10 Favorite WordPress Plugins

My favorite WordPress plugins below are used with my favorite theme Avada and my favorite WordPress hosting service WPEngine. I have used these plugins primarily for B2B sites where the primary goals are brand awareness, multi-channel ad campaigns, traffic/lead generation, extensive product content, and online sales. I prefer free and near-free plugins but have no problem paying for some of these plugins because of the value they add.

Yoast SEO Premium

For B2B and DTC sites I use the Yoast SEO Premium version which has more features than the free version. In addition to Keyword Optimization, SERP preview, Readability check, Search Appearance, XML Sitemaps — the Premium version includes useful features such as Redirect Manager, Canonical URLs and more. The Premium version is $89/site with discounts for add’l sites.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a powerful platform, but it can be intimidating at first if you’re new to ecommerce. There are a lot of features you need to be comfortable with if you want to run a successful operation. Luckily I have been a WooCommerce user for many years and have built many webstores using the core features and several of it’s app extensions. WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic, the makers of WordPress, so feel better about it’s code integration with WordPress and it’s future viability. Core WooCommerce is free but the extensions almost always needed are not. In fact, they can get quite pricey.

Gravity Forms

Quick and easy form-building with an editor UI that is full featured but intuitive including the conditional field options and styling. The MailChimp API makes that connection painless. Good docs and support.

Duplicate Post

This plugin allows users to clone posts of any type or copy them to new drafts for further editing. Should be a standard feature of WordPress. Duplicate Post is free.

Slider Revolution

Slider Revolution includes a powerful visual editor with an enormous amount of features and settings so you have control over every detail of your sliders. You can create image sliders and carousels, featured posts sliders, social media feeds, media galleries, hero panels, and more. Sliders are responsive design styled and work well on desktop, tablet, and phone. Slider Revolution is included with themes such as Avada.

WP Mail SMTP

WP Mail SMTP is the easiest way to fix WordPress email delivery and ensure your emails reach the inbox.

Layered Popups

Layered Popups makes it easy to add creative popup windows to your WordPress site. Includes a large collection of ready to go popup creative to start with. Deep feature set and a lot of goodies.

GeoTargetingWP

A complete solution to geotarget your WordPress sites. A powerful API service to geotarget content or create geo targeted redirects. WordPress content based on Geolocation never been so easy.

Relevanssi

Relevanssi replaces the standard WordPress search with a better search engine, with lots of features and configurable options. You’ll get better results, better presentation of results – your users will thank you. Free version available.

TablePress

TablePress is possibly one of the best plugins for displaying csv data inside WordPress. TablePress allows you to import csv files (and xls) and display data in wysiwyg fields via a shortcode. You can add rows/columns, swap rows/columns, set table headers and footers, add pagination, search, filters, etc. TablePress is free.

Google Reviews Business

The Google Reviews Business plugin displays G+ reviews. I use this plugin on business listing directories to display reviews and ratings to increase user confidence and SEO. Styling includes slider effect, list, grid, fixed and embedded badges. Supports Google Rich Snippets, Write a review, Minimum Filter Ratings and more. Facebook Reviews and Yelp Reviews also available. Free version available but I use the paid versions.