3 Great WordPress Plugins for WordPress Webmasters

WordPress is a great platform for managing a website or blog, and whilst the standard installation might work great for many, a wide range of plugins (both free and paid) are available to extend the existing functionality if you are needing something extra.

Here’s a selection of my top 3 WordPress plugins for WordPress webmasters. Each of these are completely free to download and install.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

If you want to take a quick look at the analytics for your website, you’ll need to go to Google Analytics, log in, then find the site you’re looking for. If you just want to take a quick glance, this is wasted time – especially if you forget your password!

This handy plugin can help you keep track of key site visitor statistics – all from the Dashboard of your WordPress installation! This saves you having to open a separate tab and doing the process mentioned above.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

When creating pages and writing content for your website or blog, it’s always a good idea to make your site as ‘Google-friendly’ as possible. You can do this by following SEO guidelines. This plugin is a great help, and shows you how SEO-friendly your site is, in addition to showing areas which could be optimised.

If you’re looking to optimise a page for a specific keyword, it can give guidance and a ‘traffic light’ style system, letting you know how optimised your content is.

W3 Total Cache

With page load speed being a key ranking factor, it is critical that your website is as fast as possible. This is where browser caching has an important role.

By telling the user’s browser to ‘remember’ certain files (such as images, which once uploaded will rarely be updated), your website’s pages will load faster.

W3 Total Cache is, in my opinion, the best WordPress caching plugin available, with an extensive number of options available.

In addition to being able to cache the resources, you can also connect the plugin to MaxCDN, which will cache your website’s static resources in many locations across the world. This means that if your web server is located in the US, but a UK visitor lands on your site, they will only need to connect to MaxCDN’s UK location, rather than having to connect right across the pond.