{"id":1946,"date":"2020-09-03T12:51:47","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T19:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/besttech2earnonline.com\/clone-of-best-seo-tools-to-outrank-and-outflank-your-competition\/"},"modified":"2024-04-06T21:06:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-07T04:06:48","slug":"wordpress-plugins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/besttech2earnonline.com\/wordpress-plugins\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best WordPress Plugins for Bloggers of 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"
WordPress powers 35% of all websites on the Internet, and its backbone is the array of plugins that provide it with all the functionality required to develop a profitable online presence. <\/p>\n
Below you’ll find a list of the must-have WordPress plugins that will bullet-proof your website against malicious attacks while equipping it with the tools required to create a solid online revenue engine for your business.<\/p>\n
When you create your website, you need to make sure you\u2019re building it on a solid foundation.<\/p>\n
To ensure continued growth and performance<\/strong>, you need to:<\/p>\n The following WordPress plugins are the best of breed<\/strong> in each of the above categories:<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Disclosure<\/span><\/strong>: Although I receive affiliate compensation at no additional cost to you to support this site that compensation in no way influences my recommendations, which are strictly informed by my 10+ years of online business experience consulting for clients large and small. My aim is to always recommend tools that offer the best return for your investment (for more details, read my <\/span><\/em>Affiliate Disclosure<\/span><\/em><\/a>). <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Once you get your WordPress website<\/a> up and running and you begin to get traffic, you\u2019ll soon come to the realization that the Internet is infested with spam-bots clogging the arteries of engagement with visitors, specifically:<\/p>\n One solution to mitigate spam is to add a captcha to every point where you interact with your visitors, but most people find them annoying and you\u2019ll find that many visitors will bail on you rather than having to answer a riddle.<\/p>\n CleanTalk<\/a> Anti Spam does away with the need for captchas by using sophisticated algorithms to filter spammy user-supplied information on the fly against a massive database of spambots that they keep on the cloud.<\/p>\n They also use this algorithm to filter manually inputted spam based on aggregated information from the almost half a million client websites.<\/p>\n While there are many free anti-spam WordPress plugins out there, a lot of them can throw false positives (good comments that get labeled as spam) as well as false negatives (spam messages that are missed by the filters and make it onto your website).<\/p>\n The reason you need to deal with spam from the get go is that most times they’ll inject your website with malicious links that, over time, can cause your site to drop dramatically in the search-engine rankings.<\/p>\n In short, a good quality spam blocker is more of a necessity than a nice-to-have feature. CleanTalk<\/a> offers a 7-day free trial and claims 100% protection against spambots.<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>CleanTalk Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Hosting an online store on your WordPress website is one of the most profitable ways to monetize your visitors.<\/p>\n Whether you are planning to sell digital products to be downloaded, physical products to be shipped or monthly memberships, you need an eCommerce solution that:<\/p>\n BigCommerce<\/a> is the only solution that checks all the above boxes. While Shopify<\/a> checks some of the same boxes (although not all), they force you to host your online store on their website since they don\u2019t offer WordPress plugins.<\/p>\n WooCommerce, the other main competitor, runs the entire eCommerce engine locally on your site, which results in long waits for payments to be processed, which is a big turn-off for customers.<\/p>\n BigCommerce<\/a>, on the other hand, hosts the \u201cfront-end\u201d of your store on your website, so it works seamlessly within WordPress, while doing the heavy transactional lifting on their back-end server located on the cloud, resulting in super fast payment processing time and next-level security.<\/p>\n While WooCommerce\u2019s entry level plugin is free, it lacks many important features from the above list, which you’ll need to pay for separately, while BigCommerce<\/a> has a reasonably priced entry-level plan (under $30\/month) that packs a large number of features compared to its competitors.<\/p>\n For example, you’ll get multi-currency driven by the customer\u2019s IP address right out of the box, while Shopify<\/a> only offers this feature in their expensive Enterprise plan.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re planning to ship physical products, BigCommerce<\/a> is the only platform to offer real-time shipping rates from third party providers and deep discounts with carriers like USPS, DHL and Fedex (other competitors only offer this level of service with their most expensive plans).<\/p>\n If you need to grow the platform with your business, BigCommerce<\/a> has over 800 specialized apps in their app store for every possible need.<\/p>\n A big advantage, and possibly one of its most distinguishing features, is that BigCommerce<\/a> does not charge any processing fees. For example, Shopify<\/a> charges 2% of sales as a processing fee for all payment gateways except their own brand (which has some limitations).<\/p>\n BigCommerce<\/a> does have a couple of downsides, though. The first one is that it requires a higher learning curve since it\u2019s so jam-packed with features.<\/p>\n The other one is that their plans get more expensive the more revenue you generate (e.g. $30\/month up to $50k\/year in sales, $80\/month up to $180k\/year and $300\/month up to $400k\/year).<\/p>\n In closing, they\u2019ve set up an excellent support infrastructure, with 24\/7 coverage for phone calls and live chat (even if you get stuck at 3 am!) plus of course email.<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>BigCommerce Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n One of the most useful features on a website is the contact form.<\/p>\n For starters, it\u2019s much safer for visitors to contact you via form than by listing your email publicly on your website and become the victim of spam. You can also use forms to ask your visitors lead-qualifying questions.<\/p>\n But this is just the beginning. Visitors can also use forms to:<\/p>\n …and so on.<\/p>\n Now, when it comes for form builder WordPress plugins, there are a ton to choose from, many are free and many paid. But a lot of them are either too restrictive or too fickle (e.g. they break under certain use cases).<\/p>\n With over 2 million downloads, WPForms<\/a> has been extensively field tested and they\u2019ve come up with a great product that\u2019s fast, mobile responsive and packed with features for every budget.<\/p>\n More importantly, it\u2019s highly reliable (it doesn\u2019t break) and it integrates with other important tools in the WordPress ecosystem, like email marketing automation platforms and payment gateways.<\/p>\n WPForms<\/a> offers a handful of pre-built form templates to get started, but also offers an add-on with over 100 beautiful templates for every possible need.<\/p>\n In addition, it comes with a lot of neat features, like conditional logic for field visibility (e.g. if the answer to a question is Yes, then show field A, if No, then show field B).<\/p>\n Last but not least, WPForms<\/a> has a very intuitive drag and drop graphical editor that allows you to create forms easily with any level of complexity by simply moving form fields around with your mouse.<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>WPForms Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Getting higher and higher traffic to your website is fantastic. But do you know what\u2019s even more fantastic? Getting more and more visitors to sign up to your email list!<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to monetize a visitor unless they\u2019ve opted into your email list\u2014without their email address they\u2019ll simply remain anonymous to you no matter how many times they visit your website.<\/p>\n And without an email address you won\u2019t be able to build a relationship with them, which eventually will pay off with a purchase.<\/p>\n The most effective way to capture someone’s email (in a legal and compliant way) is by using an opt-in form where you offer a lead magnet, like a white paper, a valuable checklist, a newsletter, etc. in exchange for their email address.<\/p>\n These opt-in forms come in many different shapes and sizes and they must be easy to integrate with popular email marketing services so that you can add your visitors<\/a> to an email marketing campaign.<\/p>\n Such a campaign will allow you to earn your visitor\u2019s trust through a regular drip of emails offering content that adds value to their lives.<\/p>\n In the opt-in business there are many players, but there’s one that stands out: Optinmonster<\/a>.<\/p>\n Their software is very easy to use, allowing you to create beautiful opt-in forms from scratch or from templates that can be structured to seamlessly fit into your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n For example, you can display opt-in forms as a:<\/p>\n Where Optinmonster<\/a> really shines is in the number of trigger options they offer. For example, your opt-in popup can be triggered:<\/p>\n In addition, Optinmonster<\/a> has great A\/B test functionality where you can compare two versions of the same opt-in popup, or even test one type of popup (say, a welcome mat) vs. another type (say, a lightbox).<\/p>\n Also, <\/span>Optinmonster<\/a> is a cloud application that links to your site via WordPress plugins, so if you have multiple websites you can access all your opt-in designs and analytics through a single portal.<\/p>\n Finally, you can create an unlimited number of opt-ins, e.g. different popups for different pages, and it can seamlessly integrate with most popular email marketing services so that you can create a number of different email campaigns based on the pages your visitors landed on.<\/p>\n With so much flexibility, Optinmonster<\/a> will definitely become a great tool in your website monetization strategy.<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>Optinmonster Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n One of the most profitable forms of website monetization is a recurring payment<\/a> model, like a subscription or a membership.<\/p>\n If you create content that can be dripped on a regular basis, say monthly, you\u2019ll be able to generate a consistent stream of recurring revenue in the long haul.<\/p>\n While you\u2019ll experience some churn, or a small number of people cancelling their subscription in a given month, you\u2019ll more than make up for that by building a growing pipeline of new subscribers.<\/p>\n How do you manage such a profitable business model? With membership\/subscription WordPress plugins.<\/p>\n The MemberPress<\/a> plugin checks all of the above boxes. For example, ActiveCampaign<\/a>, a competitor, offers even more features and the ability to create complex rules, but chances are you\u2019ll need to hire a systems developer to integrate it with your site (and they\u2019re not cheap!).<\/p>\n But if you\u2019re willing to go through their extensive documentation and learn a few basics of membership setups, you\u2019ll be up to get going quickly with a membership module that works right out of the box.<\/p>\n MemberPress<\/a> also offers features that are usually available in more expensive systems, for example, you can create a paywall to tease content to nonmembers while guiding them through a sign-up path.<\/p>\n It\u2019ll also prorate subscriptions if a member comes in half way through your membership cycle or when they upgrade (or downgrade) their memberships half way through.<\/p>\n You can also drip content to individual members based on their actual registration date or based on a fixed date.<\/p>\n Plus it\u2019ll take care of more mundane yet important tasks, like sending automated emails when a subscription or a credit card is about to expire.<\/p>\n Another useful feature is its ability to integrate multiple payment processors (e.g. Stripe as well as PayPa)l\u2014some WordPress plugins only allow you to connect to a single payment processor for all transactions.<\/p>\n The reporting module is not the best in the business but it\u2019s more than adequate (some competitors offer better reporting but at a higher cost and added complexity).<\/p>\n Finally, plans above the basic package allow you pretty fancy API integration with email marketing platforms to send notifications for every action a member takes, like renewing, upgrading, downgrading, cancelling, etc.<\/p>\n MemberPress<\/a> doesn’t have a free plan but they do offer a 14-day money-back guarantee, long enough to create a basic setup and take it out for a spin.<\/p>\n In my opinion, this is the best value for the money and actually the best all-around membership plugin in the WordPress ecosystem.<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>MemberPress Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Your website is your primary online asset and doing regular scheduled backups of all your files and databases is like taking out an insurance policy. If something catastrophic happens to your site, you\u2019ll be covered.<\/p>\n You may think that your self-hosting service provider<\/a> has redundant servers and that nothing could go wrong with your files, so why schedule regular backups on your own?<\/p>\n Well, your site could get hacked or you might delete something by accident. Why take the risk?<\/p>\n With over 3 million active installs, UpdraftPlus<\/a> is a leading force in backup WordPress plugins. With single-click backup and restore functionality, it\u2019s one of the most user friendly services out there.<\/p>\n In addition to offering their own paid off-site solution (UpdraftVault<\/a>) you can link UpdraftPlus<\/a> to your Google Drive account, Dropbox, Amazon S3 and many other remote storage platforms for complete peace of mind.<\/p>\n With a premium add-on, you can even store your backups in multiple locations and even store a clone of your website and have it restored at a different URL for push-button site migrations.<\/p>\n UpdraftPlus<\/a> allows you to back up and restore all files, all files and databases or just specific files, and you can do backups on demand or schedule them every few hours, daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.<\/p>\n For support they offer extensive documentation and a forum for users.<\/p>\n The only feature they are missing is built-in security scans and malware monitoring, however, if you use security WordPress plugins like Sucuri<\/a>, which you should anyway, you\u2019ll be covered there too.<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>UpdraftPlus Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Next to Google searches, the best source of traffic for your website will likely be social media networks.<\/p>\n To ensure that your content is widely shared, you need to install social sharing buttons to all your posts and pages to make it super easy for visitors to share your content with a single click.<\/p>\n Now, there are many social sharing WordPress plugins and they all have their unique features, but for this task, I prefer simplicity over bells and whistles.<\/p>\n AddtoAny<\/a> boasts over half a million active installations and it allows you to chose from a wide array of social sharing options. All you have to do is to select the default ones you want to display on your site, and all others can be accessed by pressing the \u201c+\u201d button.<\/p>\n You can set the social sharing buttons to float on your page as you scroll or to be in a fixed position, giving you the freedom to select the location and the type of content you want your buttons to appear on (e.g. you can choose to have buttons show up on posts but not pages).<\/p>\n By default, you can alter the size and color of the buttons and even upload your own button designs in SVG format. And if you know CSS you can do a lot more.<\/p>\n AddtoAny<\/a> is open source, so with a bit of knowledge you can customize the buttons and their placement to your heart\u2019s content.<\/p>\n In fact, with such a large user base, you\u2019ll be able to find plenty of free resources online to alter your design so you can get it just right.<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>AddtoAny Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In the world of online income generation, one of the most effective techniques for increasing your profits with little extra effort is through the use of a sales funnel with upsells, downsells and order bumps.<\/p>\n An upsell is a page that customers land on when they click the order button on your checkout page. Here you can offer a product that complements the original purchase at a discount.<\/p>\n If your customer rejects the upsell offer, you can then present them with a downsell offer with a steeper discount than the upsell, basically an \u201coffer they can\u2019t refuse.\u201d<\/p>\n If they say no thanks, you can even present them with a second downsell offer with an even better deal.<\/p>\n An order bump is a checkbox on your checkout page where customers can add an item before checking out, an impulse purchase with something that adds high value at a very low price point, making it hard to resist.<\/p>\n In the not too distant past, you had to be locked into pretty pricey external platforms to do all of the above, and if you ended your subscription, you would have to walk away from all your hard work.<\/p>\n With the introduction of Cartflows<\/a>, all of this great functionality is now available as a WordPress plugin, where you get to build all of your funnel pages locally on your own server using popular page builders.<\/p>\n In addition, Cartflows<\/a> fully integrates with WooCommerce, the native WordPress eCommerce solution, allowing you to sell any of your WooCommerce products: physical, digital, services and memberships.<\/p>\n Cartflows<\/a> also allows you to create an unlimited number funnels for multiple opt-ins plus it has a powerful A\/B testing feature where you can have two versions of every page on your funnel compete to find out which one converts better.<\/p>\n Finally, they have many high-quality templates to choose from so you don\u2019t have to build your funnel pages from scratch if you don’t want to.<\/p>\n And the best part is that unlike their cloud-based counterparts, you get to build, host, control, customize and fully own your entire funnel stack!<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>CartFlows Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a fact I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll agree with: people hate slow websites. Slow websites can kill your conversions and send people running for the hills.<\/p>\n But worse yet, search engines hate slow websites too because it hurts their bottom line, so to avoid annoying their customers they penalize slow websites by sending them to the bottom of their search rankings so people never find them.<\/p>\n The antidote? A strong caching plugin. These WordPress plugins use a lots of software tricks to really speed up page loading by:<\/p>\n WP Rocket<\/a> always manages to come on top on side-by-side tests with its competitors and that\u2019s why I\u2019m recommending it here. They have one of the easiest user interfaces making it beginner friendly.<\/p>\n They achieve that by pre-configuring their settings to make them work right out of the box. Many of its competitors have screen fulls of settings that must be manually configured by the user, which require a lot of technical knowledge.<\/p>\n Worse of all, some settings could actually break your website if set up wrong. Mind you, this is not catastrophic because you can always go back to normal by deactivating the plugin.<\/p>\n But you can only do this by logging into your WordPress dashboard in “safe mode” because your normal website will no longer be functional, which will scare the bejesus out of you if you’re a beginner!<\/p>\n But you’re technically savvy and want to get into the weeds to play with advanced settings ,they have a ton of built-in informational popups in the plugin plus an extensive video library that shows you all the necessary step-by-steps.<\/p>\n You can even message their support team directly from within the plugin\u2019s dashboard, which is a convenient feature.<\/p>\n Find Out More About <\/strong>WP Rocket Here<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n When it comes to security, the Internet is like the wild west.<\/p>\n The arteries of the World Wide Web are jam packed with bad actors with malicious intent, whether it’s to commandeer your server and your email to spread spam to unsuspecting visitors, inject malware on their computers, steal your affiliate links, or anything else under the sun that has malicious intent.<\/p>\n The only effective defense from becoming the recipient of malicious data packets coming your way is with the use of a powerful website security system to protect you, and the best globally-recognized security outfit for WordPress is Sucuri<\/a>.<\/p>\n For a very reasonable cost, starting at $200\/year or about $17\/month (look at this as the cost of an Internet insurance policy) they will protect your website with a unique approach: they will route the entirety of your traffic to themselves, making it go through a cloudproxy firewall first.<\/p>\n This acts as a digital sieve that filters out all the bad actors before they even reach your server, sending your way only legitimate visitors.<\/p>\n In doing so, not only do they protect your website, but also they increase the speed and performance of your server because it no longer has to handle spurious traffic.<\/p>\n In addition to intercepting and removing bad traffic to your website through their external firewall, Sucuri<\/a> will also:<\/p>\n Their support team works 24\/7\/365 and will even rescue you should an attack be successful by removing malware and restoring your site back to normal.<\/p>\n Without a doubt, this is the best insurance policy you can buy for your online business.<\/p>\n\n
Best Anti Spam Plugin: CleanTalk Anti Spam<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Best eCommerce Plugin: BigCommerce<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Best Form Builder Plugin: WPForms<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Other useful features:<\/h5>\n
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Best Lead Generation Plugin: Optinmonster<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Best Membership\/ Subscription Plugin: MemberPress<\/a><\/h3>\n
What you\u2019re looking for in this type of WordPress plugins is the ability to:<\/h5>\n
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Best Site Backup Plugin: UpdraftPlus<\/a><\/h3>\n
When it comes to WordPress backup systems, you want to look for something that:<\/h5>\n
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Best Social Media Sharing Plugin: AddToAny<\/a><\/h3>\n
Best Upsell\/Downsell Funnels Plugin: CartFlows<\/a><\/h3>\n
The sales funnel technique works something like this:<\/h5>\n
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Best Website Caching Plugin: WP Rocket<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Best Website Security\/Firewall Plugin: Sucuri<\/a><\/h3>\n
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