Whenever we develop a WordPress website we carefully select plugins that enhance functionality without compromising performance. Here are 5 tried and trusted plugins that boost security and help with SEO.
01. Wordfence
Site security should be at the very top of your plugin list. Wordfence is a free WordPress security plugin that comes with a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to identify and block malicious traffic. It helps to prevent hacking, malware, DDOS and brute force attacks.
02. Email address encoder
Email address encoder is a free lightweight plugin that protects your email addresses from email harvesting robots that automatically browse the web collecting email addresses. It encodes emails in posts, pages, CPTs and widgets into decimal and hexadecimal entities without any need for JavaScript. Beat the spammers with this neat little plugin.
03. Cache Enabler
Cache Enabler is a free lightweight WordPress cache plugin that helps to improve site performance by generating static HTML files to reduce the resource intensive process of database queries. It lowers page load time and time to first byte for a better user experience and a ranking boost. Cache enabler also offers WebP support without any need for JavaScript.
04. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a free WordPress SEO plugin that helps to boost site traffic. It allows you to configure titles and meta descriptions and set focus keywords to analyze your content for quality and readability and maximise on page SEO. It also generates an advanced XML sitemap that lets Google index your site better.
05. Blogvault
Blogvault is a reliable WordPress backup plugin with daily backups stored offsite on secure servers. It is a paid plugin service but worth the peace of mind that should anything go wrong with your site you can restore it to an earlier working version. It also offers a test restore feature so you can check backups were successful.