It’s 2022, which means it’s a great time to get foundations fixed up and the cobwebs brushed off of your WordPress website. In this article, I explain how to improve your website’s performance, SEO, and user experience. With these simple steps in mind, you will turn your site (or your client’s site) into an effective revenue generator. Let’s take a peek at my top 7 plugins you should be using in 2022.

WordPress being the most popular website platform means that, unfortunately, it’s also the most frequently hacked platform. WordPress has a big target on its back, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t mitigate some risks and keep attackers at bay. This is where Wordfence comes into play – it’s the best security plugin for WordPress.

Wordfence can do a lot for your WordPress security, and most of it happens on autopilot. First, it puts up a firewall that protects your site from login break-ins and other common attacks. Then, there are security scans that you can perform to attack-proof your site even more. It will also get rid of malware and protect your WordPress users.

• Free version
• Pro version: (pricing starts from $99 per license)

Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress SEO plugin and one of the most popular WordPress plugins overall. Currently installed on more than 5 million(!) WordPress sites.

Arguably, it’s a bit easier-to-use solution than Rank Math. It comes nicely preconfigured and operates based on showing you just a simple SEO recommendations list for the keyword that you want to target. It tells you how to craft your page title, meta description, and other elements.

• Free version
• Pro version: (pricing starts from $89/1 site)

There’s nothing worse than losing all your site’s content to a hacker, server crash, or other website malfunction. That’s why using a free auto-backup solution like UpdraftPlus is so important. And it’s on our list because it’s simply the best WordPress backup plugin around.

Features:

• Automated Backups — Schedule an automatic WordPress backup of your website’s files and WordPress database.
• Cloud Storage — Store your backups in a cloud service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or Amazon S3.
• Email Notifications — Get an email when a backup completes. (Check out how to fix UpdraftPlus not sending email if you’re having any issues with these alerts.)
• Instant Restore — Restore your website instantly using a one-click restore button if something happens.

There’s a pretty easy answer if you’re asking what are the best WordPress plugins and you want to sell products online. It’s WooCommerce, the most popular eCommerce platform for online stores that usually ends up at the top of every list with the best WordPress plugins for eCommerce and the best WordPress eCommerce plugin.

Features:

• WordPress Integration — This online shop creator gives you complete control over the design and functionality of your online store on WordPress.org.
• Flexibility — Sell anything you want, complete with varying shapes, sizes, product variations, and configurations. And offer a wide range of shipping options such as free shipping or shipping that’s calculated in real-time.
• Payment Options — Accept major credit cards, BACs, and cash on delivery, so people can make their purchases how they want.
• It’s All Yours — You own all of it so you never have to worry about a 3rd-party platform packing up and taking your store’s data with them.
• Grow Sales — Use live sales notifications for WooCommerce to skyrocket your income online

If you’re having problems with WordPress not sending emails, you’ll need the best WordPress transaction emails plugin WP Mail SMTP to help you out.

This free plugin helps reconfigure the wp_mail() PHP function to use the proper SMTP provider. In other words, it makes sure any WordPress emails that are supposed to send out from your WordPress site are delivered to the recipient’s inbox as they should.

Features:

• It Works — WP Mail SMTP fixes your email deliverability by reconfiguring WordPress to use a proper SMTP provider when sending emails (and it works).
• Multiple Integrations — Brings together all SMTP providers, including Sendinblue, into one plugin so you don’t have to use separate plugins for each provider.
• White Glove Setup  — The paid Elite version includes the team setting it all up for you.

MonsterInsights Lite gives you a simple way to connect your WordPress website to your Google Analytics account. With it, you can see how site visitors find your website and what they do while there. With this data, you’re able to capitalize on what site visitors like to keep them coming back for more.

Features:

• Dashboard Reports — See real-time stats in an easy to read report found right in the dashboard of your WordPress site.
• Universal Tracking — Your stats are never skewed thanks to the universal tracking system that’s in place. In other words, if your site visitors switch from a mobile device to a desktop, you’ll still get accurate data counts.
• Robust Pro Features — The premium version lets you track eCommerce stats, traffic sources, advertisements efforts, and you’ll have access to the MonsterInsights Forms addon, which lets you see your form conversion rates so you can make improvements and grow your business online.