WordPress is undoubtedly the most used CMS from all over the world. Over the past decade, it has completely revolutionized how businesses build websites. Here are a few stats that prove this
- Among websites built only with CMS, WordPress tops the chart with a market share of more than 61.8%.
- 35% of the entire web is powered by WordPress.
- 14.7% of the top 100 websites from around the world run on WordPress.
These stats make so much sense, partially because making a basic website with WordPress is a cakewalk. But times have changed and we have moved on from just having a website, haven’t we?
Your business now needs a website that runs like a rocketship, sends across your message right, ranks higher in SERPs, and is a million different things at the same time.
This is where WordPress plugins come into the picture. As if creating a website on WordPress was not easy enough, you have more than 56000 plugins to choose from that can help you to improve the performance of your WP website even further.
8 More WordPress Plugins & How To Use Them – A Step by Step Guide
These WordPress plugins make it easier for you to optimize your website for better visibility, loading speed, and many other things. In this article, I am going to talk about the 7 best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
Note: Most of these plugins have a (paid) premium version.
MonsterInsights Lite
MonsterInsights is definitely one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
In simple words, it connects your Google Analytics with your WordPress website which makes it so helpful to know everything about your visitors and make informed decisions.
Conventionally, if you would want to set up Google Analytics tracking on your business website, you will need the help of a WordPress developer to add the tracking code on each page of your website.
Add conversion tracking on top of that, you will understand that it is a painful task.
MonsterInsights is one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites that helps you integrate Google Analytics with your website. Here are a few features of MonsterInsights that can be too compelling for you to miss.
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Tracking
From universal tracking in just a few clicks to eCommerce tracking, scroll tracking, forms tracking, and much more, MonsterInsights is one of the best free WordPress Plugins for business websites that gives you detailed insights to reduce the bounce rate and increase the fluidity of your conversion funnel right from your WordPress dashboard.
On top of the default tracking features of Google Analytics, MonsterInsights facilitates the tracking of things, without writing a single line of code, like most-profitable keywords, eCommerce conversion rates, affiliate link clicks, and much more.
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Reports
One thing that most business owners and marketers agree on is that creating the right reports on Google Analytics takes time.
Find the landing page you want to get data for, use ‘Second Dimension” to further segregate, or use the “Reverse URL Path” feature to find the right source of a visitor coming to your website.
You can deny it all you want, but Google Analytics has a bit of a learning curve, and generating reports can be monotonous & painful. This is where MosterInsights become super useful and one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
MonsterInsights can be your single point solution for all kinds of Analytics reports that you want to generate for your business website – Behavior Report, Search Console Report, Custom Dimensions Report, Real-Time Report, and more.
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Integrations
The ease of integrations that MonsterInsights supports is definitely what makes it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
MonsterInsights supports super useful integrations such as WooCommerce, WPForms, Pretty Links, and many more.
Tip: The basic version of MonsterInsights – MonsterInsights Lite doesn’t add much value to your Google Analytics account.
If you are a large-scale business looking to automate the entire process, the pro version of this plugin can come in handy for your business website.
W3 Total Cache
Before we get into why W3 Total Cache is one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites, here’s a quick snippet of what Page Cache and Browser Cache mean.
Someone opens a webpage of your WordPress site for the first time.
Page Cache makes sure that the next time the same visitor opens that webpage, it isn’t dynamically loaded and loads up faster while using lesser server resources with the help of stored cache information.
On the other hand, Browser Cache allows you to download & store all the images, JavaScripts, CSS files, etc. in a temp file to enhance your website’s performance and user experience.
W3 Total Cache (W3TC) is a WordPress Web Performance Optimization plugin. It helps you to ensure site scalability, build sustainability for a high volume of traffic without crashing, and improve performance.
Other than page caching, browser caching, database caching, and other types of caching, here are a few features of W3TC that make it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
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Lazy Loading
Did you know that videos/images on webpages make up for over 78% of the total weight?
So, the addition of Lazy Loading through the W3TC can be game-changing for your website’s performance, especially if you use lots of high-res images and videos on your business website.
Lazy Loading is basically making your website smart enough to load only visible content and render/download the rest on-demand. This feature of the W3TC WordPress plugin decreases the load time and takes your site’s performance to the next level which makes it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
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CDN Options
W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin provides many comprehensive CDN options which make it even more crucial and one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
Here’s a quick snippet of why a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is important for your WordPress site.
A CDN is a network of connected servers that downloads and stores the static contents of your website for better performance and reduced loading speed.
For instance, if your main server is located in Delaware and someone from London is trying to access your website. Without a CDN, the contents of your website will have to hop over many networks thus increasing its loading time.
With a CDN, a person trying to access your website is directed to the closest server to their location. W3TC provides easy integrations with almost all the big CDN providers.
For CDN providers that are not already listed, you can use a custom CDN URL to enable its integration with W3TC.
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Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Support
W3TC provides AMP support which adds to its value as one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
There is a feature of W3TC known as “User Agent Groups” that has become obsolete in today’s age of responsive web design but still can be useful. It allows you to render different themes for different devices (mobile, tablet, and desktop).
Apart from this, the premium version of W3 Total Cache – W3TC Pro allows you to enhance the performance of your WPML-powered site, Genesis, and much more.
The premium version also contains these two Pro Extensions – Genesis Framework by StudioPress Acceleration and WPML Extension.
Jetpack
The versatility of Jetpack makes it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites. It has quite a few features that can help you reduce the number of plugins that you have currently installed on your site.
With 5+ active installations, Jetpack is one of the most popular WordPress plugins and, shortly, we will see why.
Jetpack by Automattic has “security, performance, marketing, and design tools” to make your website more secure, faster, and visible.
Primarily used for site security, Jetpack has a bunch of other features such as WordPress.com Stats, Mobile Theme, Lazy Loading, Ad-Free Video Hosting, Automatic Post Scheduling, and much more.
Here are the top features of Jetpack that make it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
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Site Security
Jetpack has a bunch of site security features such as auto-backup in real-time with unlimited storage, blocks spam comments & form submissions, site duplication/cloning/migration, brute force attack protection, and much more.
It is also referred to as a WordPress backup plugin by a few. Most of the essential site security features such as downtime monitoring are available in the free version of the Jetpack plugin as well which makes it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
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Powerful Tools
Jetpack offers powerful tools that help you to monitor everything from your WordPress site’s dashboard.
A few of these powerful tools include – advanced site stats and analytics, Publicize for auto-publishing, professional themes, oEmbed support, and related posts.
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Integrations
On top of other features, Jetpack allows integrations that definitely push it up the list of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
Few integrations that can prove useful to your business website and that Jetpack provides are WooCommerce, Google Analytics, Social Media Platforms, payment processors, etc.
Jetpack may sound like it but it is not a bed of roses. Many users complain that why does this plugin have to come with 30 different modules when most of them aren’t necessary for them.
The bulky nature of this plugin may even impact your website’s loading speed – something you shouldn’t compromise on.
Jetpack Alternatives
Since Jetpack has multiple modules, there is no one replacement for this plugin.
For instance, you can use the Envira Gallery to replace Jetpack’s responsive galleries. WP to Buffer can be an alternative to the Jetpack’s module that allows you to auto-post on social media.
8 More WordPress Plugins & How To Use Them – A Step by Step Guide
Yoast SEO
When you are looking for the best free WordPress plugins for business websites, Yoast SEO is one that you cannot miss. Since 2008, this plugin has helped many business websites get better rankings and visibility in the SERPs.
Yoast SEO is the plugin for you if you are looking for anything from the SEO basics such as defining target keywords to other things such as meta titles & descriptions to how you want your webpage to appear in the SERPs.
Here are the top features that make Yoast SEO one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
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Content Insights
Yoast SEO helps you out with actionable insights for the content on your website.
Are you writing a blog or a service page? This plugin will help you identify the top used keywords/key phrases that you can use as your primary keyword.
It also helps you to define metas (title, description, keyword) to control how your webpage appears in the SERPs. Besides, you can also define the snippet of how your webpage will look in social media sharing which is another reason why it is one of the best free WordPress plugins for WordPress websites.
It also helps you to add schema.org code to better categorize and define what a webpage on your business website is all about. For instance, you can let Google or other search engines know whether a page is an “Article” by your “Organization”.
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Redirect Manager
We all know that URL slugs are super important in the SEO of your business website and how disastrous it is to have broken links on your website.
Yoast SEO offers a ‘redirect’ feature that redirects an old URL to your new URL to make sure that your visitors aren’t taken to a ‘404 Not Found’ page.
The WordPress plugin also provides you with a feature called ‘REGEX redirect’ that allows you to redirect all links containing a certain word or expression to a single page if need be.
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Internal Linking
Believe it or not, internal linking is an important aspect of SEO. Besides, it also allows you to keep users from exiting your website and thus, increasing the average page sessions per user.
Yoast SEO allows you to ensure proper internal linking and site structure by giving you valuable suggestions. Create a hierarchical structure on your website in no time using this WordPress plugin.
Yoast SEO Alternatives
Though Yoast SEO is a great WordPress plugin, it has its own limitations. To name a few, you can use it on only self-hosted WordPress websites and most of its best features come in a premium version of this plugin.
A few Yoast SEO alternatives are – Rank Math, The SEO Framework, and SEOPress. Be advised that you’ll have to buy a Pro version to make the most of the premium features of these plugins.
Akismet Anti-Spam
Imagine if you had a plugin to identify spam comments from genuine comments. How much time & resources will it save! Akismet Anti-Spam just that.
It automatically identifies spam comments on your WordPress website from a global database of such comments. This makes Akismet Anti-Spam one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
The good news is this plugin allows integrations with other plugins such as Contact Form 7 & Jetpack. This allows you to prevent spam in form submissions as well.
Here are the top features of Akismet Anti-Spam that make it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
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Spam Comments
Primarily created to prevent spam comments on your WordPress blogs, Akismet Anti-Spam is still one of the best anti-spam free WordPress plugins for business websites. The plugin runs on its own algorithm, making it a reliable and safe option for your WordPress website.
It enables you to set a strictness level that allows you to either discard spam comments right away or review them in the spam folder. The first 50,000 spam comments are blocked for free by the Akismet Anti-Spam WordPress plugin.
After that, you can choose a premium plan (starting at $5/month) that includes detailed insights, actionable data, and more.
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Dashboard
Akismet Anti-Spam plugin has a dashboard with detailed stats for each day, week, or month (depending on your plan). It also shows how many comments are pending in the ‘Spam’ section, yet another reason why it is one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
I recommend that you go through the comments, labeled as ‘Spam’ by the plugin, as sometimes even a real comment is categorized as spam by the plugin, which is one of its cons.
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Integrations
With easy integrations, the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin can help you save tonnes of resources. It allows you to integrate the plugin with your lead submission forms, contact forms, and more.
This helps you to avoid any spam form submission and thus, filter genuine queries out of the lot. A few of the form plugins that can use Akismet Anti-Spam integration are Contact Form 7, Gutenberg Forms, etc.
It also provides custom integrations using its API to help you use its functionality as per your custom requirements.
Akismet Anti-Spam Alternatives
Akismet Anti-Spam plugin is definitely one of the best anti-spam free WordPress plugins for business websites available out there. The original creators of WordPress developed it but there are a few alternative plugins you can try your hands on.
Top Akismet Anti-Spam alternatives are – Stop Spammers, AntiSpam Bee, and Cleantalk.
Smush
Images and videos play a critical role in making your blogs visually appealing and thereby, increasing user engagement.
But, as mentioned earlier, the combined weight of images & videos on your website accounts for 70% of its loading time. So, how to handle this without compromising on the quality of images & videos used?
Smush – ‘Lazy Load Images, Optimize & Compress Images’ is a WordPress plugin just for that. It helps you optimizes your WordPress website’s images & videos for the web without compromising on their quality.
Here are the top three features of Smush that make it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
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Lossless Compression
There are many WordPress plugins available for compressing your images but the key phrase that differentiates Smush from other plugins is “lossless compression.”
Smush compresses your images to reduce their size without compromising on their quality which makes it one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites. For instance, I tested this plugin with an image of 301kb and the compressed image was of size 247kb which is a size reduction of 17.9%.
This percentage might seem lower but it definitely plays a crucial role in optimizing your WordPress website for faster load time. Besides, the premium version of this plugin has a feature called “Super-Smush” for 2x compression.
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Bulk Compress
Using the bulk compress feature of the Smush plugin, you can compress up to 50 images (free version) in a single click. This feature comes in handy, especially if you install this plugin, months or even years, after starting your WordPress website.
Smush helps you further compress your image and convert it into a .webp format as well.
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Smush’s CDN
This feature is available just in the premium version of this WordPress plugin. Smush has a 45-point CDN network. It enables you to choose if you want your images to be served to your visitors via CDN.
Just go to the ‘CDN’ tab in the plugin and click on ‘Get Started’. Having said that, if you are already using a CDN for your website (Cloudflare, for instance) Smush’s CDM feature won’t be of much help.
Smush Alternatives
Even though Smush is one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites (image compression & optimization), there are a few alternatives worth mentioning. To name a few, the top alternatives of Smush would be ShortPixel, Optimole, and Imagify.
Google XML Sitemaps
XML sitemaps are used to tell search engines with a comprehensive list of URLs on a domain. They also contain critical information such as the location of a webpage, the time/date/frequency of the page update, its priority, etc.
XML sites help search engines to understand your website and its structure in a better way by increasing the crawlability of the webpages. They play a crucial role in enhancing the online visibility of sites, especially the newer sites.
This is what makes Google XML Sitemaps one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites. And to top it all, it is a completely free plugin even for commercial use.
Here are the top features of the Google XML Sitemaps WordPress plugin.
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Supports All Content Types
Google XML Sitemaps supports all types of content across all your websites. So, you don’t have to worry about creating your own XML sitemap for content types like custom post types, etc.
This plugin takes care of it all and even pings search engines about any changes which is another reason why it is one of the best free WordPress plugins for business websites.
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Customization
As mentioned earlier, XML sitemaps have data such as the priority of a webpage. The Google XML Sitemaps WordPress Plugin allows you to customize these options without technical knowledge of PHP or any other language.
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Multi-lingual
The Google XML Sitemaps plugin is available in different languages as well. This especially helps if your business site targets users from different lingual backgrounds.
Google XML Sitemaps Alternatives
An individual developer (not an organization) created Google XML Sitemaps and has 2+ million active installs. Yet, there are a few Google XML Sitemaps alternatives that can serve you equally well.
For instance, you can use the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin to generate XML sitemaps for your website. Another Google XML Sitemaps alternative could be XML Sitemap Generator.
Best WordPress Plugins – Over To You
These are the 7 best free WordPress Plugins for business websites that can make your life much easier.
8 More WordPress Plugins & How To Use Them – A Step by Step Guide
But when it comes to setting up your business website on WordPress, you need the help of experts who are well-versed in the latest development/design trends. This will ensure that your site is user-friendly and sends the right message across to your audience.
This is where Resourcifi can help!
Resourcifi is an award-winning Staff Augmentation company. We provide WordPress developers on a full-time, part-time, or hourly basis. Contact us to know more about our engagement models.
