There are nearly 50,000 plugins available to WordPress Users. As website developers, we have tried quite a few and continue to explore options that are out there.
There are some really great free plugins out there, but some paid options deserve a second glance. In this blog, we decided to showcase a free SEO plugin we’ve used before and also discuss a couple of paid options you might consider when it comes to security and analytics. Take a look.
Yoast SEO
SEO is a very important part of your website. Search Engine Optimization helps you come up at the top of organic search results. The better your SEO ranking, the more traffic your website will see.
Need help focusing your keyword and content analysis? Look no further. Tell Yoast SEO the keyword you’d like your page to rank for in search results. It’ll run a check on your content to be sure you’re using it in the right places and not overusing it.
Yoast SEO allows you to optimize your content, image titles, meta descriptions, and more in real-time. It will also perform a readability check and help you control duplicate content with canonical URLs.
Easily manage your XML Sitemap through this plugin. Most SEO plugins don’t talk to your XML Sitemap Generator, so this is helpful. Keep certain taxonomies out of your sitemap and use an XSLT stylesheet so humans can read them, too.
Defender
You really need to seek out additional security support for your website nowadays. You never know when hackers hacking or malicious activity might take place.
The Defender plugin protects your WordPress website in a user-friendly way. Defender provides regular security scans, vulnerability reports, safety recommendations, and customized help better securing your site.
Defender will find suspicious code in WordPress and can restore files easily and quickly. If you want to avoid breakages or slowness on your website, Defender keeps an audit log for easy tracking. You’ll also be the first to know if you’re blacklisted or flagged as unsafe so you can fix the situation.
Beat brute force attacks through Defender with site bans for repeated 404s or failed logins. You’ll also be notified regularly of malicious activity. Oh yeah, and don’t forget about the very important cloud backups with Snapshot.
Google Analytics +
It’s important to know all about your website stats. We always say Google Analytics is the way to track what’s working and what’s not working, but now you can use Google Analytics + to see everything without leaving your site.
It’s easy to set up, especially if you already have a Google Analytics account. But if you don’t have one, it is still free and will be walked step-by-step through the process.
Use + to monitor activity for monthly, quarterly, or yearly progress reports. Track visits, pageviews, bounce rates, average visit duration, and referrers with your quick stats overview in the dashboard widget or track them straight from your posts or pages in the editor.
