This week’s episode is all about the nine essential WordPress plugins that you need for your online business. I don’t know about you, but I love a good WordPress plugin. It can make life so much easier, and it’s one of my favorite things about WordPress.
I don’t know if you know that WordPress is open source. Which means that people can come in and create things and add to it and help the platform out. Which is one of the beauties of it. It’s that you’re not tied to something that is only what the creators can come up with. You have all these options. Anyone can make a WordPress plugin and put it up there. And it can be a life-changing plugin.
So I looked up out of curiosity, and the plug-in store on WordPress has more than 58,000 free plug-ins. That doesn’t include all the plug-ins that are out there, that aren’t up on it. The ones that are paid, that are something that you have to go to the developer site and purchase. And then they give you the plug-in, and then you upload it yourself.
I mean, if you think about it. That’s like walking into a small Barnes and Noble. Which by the way holds 60,000 different book titles in the small stores. And for me as a fellow book lover, being able to compare the amount of plug-ins on WordPress to the amount of books in a small Barnes and Noble is pretty cool. I mean, they’re almost identical numbers.
A Treat to Help You Build Your Website
But it just goes to show how many options you have out there. But when it comes to having that many options, it can be overwhelming, especially when tech and web design, and all of this isn’t your zone of genius. And it’s not what you love. You don’t like to just sit there and figure out and learn about different plug-ins. So I’m gonna take you through my nine favorite plug-ins and what I love about them.
Speaking of doing things you love, I’m all about building websites. But I know it’s not that easy if you’re totally new to the game. Which is why I have just the tool for you. I knew I had to make my Guide to Build Your Website the Right Way. It’s my free 20 page guide to help you build your website and make sure that your website is working for you, helping you meet your goals. So grab your free copy of the Ultimate Guide to Build Your Site the Right Way, below.
*Note: Links with an * are affiliate links. This means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I love and use in my own business.
Now that you’ve grabbed your copy of that, let’s dive into these 9 essential WordPress plugins for your online business. I don’t know about you, but I’m super excited for these.
No. 1 - Elementor
So my first favorite plugin is Elementor. If it isn’t obvious already, if you’ve consumed any of my other pieces of content. Elementor is how I build websites. It is the tool I trust. It is the tool I love and it is my favorite for a number of reasons.
So Elementor has a lot of beautiful things about it. It’s very user-friendly. So if you are not a person who knows code, it’s ok. I know all the code languages, not all of ’em. There’s plenty I don’t know. But I know all of the important coding languages. And I don’t have to use them with Elementor. I use a little bit of CSS to do some tweaks, and that’s the only one I use. But I can get 99% of any website built with just Elementor without having to use CSS. So being able to do that is one of my favorite things.
It's drag and drop. It's user friendly and you don't have to know a bunch of coding languages. You can build right on the front end and see what your page is gonna look like in real time as you build it.
Not to mention that I’ve seen some WordPress themes out there. You know, those WordPress theme shops, nothing wrong with them, nothing against them. It all has its own place in the world.
But I’ve seen some WordPress themes where you go to their shop and you pick a theme and it can cost you like $300 for a theme. Sure, there are some that are like $50 to $100 for a premium WordPress theme.
But my gripe with those is that you’re limited to what that theme can do. This is your website design and this is it. And unless you can figure out a whole bunch of coding to do different things, you’re tied into that. So what’s gonna happen in a year or two when you decide to rebrand, change your colors, or you wanna update the site. You then have to go drop another couple hundred on a new one or consider other options.
But the beauty of Elementor is that when you spend the $50 for the year for it, you get access to the Elementor Pro, which is where all the beautiful tools are. And you can build any custom website anytime you want, do whatever.
And you’re not limited to that theme because when you buy Elementor Pro, they give you their Elementor hello theme. So your website still uses a theme. But it’s a very basic design to keep it light. Because Elementor knows that you’re gonna be building with their plugin, and that the theme is just a set of base rules. So this way you get to build literally anything you can come up with, with Elementor, and that’s the beauty of it.
Related Reading: How to Make a Complete WordPress Website with Elementor
No. 2 - LaunchFlows
So my second favorite plugin is LaunchFlows. This is another one of those… I think it’s like $50 for the year, and it does so much. So it works with your website and it works with Elementor and it works with WooCommerce. So you can build a custom funnel on your own website using Elementor and WooCommerce and Launch Flows.
Launch flows is what gives you the option to do all of those custom pages, the upsell and things like that. And it integrates with Elementor and it’s really nice. It gives you features inside of WooCommerce that you don’t normally have. So for the short $50 it is for the year. It’s a really nice plugin and I am totally in love with it.
No. 3 - All-In-One WP Migration
So my third plugin is All-In-One WP Migration, and there’s an extension part of this too. So long story short on this plugin, I use it for backups on websites. And it is my favorite plugin to do backups on websites with.
So when I first got started with figuring out how to do backups on my site, a lot of them were overwhelming. They’re like, we wanna do a backup to this, and we wanna do this. And it felt really hard for me to figure out how to restore a backup, should I ever need it.
And in all my years, I’ve never had to restore a backup. But should I need to, this plugin is my easiest and favorite way to do it.
o the All-in-One WP Migration plugin itself is free, but there’s a limit on the file size. So for $70 for the year, they have an unlimited extension version which removes that limit on file size
The best part is that you can tell it to take a backup automatically and it'll store it.
You can go take one and then download a full copy and save it somewhere. So if you wanna save it on your computer and you wanna back it up to an external hard drive, or to Google, wherever you wanna put it. You can download it.
And then should you ever have an issue, you have that backup of your site. So say for example someone comes in and trashes your site, they kick you out. You can’t log in… like… it’s the worst ever. But you know you have a backup from two weeks ago. So the beauty of it is,,, talk to your host. Ask them to just fix it. Tell them, I just need to be able to log on to WordPress. I just need to be able to get back onto my WordPress and I can fix it from there.
And when they do that, you go in and you put on your plug-ins for the all-in-one WP migration and your unlimited extension. And then you can upload that backup right there inside WordPress and restore your site from it and then your site’s back. So it’s as simple as getting access back through your host and then getting your site back in maybe an hour. So that’s why I love it.
A bonus tip:
And if you happen to be someone who does design websites. I don’t normally give out this kind of a tip, but I love it because I can build a site for a client on a dev site, like a subdomain. And then I can download it.
And as long as they’re not worried about keeping anything that’s existing on their site, I can upload it to their new site, their regular domain. And then I’ve moved it all over and I don’t have to worry about that. So it makes life easier in that regard too.
No. 4 - Enhanced Media Library
So my fourth plugin is Enhanced Media Library. This is something that I keep on my site because I am able to organize all of the media that goes on in my site. And if you run an online business with multiple offers, blog posts, and lead magnets. All these things get really hectic and crazy to see just a ton of media files.
So what I do is, I use the free version. And it gives you the option to create categories inside your media library on your site. You can put an image under that category, so this way you can easily find them.
So if you have a specific lead magnet promo image that you always use, you can put it under lead magnets. And then you can easily find it and it’s right there. You don’t have to go digging and go back and back and back through pages either.
It also makes it nice because if you were to go back through and update an image. If you have images on your site that you no longer use, you can remove them. You can easily find them and remove them, and then you’re not storing extra unnecessary images on your site. Which adds to the bulk of it.
No. 5 - Related Posts by Taxonomy
My fifth plugin is Related Posts by Taxonomy. This is one that I love to use in conjunction with Elementor. So with Elementor, I can set a standard layout for my blog posts. So if there’s something I want to include at the bottom or the top of every blog post, or after my featured image, I can set that and then I can forget it. I don’t have to add it to every single post every time.
So the beauty of this is, Related Posts by Taxonomy works with short code. If you don’t know what short code is, essentially it’s just a tiny little snippet that you put in somewhere and there’s stuff that works in the backend behind it. What you put into that short code is what it tells the backend what to do with it.
So I create a section on my blog post at the bottom, and I put the short code in to show related posts with certain parameters. And then it pulls it for me so I don’t even have to think about it or do it. And it’s a very light plugin, it’s really small. It doesn’t take up a ton of space, which is another nice thing.
No. 6 - Tasty Pins
My sixth plugin is Tasty Pins, and this might seem like a little bit of a frivolous purchase. But I think it’s like $30 for the year, and it makes my life so much easier.
So if you use Pinterest a lot and if you’re always doing pins you’ll know. So back in the day, I used to have to hand code a section inside at the end of my blog post where I would put all of my images. And I’d have to hand code what I wanted my pin descriptions to be. And I would have to make sure that that section was hidden so that my pins were there. But you didn’t see all of my pins for the blog post.
So the beauty of Tasty Pins is that it gives you a space at the bottom of your blog post to go ahead and input your image and set your pin description. And then it doesn’t show it on the front end of your blog post, but they’re there. So if someone goes to save your post, they have different pin options and the pin description that you wanna use for them. So it definitely made life a lot easier. You can work around without it, but if you’re doing pins for your blog post, it makes it a lot easier.
No. 7 - WP Code Lite
My seventh plugin is WP Code Light. Now, this formally used to be known as insert headers and footers. And essentially this is a really nice small plugin to put on your site for whenever you do a lot of integrations. With things like Google Analytics and Pinterest and all.
They want you to always insert this code into the header of your site. So it’s a nice way to go ahead and do that without having to go into the code. And without having to worry about messing something up on the backend. So that’s one of my other favorite things. It’s a nice little light plugin to keep on there.
No. 8 - Yoast SEO
My eighth plugin is Yoast SEO. There’s a couple of different SEO plugins out there. Yoast is what I’ve always used. And it’s a nice way to just make sure that your site has some good readability and that you’re hitting some of those good SEO scores on your site.
So essentially it’s what helps me make sure that I’m doing all the things I should be doing inside my blog post for SEO that I don’t have to think about because they’re right there.
I don’t have to set it up somewhere else to make sure I do them all.
No. 9 - Pretty Links
My ninth plugin is Pretty Links and I use the free version of it for now. And this is a nice plugin because when you’re doing Google analytics and tracking using something called UTMs. And that’s a whole other topic for a whole other post.
But essentially UTMs are what help you kind of label links so you can label traffic sources or maybe what the campaign goes to. There’s a variety of things you can label, but it helps you label a link. So if you wanna link from your blog post to your lead magnet. You can put in a UTM code on that link so that whenever someone lands on your lead magnet, you can tag it so that it will know they came from this blog post, for example.
It’s a way to track and see what’s working and what’s not working. And help better understand your figures and numbers and things like that. So Pretty Links is a nice plugin because It makes it really easy to go ahead and make a shorter link version, and condense it down to something where you can spit it out easily. Or you can input it somewhere, and it’s shortened it for you.
So if you want to promote your blog post every week on these social media platforms, but you don’t wanna have to do the whole long URL with all of the title. You can make a condensed version and put that into Pretty Links, and it will go ahead and pull that over into your site.
So essentially, someone can go to the link you give them that you've made with Pretty Links, and it will redirect them to the page that they're supposed to be going to or the page that you've intended for them to go to.
The other nice thing is that if you have affiliate stuff that you do. Now the disclaimer here is that not all affiliates allow you to do this, but you can make a Pretty Link for it.
So you can tell someone… you can get a 14 day free trial of this by going to mysite.com/product name, for example. And it will direct them to your affiliate link. So this way you don’t have to mumble out some random jumble of words. You can just tell them, go to mysite.com/blank and this is how you can sign up. So that’s, that’s how bloggers do that, how you can do that for your business to make those nice looking. For your affiliates and for other things like social media.
The 9 Essential WordPress Plugins for Your Online Business
Alrighty, so there we have it. My nine essential WordPress plugins for your online business. Elementor, Launch Flows, the All-In-One WP Migration, with that unlimited extension, Enhanced Media Library, Related Posts by Taxonomy, Tasty Pins, WP Code Light, Yoast SEO, and Pretty Links. These are all plug-ins I use on a variety of my sites that I absolutely love that have been so helpful for me.
