WordPress is a fantastic platform for building your own blog, portfolio, or ecommerce site. It’s packed with tools to help you create a professional-looking site and monitor its performance, and you can make it even better by installing WordPress plugins to add new features.

Some WordPress plugins are free, while others are premium products with a price tag to match. You can find free plugins using WordPress’s own Plugin Directory, which is accessible from your dashboard. Paid-for plugins can be uploaded using the Add New option from the plugins menu,

You can only install third-party plugins if you’re hosting your site yourself using the software from WordPress.org. If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, you won’t have a plugins menu.

1. Yoast SEO

If you’re serious about search optimization, use Yoast to reach the next level

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that offers real-time page analysis to help you optimize your pages’ content, images, titles, meta descriptions, and keywords. You can also use the plugin to tell Google not to index a page, or set of pages. And it even analyses the readability of your copy; checking the length of your sentences and paragraphs, whether you use transition words or subheadings, if you use passive voice too often, and so on.

You can also use Yoast SEO to generate URLs automatically (so you don’t get penalized by Google for duplicate content), create readable XML sitemaps, and get finer control over breadcrumbs. The premium version of Yoast SEO offers more advanced features, but even the free plugin can help you make a real difference to your site’s ranking. Yoast SEO is constantly updated with new releases which you can check here.

Download here: Yoast SEO

2. WP-Rocket

Want to speed up your site? Caching plugin WP Rocket could be your friend

WP Rocket begins at US$49 (about £37, AU$69) for an annual license for a single site. That might sound like a lot – especially when there are other caching plugins available free – but this really is a premium product where you get what you pay for.

It’s very easy to set up, and can be installed and configured in just a few minutes. And that’s it – a real case of set it and forget it. Page caching is activated straight away and you should get an immediate speed boost to your site as a result. Plus, because this WordPress plugin’s crawler simulates a visit to preload the cache, the indexing of your website by search engines is instantly improved.

WP Rocket, which has been used on more than 1,280,000 WordPress websites, also makes sure the images on your site are loaded only as your visitor scrolls down the page, and reduces the weight of your HTML, JavaScript and CSS files through minification, both of which should improve your load times further. Furthermore, being a premium product means you’ll receive regular updates and excellent customer support.

Download here: WP Rocket

3. Gravity Forms

If you need a contact form for your WordPress site, Gravity Forms is ideal

Currently in use by more than one million sites, Gravity Forms is a WordPress plugin that allows you to build complex, contact forms quickly and with ease, with no technical knowledge required. 

A user-friendly editor prompts you to select the fields you want to include, configure your options, and then embed the forms on your WordPress site. If you wish, you can also break up your form into multiple pages, and show a progress bar that lets users know how far they’ve got in the process. Also, there is a HubSpot add-on integration.

You can also schedule forms to appear and disappear at certain times; create order forms with pricing fields; and even build a form that creates user-generated WordPress posts on your site. All in all, well worth the US$59 (about £45, AU$83) price tag.

Download here: Gravity Forms

4. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

Use this plugin to find out how many people are visiting your site, where they’re from, and how long they’re staying on each page

This powerful, free WordPress plugin enables you to track your site’s visitors using Google Analytics’ tracking code, and view key statistics within your WordPress installation. You can use Google Analytics Dashboard for WP to generate a set of performance reports about the site’s performance as a whole, as well as that of individual pages and posts, and the information you get back is fully customizable. 

This WordPress plugin is fully compatible with multisite network installs, integrates with Google AdWords so you can keep track of how well your ads are converting, and supports AdSense, so you can work out which posts or pages are generating the most income. Note that you need to open a (free) Google Analytics account before you can use this plugin.

Download here: Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

5. WooCommerce

A free WordPress plugin that’s the world’s most popular for ecommerce sites

The WooCommerce WordPress plugin currently powers more than 30% of online stores. First launched in 2011, it was acquired by Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) in 2015, so its future development is clearly in safe hands. 

The standard, free version of WooCommerce can calculate the costs of shipping and taxes and offers the ability to accept major credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers and cash on delivery. There are also some very capable stock management tools to help you keep track of your inventory.

The premium version of WooCommerce comes with more advanced tools, such as a one-page checkout, and an add-on for cart abandonment emails. There are also hundreds of add-ons and themes to extend WooCommerce’s functionality further.

Download here: WooCommerce