January 21, 2025 • 18 mins
Running a WordPress website is a bit like owning a high-performance car. It’s powerful, versatile, and gets the job done—but to keep it running smoothly, you need the right tools. That’s where plugins come in. Think of them as the upgrades and accessories that take your website from good to exceptional.
In today’s episode, we’re diving into the must-have plugins that every WordPress website owner should know about. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to refine and optimize your site, these plugins will help you boost performance, enhance security, and create an amazing user experience.
Mentioned Resources
WordPress Site Security
--> EP 016: How to Protect your WordPress Site
Website Speed & Performance
--> EP 047: How Faster Websites Drive More Sales
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Carrie Saunders (00:01):
Running a WordPress website is a bit like
owning a high-performance car.
Now, if you don't know thisabout me, I actually love cars.
I've loved cars as a little kidtoo, which is why I use this
analogy.
It's powerful, versatile and itgets the job done, but to
really keep it running smoothly,you need the right tools added
into it.
That's where plugins come in.
(00:21):
Think of them as the upgradesand accessories that you can add
to your car or website we'retalking about here to go from
good to great and highlyfunctional.
So in today's episode, we'rediving to the must-have plugins
that every WordPress websiteowner should know about.
Whether you're just gettingstarted or looking to refine and
(00:42):
optimize your site, theseplugins will help you boost
performance, enhance securityand create an amazing user
experience.
By the end of this episode,you'll have a clear
understanding of which pluginsare essential, why they matter
and how to make sure yourwebsite's running at its best.
We're going to give you severaloptions in each category so you
can pick the best plugin thatis right for you.
(01:06):
Welcome to the eComcommerce madeeasy podcast.
I'm your host, k Saunders.
When we started this business,all I had was a couch, a laptop
and a nine month old, my maingoal To help others.
Now, with over 20 years in thee-commerce building industry and
even more than that in webdevelopment, I have seen a lot.
I love breaking down the hardtech into easily understandable
bits to help others besuccessful in their online
(01:28):
business.
Whether you're a seasonede-commerce veteran or just
starting out, you've come to theright place.
So sit back, relax and let'sdive into the world of
e-commerce together.
Welcome back to the show.
Today, we're talking about somehighly popular and essential
plugins for WordPress, and I'mgoing to be talking about them
highly popular and essentialplugins for WordPress, and I'm
going to be talking about themin different categories, because
(01:49):
I feel like these categoriesare very essential that you
should have at least should havea great plugin for one of these
categories.
Now I'm going to give you acouple options, because not one
piece of software fits all.
I don't feel like.
I've always felt this over 20some years.
One piece of software isn'tright for everybody, just like
one plugin for WordPress isn'tright for everybody, but we do
(02:10):
need to have these essentialcomponents come covered.
So the first one you'reprobably going to guess that if
you've been listening to thepodcast for a while is security.
I want to make sure you have asecurity plugin in your
WordPress site.
Now.
(02:32):
What we typically do is wetypically use a specific
security plugin, and I'll tellyou about that.
But the reason behind this,though, is, with over 40% of the
websites 40% out there on theInternet being powered by
WordPress is a prime target forhackers.
Security is an optional forWordPress, and I've talked about
this before on the podcast, butit is super essential, highly
(02:52):
essential.
I have found that WordPresssites get hacked because they're
not having a security plugin,because they aren't keeping
things up to date.
We have podcast episodes onthat too.
We'll link to those in the shownotes, but it's highly
important because when you havea popular software, it's not the
(03:14):
software itself that's theproblem.
It's just a large targetbecause there are so many of
that out there, so there's a lotmore opportunity for websites
to make mistakes and not besecure.
Don't have the plugins updatedor don't have a security plugin
in place to help prevent hackerstoo.
So our top recommendations areWordFence, security and
(03:34):
SecuriSecurity.
That's a bit hard to pronounce.
We'll put a link.
We'll put the words in the shownotes so it's easy for you to
find.
We personally tend to useWordFence security for all of
our clients.
It's the first plugin weinstall when we are creating a
new WordPress website.
What it does is it helps alertyou, the owner, when your
plugins are out of date, whichis one thing that's really
(03:57):
important to know is we want tomake sure we're updating our
plugins and or WordPress itselfto alert you when this needs to
happen.
It also will block repeatedattacks to your website.
So if it is detecting that anIP address which is basically
that if you're not familiar withwhat an IP address is, it's
basically like the address of acomputer.
(04:18):
In simple terms, if they see aspecific computer hitting your
website over and over and overand over and over again, they
are going to block that and shutthem down temporarily and then
let them back in later so thatthey can't brute force that's
called brute force hacking intoyour website.
So it's a great first measure.
They also provide this pluginfree as well as paid.
(04:40):
We have customers typicallyusing the free version, but you
know, if you're much popular,much bigger website, you may
want to consider the paidversion of this.
And then the other one Imentioned was security security
S-U-C-U-R-I security.
You can see the way, that's alittle hard for me to say that
(05:01):
one is also good.
We have um a few clients usingthat one and they actually use.
Some of them use it on theire-commerce website as well, and
we've had no problems workingwith that company, um, whenever
updates didn't need to be madethat they were alerting their
our mutual client with um.
It's not something we're asexperienced about, so I can't
speak personally to that one asmuch, but it is definitely one
(05:23):
of the top ones and one youcould consider if you don't want
to use WordFence.
And then I also want to back uphere and I forgot to say this in
the beginning.
I want to make sure we say thisis I want you to be looking at
the terms and conditions of anyof these plugins.
I suggest and I don't know whenyou're going to listen to this
podcast episode it could be ayear or two from now so I want
(05:43):
to make sure, before you installany WordPress plugin, I want
you to make sure it has beenupdated in the past few weeks.
When I looked at this listbefore I created this podcast
episode, I looked at all of themand they've been created within
, or updated within the last fewweeks.
Now, why I say that is, if it'snot been updated in the last
(06:04):
few weeks, that might be a deadplugin, which means the
developer is not updating itanymore, which can cause
security issues.
So I do want to caution you.
I should have said this in thebeginning, but we're still early
in the podcast episode.
Make sure that you are checkingto make sure that that plugin
has been updated within a month.
Typically, it would be the bestmonth or less.
(06:25):
Some of them that I checkedwhen I was looking at this as
I'm creating this list, had beenupdated in the past hour.
One of them was a month, butthat plugin I felt like was one
that maybe not needed to beupdated, you know, every several
weeks.
So that one seemed okay.
But anyway, let's keep going onthe onto this episode.
(06:45):
So, first off, with securityWordFence security or security
security are the two that wehave found to be the most
popular.
All right, oh.
And then make sure you're onlychoosing one of these security
options, because we want to makesure they're not creating
conflicts either.
So that's just a little pro tipthere is make sure that you're
picking one, okay.
(07:07):
And then the next set ofplugins we need to pick one from
is performance plugins.
We talk a lot about on thispodcast episode, making sure on
this podcast show, making surethat we are having a high
performing website, because thathelps search engine
optimization, it helps our userexperience.
It just really makes ourwebsite so much better.
So some of them are.
(07:29):
There's actually three I'mgoing to present to you that are
potential options that youcould use.
The first one's WP Rocket.
It's an all-in-one cachingplugin that boosts load
performance and load times.
It is great for non-tech savvyusers with its easy setup too.
And what a caching program is?
(07:50):
If you're not familiar withthat word, I want to make sure I
spell that one out a little bit.
For us is you can think of itas a video versus a photo from
that video.
So a photo from that video is astill image of a snapshot in
time.
That kind of is what a cache is.
It's a snapshot in time of whatyour website is and looks like
(08:13):
when it's all compiled together.
I'm kind of using techie wordshere, but hopefully that makes
sense.
So it's like when you createdit and you have that one picture
.
Here's what it is and then, asdynamic things adjust as you're
adding more like blog posts orchanging your words.
It's going to re-update thatpicture of your website so that
it doesn't have to build thatpicture on the fly Maybe that's
(08:36):
a great way to say it.
So that's what caching meansit's creating a picture, a
snapshot, so that's not buildingthe dynamic parts, the things
you change on the fly.
Another one you should consideris Smush.
That's a bit funny word to lookat and to say.
It optimizes images withoutcompromising the image quality,
(08:56):
which is great.
It also compresses large imagefiles automatically to save
storage, and really the savingstorage isn't nearly as
important as the saving the sizefor the delivery to the
consumer too, because when youhave a large file size,
especially on mobile, you'regoing to get dinged for being
very slow on your websitebecause that image is slowing
(09:16):
things down.
Another one to consider isauto-optimize.
It's kind of hard to saythere's only one O in there, so
it's hard to say auto-optimize,I guess would be the way you
pronounce it.
It minifies CSS, javascript andHTML for faster page rendering.
Now that's a mouthful oftechnical words right there, so
(09:37):
let me break that down reallyquick.
So minimizing files like thatCSS is your style, so just think
of it as style cascading stylesheets, what it stands for.
Just think of it as a style thefonts, the colors, things like
that.
Javascript is all the fancystuff in the background.
We won't dig into that too muchand HTML is just the coding
(09:58):
that's behind your website fromthe visual standpoint of it.
So, that being said, thosewords really aren't that
important.
But what it does is it makesthose files smaller so that the
delivery to the consumer isfaster.
So, even though those are somehighly technical words, let's
just remember that they are justmaking your files smaller so
(10:20):
that they get your users faster.
So that's what that one does alot.
And then, obviously, we want tomake sure we're checking this
regularly.
On speed, we talk about this alot on the podcast, using tools
like GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights.
We have lots of links to thoseon our
ecommercemeeteasypodcastcomwebsite so that you know how to
(10:42):
get to those and double checkyour speed.
Okay, so the next one is searchengine optimization plugins.
As you probably guess if you'rea regular listener to the show
we talked about.
We talk about search engineoptimization a lot and we want
to make sure that our website'sgreat and visible.
And that's what search engineoptimization can help us do so.
(11:03):
For WordPress, there's severalplugins you could choose from.
One of the most popular ones isYoast SEO.
It's very user friendly.
It's great for beginners.
It offers real time feedback onyour keyword usage, readability
and your metadata, which islike the data that you're
(11:23):
talking to with the searchengines.
I find a lot of people likeusing this.
It has a red light, red, red,yellow and green light indicator
on how well you're doing ondifferent things that it looks
for like how you're using yourkeywords, how well your words
are easy to read things likethat.
(11:44):
Your readability would be thebetter way to say that.
It's something we use on ourclients websites, so it's very
popular.
It would be one I wouldrecommend.
Now there's a couple other onesthat are also getting very
popular, especially rank math.
This is a new one to me.
It's a rising star in thesearch engine optimization world
(12:04):
.
It offers advanced features forfree and it provides in-depth
SEO analysis and integrationwith Google Analytics.
So this one might be one youmight want to consider In my
research.
Like I said, it's somethingthat's coming up.
It's a rising star in thesearch engine optimization world
.
It might outrank the popularityof the other one at some point
in time, who knows?
(12:25):
Because Yoast SEO is verypopular, but it's one you can
look at, see if it has more ofthe features in line of what you
would need.
A third one would be all-in-oneSEO pack.
This is a reliable alternativeto Yoast, based upon my research
.
It offers robust settings forsite maps and schema markup.
So what those are is thetechnical way to inform Google
(12:50):
and major search engines a bitmore information about your
website and they willautomatically do the things you
don't need to know exactly whatthey're doing generally, so
don't worry about that, but itmight be something to consider
if you feel like SEO is notgiving you great site maps or
schema markup.
Again, if you need moreinformation on what schema
(13:12):
markup, I would need to havelike a whole podcast episode on
that one, so just drop us anemail if you're curious of what
that is.
It's not something mostbusiness owners need to worry
about what it technically isfrom.
And then the next section isabout backups.
We want to make sure that wehave backups of our website One.
I want you to go to your hostafter you get done listening to
(13:34):
this podcast episode, see ifthey make backups of your
website, all your files and yourdatabase.
This is super important and alot of Of our customers we find
don't have backups, which we'reshocked.
You know we're hosting providertoo.
We make sure we have nightlybackups for our customers and we
keep weekly backups for severalweeks.
(13:55):
We want to make sure that wehave that backup in case
something does go wrong, in casethe customer messes something
up, in case they get hacked,things like that.
The backups are really importantand what I encourage you to do
is consider making your ownbackups too.
It's just like another backup,one we want to make sure our
host is doing it.
And two, you might as well haveyour own backups too.
(14:16):
Now, I haven't used either ofthese myself, because we have
our own backup system, but hereare the top two recommended ones
that I found.
Updraft Plus was one of themthat I found out.
It lets you back up to cloudservices like Google Drive,
dropbox and Amazon.
It has a one-click restorefunctionality for emergencies
(14:36):
too.
Again, I'm not experienced inusing this one, but it was one
of the top ones recommended whenI did some research.
Blogvault is another one.
It offers real-time backups andstaging sites or test sites for
testing changes, and it's idealfor e-commerce websites with
frequent updates.
So if you're using WooCommerceinside your WordPress, you might
(14:57):
want to consider this one.
And then the last area that wewant to cover when we have
plugins for our WordPress siteis user experience, as we talk
about a lot on this podcast.
User experience greatly mattersto your success of your website
(15:17):
, so there's some top ones thatare recommended.
We only use one of these.
We may use two of these of thethree.
Elementor is super, superpopular.
It's a drag and drop pagebuilder.
It makes designing, studyingweb pages a breeze.
I have seen some people on theinternet having trouble with it,
but it is very popular and Ihear it's really great.
(15:37):
We've actually personally notused it too much ourselves for
our clients.
We tend to be creating customdesigns from scratch use.
We use HTML and all the codinginstead of the drag and drop.
But this is great If you don'tknow HTML, you don't know coding
and you want to be able tocreate a beautiful website for
it.
And then WP forms is verypopular.
(15:59):
This one we've used before.
It creates intuitive contactforms, surveys and payment forms
.
It's easy to use and integrate,and it integrates with many
email marketing platforms, soit's a great option to use when
you need forms on your website.
And then Monster Insights issomething we use pretty
regularly on our customerswebsite.
It brings Google Analyticsdirectly into your WordPress
(16:21):
dashboard.
So that's great because ithelps you understand visitor
behavior, to make informeddecisions, and you don't have to
go to another application tofind it.
You've got it right there inyour WordPress website.
So we want to make sure thatwe're picking one of these, or
you could probably, in thiscategory, pick maybe two to work
hand in hand.
Definitely, you could use like.
Actually, you could probablyuse all three.
(16:43):
Elementor is really more forthe design, wp Forms is more for
like forms, and MonsterInsights bring in Google
Analytics.
So you could, in this category,use all three if you chose to
do so.
All right.
So let's recap.
So, first off, we want to picka security plugin for our
WordPress site Security is keywhen you have WordPress and then
next, we want to pick aperformance plugin.
(17:04):
We want to make sure our imagesare optimized, our speed is
nice and fast on the website,and then we want to have a
search engine optimizationplugin that helps us optimize
our website for search engines.
Make sure we understand whenwe're not quite creating a blog
post or an article that's searchengine optimized, so we can get
some guidance on what to fix.
(17:25):
We want to make sure we havebackups, so make sure you have a
backup plugin and check withyour host.
And then we want to have gooduser experience plugins to help
that user experience be rich andfulfilled.
Okay, so that's all we have forthis week's episode of the
e-commerce made easy podcast.
I hope this was super helpful.
We would love to hear from you.
(17:45):
Drop us an email at podcast, atvcsengineeringcom, if you have
any questions on topics you wantus to cover, any questions on
this episode or suggestions.
We'd love to hear from you andthat's all we have for this week
.
Make sure you're subscribed toour podcast and we will see you
next week.
Running a WordPress website is a bit like
owning a high-performance car.
Now, if you don't know thisabout me, I actually love cars.
I've loved cars as a little kidtoo, which is why I use this
analogy.
It's powerful, versatile and itgets the job done, but to
really keep it running smoothly,you need the right tools added
into it.
That's where plugins come in.
(00:21):
Think of them as the upgradesand accessories that you can add
to your car or website we'retalking about here to go from
good to great and highlyfunctional.
So in today's episode, we'rediving to the must-have plugins
that every WordPress websiteowner should know about.
Whether you're just gettingstarted or looking to refine and
(00:42):
optimize your site, theseplugins will help you boost
performance, enhance securityand create an amazing user
experience.
By the end of this episode,you'll have a clear
understanding of which pluginsare essential, why they matter
and how to make sure yourwebsite's running at its best.
We're going to give you severaloptions in each category so you
can pick the best plugin thatis right for you.
(01:06):
Welcome to the eComcommerce madeeasy podcast.
I'm your host, k Saunders.
When we started this business,all I had was a couch, a laptop
and a nine month old, my maingoal To help others.
Now, with over 20 years in thee-commerce building industry and
even more than that in webdevelopment, I have seen a lot.
I love breaking down the hardtech into easily understandable
bits to help others besuccessful in their online
(01:28):
business.
Whether you're a seasonede-commerce veteran or just
starting out, you've come to theright place.
So sit back, relax and let'sdive into the world of
e-commerce together.
Welcome back to the show.
Today, we're talking about somehighly popular and essential
plugins for WordPress, and I'mgoing to be talking about them
highly popular and essentialplugins for WordPress, and I'm
going to be talking about themin different categories, because
(01:49):
I feel like these categoriesare very essential that you
should have at least should havea great plugin for one of these
categories.
Now I'm going to give you acouple options, because not one
piece of software fits all.
I don't feel like.
I've always felt this over 20some years.
One piece of software isn'tright for everybody, just like
one plugin for WordPress isn'tright for everybody, but we do
(02:10):
need to have these essentialcomponents come covered.
So the first one you'reprobably going to guess that if
you've been listening to thepodcast for a while is security.
I want to make sure you have asecurity plugin in your
WordPress site.
Now.
(02:32):
What we typically do is wetypically use a specific
security plugin, and I'll tellyou about that.
But the reason behind this,though, is, with over 40% of the
websites 40% out there on theInternet being powered by
WordPress is a prime target forhackers.
Security is an optional forWordPress, and I've talked about
this before on the podcast, butit is super essential, highly
(02:52):
essential.
I have found that WordPresssites get hacked because they're
not having a security plugin,because they aren't keeping
things up to date.
We have podcast episodes onthat too.
We'll link to those in the shownotes, but it's highly
important because when you havea popular software, it's not the
(03:14):
software itself that's theproblem.
It's just a large targetbecause there are so many of
that out there, so there's a lotmore opportunity for websites
to make mistakes and not besecure.
Don't have the plugins updatedor don't have a security plugin
in place to help prevent hackerstoo.
So our top recommendations areWordFence, security and
(03:34):
SecuriSecurity.
That's a bit hard to pronounce.
We'll put a link.
We'll put the words in the shownotes so it's easy for you to
find.
We personally tend to useWordFence security for all of
our clients.
It's the first plugin weinstall when we are creating a
new WordPress website.
What it does is it helps alertyou, the owner, when your
plugins are out of date, whichis one thing that's really
(03:57):
important to know is we want tomake sure we're updating our
plugins and or WordPress itselfto alert you when this needs to
happen.
It also will block repeatedattacks to your website.
So if it is detecting that anIP address which is basically
that if you're not familiar withwhat an IP address is, it's
basically like the address of acomputer.
(04:18):
In simple terms, if they see aspecific computer hitting your
website over and over and overand over and over again, they
are going to block that and shutthem down temporarily and then
let them back in later so thatthey can't brute force that's
called brute force hacking intoyour website.
So it's a great first measure.
They also provide this pluginfree as well as paid.
(04:40):
We have customers typicallyusing the free version, but you
know, if you're much popular,much bigger website, you may
want to consider the paidversion of this.
And then the other one Imentioned was security security
S-U-C-U-R-I security.
You can see the way, that's alittle hard for me to say that
(05:01):
one is also good.
We have um a few clients usingthat one and they actually use.
Some of them use it on theire-commerce website as well, and
we've had no problems workingwith that company, um, whenever
updates didn't need to be madethat they were alerting their
our mutual client with um.
It's not something we're asexperienced about, so I can't
speak personally to that one asmuch, but it is definitely one
(05:23):
of the top ones and one youcould consider if you don't want
to use WordFence.
And then I also want to back uphere and I forgot to say this in
the beginning.
I want to make sure we say thisis I want you to be looking at
the terms and conditions of anyof these plugins.
I suggest and I don't know whenyou're going to listen to this
podcast episode it could be ayear or two from now so I want
(05:43):
to make sure, before you installany WordPress plugin, I want
you to make sure it has beenupdated in the past few weeks.
When I looked at this listbefore I created this podcast
episode, I looked at all of themand they've been created within
, or updated within the last fewweeks.
Now, why I say that is, if it'snot been updated in the last
(06:04):
few weeks, that might be a deadplugin, which means the
developer is not updating itanymore, which can cause
security issues.
So I do want to caution you.
I should have said this in thebeginning, but we're still early
in the podcast episode.
Make sure that you are checkingto make sure that that plugin
has been updated within a month.
Typically, it would be the bestmonth or less.
(06:25):
Some of them that I checkedwhen I was looking at this as
I'm creating this list, had beenupdated in the past hour.
One of them was a month, butthat plugin I felt like was one
that maybe not needed to beupdated, you know, every several
weeks.
So that one seemed okay.
But anyway, let's keep going onthe onto this episode.
(06:45):
So, first off, with securityWordFence security or security
security are the two that wehave found to be the most
popular.
All right, oh.
And then make sure you're onlychoosing one of these security
options, because we want to makesure they're not creating
conflicts either.
So that's just a little pro tipthere is make sure that you're
picking one, okay.
(07:07):
And then the next set ofplugins we need to pick one from
is performance plugins.
We talk a lot about on thispodcast episode, making sure on
this podcast show, making surethat we are having a high
performing website, because thathelps search engine
optimization, it helps our userexperience.
It just really makes ourwebsite so much better.
So some of them are.
(07:29):
There's actually three I'mgoing to present to you that are
potential options that youcould use.
The first one's WP Rocket.
It's an all-in-one cachingplugin that boosts load
performance and load times.
It is great for non-tech savvyusers with its easy setup too.
And what a caching program is?
(07:50):
If you're not familiar withthat word, I want to make sure I
spell that one out a little bit.
For us is you can think of itas a video versus a photo from
that video.
So a photo from that video is astill image of a snapshot in
time.
That kind of is what a cache is.
It's a snapshot in time of whatyour website is and looks like
(08:13):
when it's all compiled together.
I'm kind of using techie wordshere, but hopefully that makes
sense.
So it's like when you createdit and you have that one picture
.
Here's what it is and then, asdynamic things adjust as you're
adding more like blog posts orchanging your words.
It's going to re-update thatpicture of your website so that
it doesn't have to build thatpicture on the fly Maybe that's
(08:36):
a great way to say it.
So that's what caching meansit's creating a picture, a
snapshot, so that's not buildingthe dynamic parts, the things
you change on the fly.
Another one you should consideris Smush.
That's a bit funny word to lookat and to say.
It optimizes images withoutcompromising the image quality,
(08:56):
which is great.
It also compresses large imagefiles automatically to save
storage, and really the savingstorage isn't nearly as
important as the saving the sizefor the delivery to the
consumer too, because when youhave a large file size,
especially on mobile, you'regoing to get dinged for being
very slow on your websitebecause that image is slowing
(09:16):
things down.
Another one to consider isauto-optimize.
It's kind of hard to saythere's only one O in there, so
it's hard to say auto-optimize,I guess would be the way you
pronounce it.
It minifies CSS, javascript andHTML for faster page rendering.
Now that's a mouthful oftechnical words right there, so
(09:37):
let me break that down reallyquick.
So minimizing files like thatCSS is your style, so just think
of it as style cascading stylesheets, what it stands for.
Just think of it as a style thefonts, the colors, things like
that.
Javascript is all the fancystuff in the background.
We won't dig into that too muchand HTML is just the coding
(09:58):
that's behind your website fromthe visual standpoint of it.
So, that being said, thosewords really aren't that
important.
But what it does is it makesthose files smaller so that the
delivery to the consumer isfaster.
So, even though those are somehighly technical words, let's
just remember that they are justmaking your files smaller so
(10:20):
that they get your users faster.
So that's what that one does alot.
And then, obviously, we want tomake sure we're checking this
regularly.
On speed, we talk about this alot on the podcast, using tools
like GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights.
We have lots of links to thoseon our
ecommercemeeteasypodcastcomwebsite so that you know how to
(10:42):
get to those and double checkyour speed.
Okay, so the next one is searchengine optimization plugins.
As you probably guess if you'rea regular listener to the show
we talked about.
We talk about search engineoptimization a lot and we want
to make sure that our website'sgreat and visible.
And that's what search engineoptimization can help us do so.
(11:03):
For WordPress, there's severalplugins you could choose from.
One of the most popular ones isYoast SEO.
It's very user friendly.
It's great for beginners.
It offers real time feedback onyour keyword usage, readability
and your metadata, which islike the data that you're
(11:23):
talking to with the searchengines.
I find a lot of people likeusing this.
It has a red light, red, red,yellow and green light indicator
on how well you're doing ondifferent things that it looks
for like how you're using yourkeywords, how well your words
are easy to read things likethat.
(11:44):
Your readability would be thebetter way to say that.
It's something we use on ourclients websites, so it's very
popular.
It would be one I wouldrecommend.
Now there's a couple other onesthat are also getting very
popular, especially rank math.
This is a new one to me.
It's a rising star in thesearch engine optimization world
(12:04):
.
It offers advanced features forfree and it provides in-depth
SEO analysis and integrationwith Google Analytics.
So this one might be one youmight want to consider In my
research.
Like I said, it's somethingthat's coming up.
It's a rising star in thesearch engine optimization world
.
It might outrank the popularityof the other one at some point
in time, who knows?
(12:25):
Because Yoast SEO is verypopular, but it's one you can
look at, see if it has more ofthe features in line of what you
would need.
A third one would be all-in-oneSEO pack.
This is a reliable alternativeto Yoast, based upon my research
.
It offers robust settings forsite maps and schema markup.
So what those are is thetechnical way to inform Google
(12:50):
and major search engines a bitmore information about your
website and they willautomatically do the things you
don't need to know exactly whatthey're doing generally, so
don't worry about that, but itmight be something to consider
if you feel like SEO is notgiving you great site maps or
schema markup.
Again, if you need moreinformation on what schema
(13:12):
markup, I would need to havelike a whole podcast episode on
that one, so just drop us anemail if you're curious of what
that is.
It's not something mostbusiness owners need to worry
about what it technically isfrom.
And then the next section isabout backups.
We want to make sure that wehave backups of our website One.
I want you to go to your hostafter you get done listening to
(13:34):
this podcast episode, see ifthey make backups of your
website, all your files and yourdatabase.
This is super important and alot of Of our customers we find
don't have backups, which we'reshocked.
You know we're hosting providertoo.
We make sure we have nightlybackups for our customers and we
keep weekly backups for severalweeks.
(13:55):
We want to make sure that wehave that backup in case
something does go wrong, in casethe customer messes something
up, in case they get hacked,things like that.
The backups are really importantand what I encourage you to do
is consider making your ownbackups too.
It's just like another backup,one we want to make sure our
host is doing it.
And two, you might as well haveyour own backups too.
(14:16):
Now, I haven't used either ofthese myself, because we have
our own backup system, but hereare the top two recommended ones
that I found.
Updraft Plus was one of themthat I found out.
It lets you back up to cloudservices like Google Drive,
dropbox and Amazon.
It has a one-click restorefunctionality for emergencies
(14:36):
too.
Again, I'm not experienced inusing this one, but it was one
of the top ones recommended whenI did some research.
Blogvault is another one.
It offers real-time backups andstaging sites or test sites for
testing changes, and it's idealfor e-commerce websites with
frequent updates.
So if you're using WooCommerceinside your WordPress, you might
(14:57):
want to consider this one.
And then the last area that wewant to cover when we have
plugins for our WordPress siteis user experience, as we talk
about a lot on this podcast.
User experience greatly mattersto your success of your website
(15:17):
, so there's some top ones thatare recommended.
We only use one of these.
We may use two of these of thethree.
Elementor is super, superpopular.
It's a drag and drop pagebuilder.
It makes designing, studyingweb pages a breeze.
I have seen some people on theinternet having trouble with it,
but it is very popular and Ihear it's really great.
(15:37):
We've actually personally notused it too much ourselves for
our clients.
We tend to be creating customdesigns from scratch use.
We use HTML and all the codinginstead of the drag and drop.
But this is great If you don'tknow HTML, you don't know coding
and you want to be able tocreate a beautiful website for
it.
And then WP forms is verypopular.
(15:59):
This one we've used before.
It creates intuitive contactforms, surveys and payment forms
.
It's easy to use and integrate,and it integrates with many
email marketing platforms, soit's a great option to use when
you need forms on your website.
And then Monster Insights issomething we use pretty
regularly on our customerswebsite.
It brings Google Analyticsdirectly into your WordPress
(16:21):
dashboard.
So that's great because ithelps you understand visitor
behavior, to make informeddecisions, and you don't have to
go to another application tofind it.
You've got it right there inyour WordPress website.
So we want to make sure thatwe're picking one of these, or
you could probably, in thiscategory, pick maybe two to work
hand in hand.
Definitely, you could use like.
Actually, you could probablyuse all three.
(16:43):
Elementor is really more forthe design, wp Forms is more for
like forms, and MonsterInsights bring in Google
Analytics.
So you could, in this category,use all three if you chose to
do so.
All right.
So let's recap.
So, first off, we want to picka security plugin for our
WordPress site Security is keywhen you have WordPress and then
next, we want to pick aperformance plugin.
(17:04):
We want to make sure our imagesare optimized, our speed is
nice and fast on the website,and then we want to have a
search engine optimizationplugin that helps us optimize
our website for search engines.
Make sure we understand whenwe're not quite creating a blog
post or an article that's searchengine optimized, so we can get
some guidance on what to fix.
(17:25):
We want to make sure we havebackups, so make sure you have a
backup plugin and check withyour host.
And then we want to have gooduser experience plugins to help
that user experience be rich andfulfilled.
Okay, so that's all we have forthis week's episode of the
e-commerce made easy podcast.
I hope this was super helpful.
We would love to hear from you.
(17:45):
Drop us an email at podcast, atvcsengineeringcom, if you have
any questions on topics you wantus to cover, any questions on
this episode or suggestions.
We'd love to hear from you andthat's all we have for this week
.
Make sure you're subscribed toour podcast and we will see you
next week.
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