These days, WordPress is more than just a blog-hosting tool. It has become a powerful content management system that many small business owners, as well as bloggers, choose to host their startups or choose as the website tool for their businesses. While WordPress has easy-to-use functionality and many features within the tool itself, a great amount of flexibility and added value is derived from the hundreds of plugins that are compatible with the system. Below is a list of 5 of the top WordPress plugins we find offer the most value.

1. Google Analytics

Data, data, data on who, what, when, why, where, and how is the core of Google Analytics and also why this plugin is so important to your site. Without a plugin like this to track who is coming to your site, what that user is doing, when they are coming, why they are doing what they are doing on your site, where they are interacting and not interacting on your site, and how they are interacting, even the most well-designed and aesthetically pleasing website can be a total failure. Data behind these questions is the best first step to a great website which makes Google Analytics a must-have plugin for WordPress.

 Bonus – it’s free!

2. Yoast SEO

Another very important aspect to your website design is SEO. Optimizing on-site SEO is critically important to maintaining website health and a good organic ranking within search engines like Google. If people cannot find you, what good is a website?

That is where Yoast comes in – this plugin makes it easy to add title tags, meta descriptions, and a host of other must-have optimizations.

3. WP Forms

As a blogger or business owner, you want your audience or customer base to be able to get in touch with you for questions, clarifications, and many other reasons. The WP Forms plugin allows you to create form pages using a very simple drag-and-drop tool. Whether it is order forms, contact forms, or email subscription forms, this plugin turns hassle into hero and lets you get on to something else just as important to making your business a success.

4. Envira Gallery

Wanting to showcase brand or work through images on your site but looking for something unique? Envira Gallery might be the plugin for you. This tool allows you to create professional galleries of images that are responsive (scale correctly on devices such as mobile and tablet) but that don’t cause your website to get bogged down and have slow load speed. An additional exciting feature of this plugin is the lightbox pop-up functionality. This allows a potential user on your site quicker access to the content you so meticulously out together to showcase on your site. 

5. Sucuri Security

Online security has always been important, but recently with the outpouring of cyber-attacks and hacker infiltrations, users want to know their information is secure when purchasing an item online or entering their information into a form online. The Securi plugin is more than up for the task of protecting your users’ data as well as insuring your site is note being taken over by some malware circling around on the web.

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