There are a few major categories of plugins almost every WordPress website should have one of them.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): There is almost no point in having a website with SEO. My favourite WordPress plugin is RankMath, it has a ton of useful SEO features all for free.
- Backup: Even if you’re using a best-hosting provider or following the best practices, it always better to have properly configured backup plugin on your website. In case of any issues, the backups are the ultimate resort. My favourite plugin for Backup is Updraft Plus (free). It takes automated regular backups at defined interval & can also store them on a remote server like Google Drive, Dropbox etc.
- Caching: After all your effort, you won’t risk your user’s experience, many people claim that WordPress & page builders make the website slow. Caching help generate static ready to serve files, which helps to reduce server-side processing. WP Super Cache & WP Fastest cache are two great cache plugin to help you with enabling & configuring cache for your WordPress site.
- CDN: Content Delivery Networks, help reduce load over your web server by the server the many static resources like image, CSS etc from their powerful servers, this helps to improve the site loading time. Jetpack & Cloudflare are the two best free option.
- Google Analytics & Search Console: Who doesn’t want to see the impact of their efforts, the number of people who are using their website. Are people finding the website in Google Search? & answer to many more such question can be found with Google Analytics & Search Console. Google Site Kit is a great plugin by Google to help you integrate your website with such Google’s services.
- Image Compression & Lazyload: If you regularly add new content (images) to your website, automated image compression is something you must consider. Image compression with help saving your web server bandwidth & more importantly improves your site speed for visitors. Shortpixel, Optimole, Smush are few geat plugins for this task.
- Security: After putting so much effort in building your website, you won’t love your website getting hacked. There are many WordPress plugins to harden your WordPress security. I prefer using Sucuri Security or All In One WP Security & Firewall.
I’ve tried to list the major important categories of plugins which every WordPress site should have. The plugin recommendation is based on my personal experience.
There may be better plugins for different use-cases & also there are many plugins which can do multiple things.