techniques.

9. No Self Pings

I have seen numerous lists of useful WordPress plugins on the web, and it is surprising that no one has listed the No Self Pings plugin.

This simple plugin saves you from a lot of headaches.

When you link to any post from any other post on your blog, it sends a pingback. With this plugin, your blog will stop sending pingbacks from the blog itself.

This is a plug & play plugin without any extra configuration needed.

This is a free plugin for WordPress which lets you manage all your affiliate links.

You can read all about this plugin here.

Easy Affiliate Links help shorten and mask an awkward looking URL. It also helps in redirecting readers to your favorite affiliate programs.

For affiliate marketers, this plugin will add a lot of value to your site.

Watch the below video to learn the benefit of this technique:

Subscribe on YouTube

11. OptinMonster

OptinMonster WordPress plugin
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Can you think of a blog without an email list?

Well, OptinMonster is one great plugin that helps you capture emails.

This plugin offers many advanced features such as A/B testing, geolocation targeting, conditional pop-ups, and even email subscription forms for mobile sites.

Broken Link checker WordPress Plugin
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Broken links are dead ends for search engines and suicide for your website’s SEO.

Broken Link Checker is a free plugin that continuously scans your blog for broken links and allows you to fix them with one click.

This plugin also avoids sending pings to your site when you publish posts with links to your own posts.

I have been using this plugin since the inception of ShoutMeLoud and I can confidently say that it is something every WordPress blog should use.

I have written this guide on how to use the Broken Link Checker plugin. Do take a look.

These 12 plugins are not only useful but are one of the top choices for any kind of WordPress website.

They will add another layer of functionality and add features to your WordPress blog that will enhance both the user and the admin experience.

You should also check out our list of must-have WordPress plugins that we use at ShoutMeLoud.

Do you know of any more must-have or basic WordPress plugins which should be on every WordPress blog? Let us know via the comments.

Don’t forget to share this list with others on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!

Here are a few other hand-picked guides for you to read next:

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

7 thoughts on “12 Best WordPress Plugins For Blogs & Business Websites in 2024”

  1. Vishal Singh

    Hi Harsh
    As you have shown in your you tube tutorial video for installing akismet plugin, some of the option has changed now I am trying to get API key for wordpress blog and this plugin showing below mention option with checkbox, which I need to check to get API key.
    I don’t have ads on my site
    I don’t sell products/services on my site
    I don’t promote a business on my site

    But I Planning put google ads and affiliate links on my site.
    Still should I check these boxes to get API key or should I go for some other option.

  2. Saurabh Tyagi

    Hi, can you please suggest me a wordpress plugin which can be used to take membership payments and restricts the membership limit also.

    My website is not a woocommerce website and i want to integrate domestic payment gateways like razorpay, ccavenues, etc. which can take upi and wallet payments except paypal and stripe.

    1. @Saurabh
      You should look at Memberpress + Learndash integration. For domestic payment, see if they have any available addon or send me an email, I will connect you with my developer, who will do the integration for you.

  3. Prajyot

    Is Pushengage faster then Onesignal?

    1. @Prayjot
      I’m not certain about the speed but PushEngage definitely have many more features in comparison to Onesignals.

  4. Steffa

    Thank you so much for this list! I’m a new blogger and have only recently started looking into SEO and plugins. I’m not technical in the least so your straight forward explanations are extremely helpful.

    Ha! I’m basically spending my morning going through your articles on SEO and tweaking the things I understand how to do. Your Permalink setting article was great too.

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