Having the right plugins can take your WordPress site’s functionality to the next level. Plugins add useful features, integrations, and automations to help you optimize your site. In this post, we highlight the 10 best WordPress plugins for added functionality. We’ve carefully selected these plugins based on usability, popularity, features, and security.

Essential WordPress security plugins

Keeping your WordPress site secure should be your top priority. Having the site hacked could lead to catastrophic outcomes. These two plugins will help beef up security:

Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security is the most downloaded WordPress security plugin, with over 4 million active installs. It offers top-grade protection through:

Real-time blocking of known malicious IPs

• Advanced firewall rules to prevent different types of attacks
• Integrated malware scanner to detect infections
• Login protection via two-factor authentication and captcha
• Installing Wordfence gives you 360-degree protection from various threats seeking to compromise your site.

iThemes Security

iThemes Security takes the standard WordPress security provisions to the next level. The plugin provides 40+ ways to lock down the site, including:

Password strength enforcement

• Banning troublesome IPs and users
• Securing database tables
• Automatic malware scanning
• Two-factor authentication
• iThemes Security makes it easy to implement WordPress hardening that covers every potential vulnerability.

SEO enhancement through sitemaps and redirection

SEO is crucial for driving organic growth of any WordPress site. These two plugins make search optimization a breeze:

Yoast SEO

With over 100 million downloads, Yoast SEO is the go-to choice for optimizing WordPress sites for search engines. The plugin offers comprehensive SEO features such as:

Title and Meta description templating

• XML sitemap integration with search engines
• Robots.txt editor
• Focus keywords and analysis
• Redirection manager
• Ability to optimize multiple content types
• By using Yoast SEO, you get everything you need for superior site optimization.

Redirection

While Yoast SEO offers basic redirection functionality, the premium Redirection plugin takes it to the next level. The plugin enables you to easily manage 301 redirections with support for:

CSV import and export

• Apache .htaccess converter
• Automatic 404 error redirection to home page
• Redirect monitoring
• Geo IP based redirection
• With Redirection, you can set up redirects between old and new URLs to prevent visitors from hitting 404s after site changes.

Boost conversions with heatmaps and A/B testing

Understanding visitor behavior and testing site changes is vital for conversion rate optimization. These plugins make the process seamless:

Hotjar Heatmaps

Over 1 million sites use Hotjar for visitor analytics and conversion optimization. Key capabilities include:

Interactive heatmaps showing visitor clicks and scrolls

• Visitor recordings to see real site interactions
• Conversion funnels to identify drop-off
• Form analysis to improve conversions
• Polls and surveys for visitor feedback
• Installing Hotjar gives you the complete toolkit for understanding visitor behavior down to each mouse movement.

Google Optimize A/B Testing

Google Optimize makes conversion-focused A/B testing quick and hassle-free. You can use it for:

A/B testing site variations

• Multivariate testing combining multiple elements
• Redirect tests for effective advertising
• Scripts for advanced event tracking

The plugin seamlessly integrates Google Optimize with your WordPress site for granular conversion optimization tests.

Enhance site forms and surveys

Forms and surveys help capture lead information and visitor feedback. These two plugins supercharge your site’s forms:

WPForms Lite

WPForms Lite is the most beginner-friendly WordPress contact form and survey builder. Top features include:

• Drag and drop form building
• Multi-page survey support
• Entry limiting and scheduling
• Custom confirmation messages
• File uploads and multi-selects
• Form templates and previews
• WPForms makes it super simple for anyone to create multi-field forms optimized for lead capture.

SurveyMaker

If you want advanced surveys, then SurveyMaker is a great choice. It comes with capabilities for:

• Smart branching logic
• Randomization of questions and answers
• Partial submission saving
• Automated triggers
• Survey comments
• Dedicated survey results page

By leveraging SurveyMaker, you can create complex multi-page surveys tailored for in-depth market research.

Boost site speed

A fast loading site proves crucial for visitor engagement and conversions. These two plugins will accelerate your site speed:

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is arguably the most powerful WordPress caching plugin. It delivers superior performance through features such as:

Multisite and Varnish cache support

Browser, database, and object caching

Lazy loading for images and iframes

File optimization and minification

Critical CSS rendering

With WP Rocket, you get an all-in-one caching toolkit that can exponentially improve site speeds.

Autoptimize

Autoptimize perfectly complements plugins like WP Rocket by optimizing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The plugin can:

Concatenate CSS and JavaScript files automatically

• Minify and inline CSS and JS code
• Defer non-essential JS
• Async load JS scripts
• Remove unused CSS rules and code bloat
• Together WP Rocket and Autoptimize provide a comprehensive solution for maximizing WordPress performance.

Also Read:Revamping The Flagship of The Website: NASA Chooses WordPress

Final thoughts

Optimizing a WordPress site goes beyond using a fast theme. The right plugins play a vital role in security, conversions, user experience, and performance. This list of 10 WordPress functionality plugins covers all the key website aspects. Each plugin solves a specific site need while working harmoniously together. We encourage installing them to take your site to the next level.