19 Jan 15+ Essential WordPress Plugins for 2021 (Expert Curated)

WordPress is gold, only if you utilize it in a correct manner.

Using plugins is one way you can extend the functionality of your website. Above all, different webmasters can have different requirements, but there are some plugins that every website/blog should use in 2021.

We will go through some of the essential WordPress Plugins for 2021. These plugins are extremely useful for site functionality.

The plugins can easily improve your experience with the WordPress website and will help you to improve both user engagement and retention.

So, without wasting much time, let’s get started with the essential WordPress plugins for 2021.

Must Have WordPress Plugins for 2021

Strive

Strive is an editorial calendar plugin that will help you plan and schedule your blog posts. Instead of relying on a third-party app, you can view your calendar directly in your WP dashboard. The calendar is highly dynamic, so you can edit your posts and reschedule them via drag-and-drop, all without leaving your admin area.

The Strive plugin also includes helpful features like post statuses so you can track your progress. There are also custom checklists to document your publishing process and check off items while you work in the editor. And if you republish content, you’ll love the revisions feature, which lets you edit and schedule new versions of your published posts.

WordPress SEO Yoast

 

WordPress SEO Yoast is an essential plugin for your WordPress website. It doesn’t depend on if you are starting out or already have a steady flow of visitors — Yoast SEO can easily help you gain better rankings.

The plugin comes with on-page SEO optimization perks and is a great way to handle the SEO efforts for your website. In 2020, SEO will only get strong so it is a good idea to start from your own website.

The plugin is easy to install and we have also covered a guide on how to get it up and running.

Akismet

Year’s change but not that doesn’t make spam go away. Bots and human spams are common these days. To make it stop, you can easily use Akismet — an anti-spam WordPress plugin that handles all your spam comments.

Installing and setting up Akismet is super easy. All you need to do is install and activate the license key. The license key can be grabbed for free by registering on the Akismet website.

In short, the plugin is an essential plugin for any WordPress website.

Editorial Calendar

Editorial Calendar is my personal favorite. Blogging or maintaining a content website is no joke. It requires a constant effort on the part of the administrator to add quality content.

Another important factor for success is the regularity of the content. For editors, writers and bloggers, it is tough to handle all these without a nifty tool!

Editorial Calendar lets you schedule posts in advance. This keeps you focused and on the route with the long term plans of the blog.

With this plugin, you can easily see all your posts in one place. It also supports drag and drop operations and a quick way to edit the post title and other vital information.

You can also publish posts directly from the editorial calendar. Also, if you have a team of writers, you can easily assign them work and manage them later.

Floating Social Bar

Floating Social Bar is a social sharing plugin. If you ever need to expand your blog wings, you need  the support of social networks.

The plugin lets you add a floating social bar to your Website. It is a great way to grab the attention of the visitor and increase the chance of your blog post to go viral.

The plugin comes free of cost. It loads fast and make your website more social network friendly.

Alternative: Monarch Social Sharing Plugin, Shareaholic

UpDraftPlus

UpDraftPlus is a backup and restoration plugin. With this plugin, you can easily backup your website. Both manual and scheduled operations are supported by the plugin.

You can choose the location of the backup. For now, it supports Dropbox, RackSpace, FTP, SFTP, S3, email, etc.

Alternative: BackUpWordPress

Sucuri Security

Sucuri Security is all-in-one security plugin for WordPress. The plugin offers security editing, blacklisting monitoring, file integrity monitoring, post-hack security actions, and much more.

You can also buy the Website Firewall add-on to enhance the security of the website. Overall, the plugin really improves the base security of WordPress website.

Alternative: WordFence

WooCommerce

Are you looking to create an e-Commerce website? Then, WooCommerce is the plugin that you should be using!

The plugin lets you completely transform your website into an eCommerce website. It handles all the integration, shipping, inventory management and product display with ease.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is one of finest WordPress plugin out there. Site performance is crucial to rank higher on Google. If a site loads faster, it is also easy to make visitor stick around.

W3 Total Cache enables caching on your website and makes sure that you website loads faster. Static resources such as theme files, configuration files, etc. are compressed and loaded faster than usual, providing you to the necessary juice for better user experience.

W3 Total Cache also utilizes CDN networks for better content delivery worldwide.

Yet Another Related Post Plugin(YARPP)

It is always a good idea to provide a point of action for visitors who just finished reading your awesome article. YARPP, let’s you do that.

It utilizes a simple algorithm to find the related posts and list them according to the score. The algorithm does all the calculation and hence the plugin is praised for what it does.

The only downside is that it eats the valuable resources of the server to find related articles. If you are on shared server, you might want to skip the plugin and use the alternative plugin mentioned below.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

Seeing your blog grow from the dashboard is one of the best experience for any blogger or webmaster.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP, lets you do just that! It imports all the stats from Google search console and displays right in front of you.

You get access to all the information regarding daily visitors, page views, bounce rates, etc.

Redirection

A simple WordPress plugin that helps you manage all the 301 redirections in one place. The plugin thus eliminates the need for .htacccess editing.

With the plugin, you can also keep track of the 404 errors and remove them to improve your website SEO friendliness.

The plugin can automatically add a 301 redirection if a post’s URL changes. This is very useful and helps keep the 404 errors in check. You can also manually add 301 “redirection” to the posts.

WP-Optimize

WP-Optimize is a database optimizer plugin. Over time, the database is overburdened by useless information/data. The data can be trackbacks, spam comments, trashed comments, etc.

Once you load the plugin, you can do a database clean operation. The operations that can harm your information are marked in red. So, caution should be taken while using the plugin.

MailChimp

The newsletter is the best way to stay in touch with your subscribers. It doesn’t matter what type of blog/website you run, a newsletter can easily increase your sales and bring more visitor to the website.

With MailChimp, you can easily create an appealing newsletter and send it to all the subscribers with just one click. The plugin works seamlessly with other WordPress plugins including Contact Form 7, BuddyPress, Easy Digital Downloads, etc.

WP Smush

Images provide the necessary traction to the blog post. Without images, visitors will not tend to read the blog post.

But, using images wrongly can cause more problems. Large size images slow down the website, hitting its potential to handle the visitors. Rankings also get affected due to the use of large image file size.

WP Smush helps you evade the scenario by compressing the image when loaded.

PolyLang

Polylang is a simple plugin that lets you build a multilingual website. The plugin supports most of the languages.

All you need to do is select the desired language and see the magic unfold in front of your eyes.

AdSanity

AdSanity is an Ad-management WordPress plugin. The plugin offers easy to use Ad management experience.

The plugin supports shortcodes and widgets, which can be used to display adds to the visitors. The ads can be customized with many parameters including time, rotation.

Intergeo Maps Lite

If you are looking for a great solution to insert Google Maps into your WordPress site, check out Intergeo Maps Lite from ThemeIsle. This theme offers a simple, but powerful solution that allows users to create, manage, and embed custom Google Maps into desired posts and pages. A powerful interface allows for intense customization and tinkering. This is one of the best Google Maps solutions we have seen to date.

Notes and Conclusion

WordPress is a great platform. Combined with the right themes and plugins, you can actually make the most out of the platform.

I hope you liked the list of essential plugins. If you think that I missed an awesome plugin, then don’t forget to comment below and let us know.

Also, sharing is caring!

*last updated 01/09/2020