Having a WordPress site gives you a huge advantage over your competitors; Google and other search engines can easily crawl and index WordPress sites. But WordPress Sites can’t be used to their full potential without the proper plugins installed; some plugins that no site should be without, include:
- All in One SEO Pack
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Contact Form 7
- Simple Lightbox
- W3 Total Cache
These five are the core plugins that should be installed on every WordPress site; there are certainly many other plugins you can install.
All in One SEO Pack is probably one of the most important plugin to install; as the name suggests, it allows you to perform SEO strategies that will help search engines index and read your site; these SEO strategies include updating Page Titles & Meta Descriptions, installing Google Analytics, and verifying Google & Bing Webmaster’s Tools.
Google XML Sitemaps is another extremely important plugin that must be installed right away; this plugin allows you to create a sitemap. Just as a refresher, a sitemap is like a blueprint of your website; it shows search engine each page of your site, allowing them to crawl and index your site more efficiently. Once you have your sitemap created, you will submit it to Google & Bing Webmaster’s Tools.
Contact Form 7 creates an orderly and organized form that allows clients to easily fill out information regarding your services/products; this form will go directly to your email address. This plugin allows customers to fill out information quickly without having to pick up a phone. You can organize this form in any way you feel fit, just be sure that it is in a place where a customer can easily access it, i.e. the homepage.
Simple Lightbox is a great plugin for photos on your site; when a customer clicks on a picture, it will open up in a smaller box, instead of taking them to a completely new page. Having pictures that are resized will help your site load faster, which will allow customers to quickly view your site, and it will help improve your search results.
W3 Total Cache are for sites that load painfully slow. A site that loads slowly will not only create a lousy user experience, but it can also affect your search results. Sites that load slowly are punished by search engines.
These five plugins should be the first things installed in your new WordPress Site; as you learn more about how your site works, you may find that you need to install additional plugins. These five core plugins can help improve your site, and can help you get achieve great search results!
For more information, please feel free to give Boston Web Marketing a call at 857.526.0096.