4 Essential WordPress Plugins for Any Small Business

Chances are you’ve visited a website that has been built on WordPress. It’s the go-to for new businesses looking to create a presence online, and if you know how to use it right you can create a very modern and user friendly website. WordPress is free and it has all the basic customizable and marketing options a small company needs in its early stages. It doesn’t matter if you are using WordPress to create an online shop, a blog, a simple brochure-type webpage or something a little more advanced, if you have these plugins you will find it much easier to use.

Akismet

This plugin flags spam then tracks it/trashes it accordingly. This is probably the most popular plugin on WordPress and ensures your desktop doesn’t fill up with spam and irrelevant data. It’s is amazing how accurate Akismet is, something I definitely wish I knew about before I let my inbox flood with comments from the Prince of Nigeria and his friends.

WordPress SEO

If you want your website to be the number one hit if someone was to Google “Vegan Green Grocer Melbourne,” you can tailor your options to ensure that your SEO is optimized for those keywords with this plugin. Essentially it will make sure you get the most SEO out of the content you have. If have a blog on your WordPress (and you should if you want to maximize the content on your page), this is a must-have plugin. It allows very easy tailoring of your meta-data and descriptions of each blog post and will demonstrate how strong your SEO rating for each post is as per your own guidelines and keywords. WordPress SEO is a valuable plugin for all start-ups who want to get their name out there.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the small-time business website owner’s dream. It will track your website’s outbound links, page views, downloads and clicks. This is information that you can then use to suit your own personal marketing agenda. It will allow you to access very valuable information that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

WP Touch

WP Touch turns your blog into an elegant mobile theme. Google now takes into account whether or not a website has mobile capabilities when delivering its results, and those with mobile capabilities rank higher than those without.

TIP: Don’t install too many plugins!

Installing too many plugins can impact the performance of your site, but there are many plugins that are extremely valuable to have. Technically speaking, it isn’t the number of plug-ins you have that will slow you down, it’s the number of badly coded and developed plugins you have. If you download numerous plugins and your site starts to slow, it will be a long process to find which plugin is doing the damage.

WordPress is a priceless tool and in this digital age it is essential that any growing business has a presence online, even if it is just a simple webpage with some details on it. You may find that as your company grows so does your need for an up-to-date online presence. In regards to online content management systems (CMS), WordPress is considered a very basic platform.

There are other programs out there that are far more powerful but far harder to use. Perhaps when you have grown in substantial proportion as a business, you will require the aid of a digital agency to manage your website on a platform like the Sitecore DMS or Kentico CMS. But for now, be content knowing that you know more about WordPress than I did when I first started, and I have no  doubt you will continue to learn.

Author: Joe Flanagan is a web developer and eCommerce business strategist at Loud&Clear, a digital agency based in Melbourne. In his spare time he’s an avid poker player, world traveller and a glass half full type of guy.