• Menu
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Spectrum Group Online

Decisions Made with Data.

  • What We Do
    • SEO
      • White Hat SEO
      • Local SEO
      • Website SEO Audit
      • Link Building
      • Penalty Recovery
    • Google Analytics
    • Pay Per Click
      • Google Ads
      • Bing Ads
    • Content Marketing
    • Social Media
    • WordPress
      • WordPress Websites
      • WordPress Maintenance
  • Pricing
    • Our Pricing Explained
    • PPC Pricing
    • Brand-Only PPC
  • Case Studies
    • Testimonials
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Upcoming Events
    • Certifications
    • Tools We Use
  • Contact Us
  • Blog
  • What We Do
    • SEO
      • White Hat SEO
      • Local SEO
      • Website SEO Audit
      • Link Building
      • Penalty Recovery
    • Google Analytics
    • Pay Per Click
      • Google Ads
      • Bing Ads
    • Content Marketing
    • Social Media
    • WordPress
      • WordPress Websites
      • WordPress Maintenance
  • Pricing
    • Our Pricing Explained
    • PPC Pricing
    • Brand-Only PPC
  • Case Studies
    • Testimonials
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Upcoming Events
    • Certifications
    • Tools We Use
  • Contact Us
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Web Design & Development / Our WordPress Plugins Top Picks

Our WordPress Plugins Top Picks

June 15, 2017 //  by Massimo Paolini//  Leave a Comment

Last Updated on September 10, 2020

These are a Few of Our Favorite Things

One of the many things we love about WordPress is it’s versatility. If you’re looking for our WordPress plugins top picks that play nice together, this post is for you. Here we’re going to outline our favourite WordPress plugins.

Ready to Talk?

An Eye on Security (At All Times)

Regardless of what content management system you use, hackers will inevitably try to get in. While we like the open-source community WordPress offers, you must also be mindful of security. When we build a site, we harden it by modifying common or standard elements of the software installation. In addition to those changes, we use these WordPress plugins for added security:

  1. Sucuri Security — it’s an auditing, malware scanner and hardening plugin. I like that it scans for changes and alerts you when they occur. For sites worried about malware, it has that scanning feature as well.
  2. Authy – Authy is a two-step authenticator that adds an extra layer of security to your WordPress website. It combines an application on your smartphone with your login page to ensure nobody is getting into your site unless you want them to.

Easy Maintenance

CannasI debated adding these WordPress plugins to the above security list… as maintaining your WordPress website is your best security defense. As you can see, I decided to group maintenance-related plugins:

  1. WP-DBManager — while it has some security functions, it mainly backs up and maintains your database automatically.
  2. Akismet — sadly, comment spam runs rampant on websites. Akismet uses the cloud to identify spammy comments. Similar to BruteProtect, it bands together WP websites to help fight spam.
  3. Broken Link Checker — broken hyperlinks offers a poor visitor experience. This plugin checks for broken links and has tools to fix them. It’s very handy. It’s also important to note that a bunch of broken links is a signal to search engines (Google) that your site isn’t well maintained and therefore can negatively affect your SEO.
  4. Jetpack — packages several functions together, things like contact forms, sidebar widgets, etc. While Jetpack has been a page speed hog, they have made huge strides with speed. Stay tuned to this blog for a series of speed experiments in 2015.

 SEO & Back-End Use

  1. CMS Tree Page View — If you’re serious about building online visibility (SEO), you’re probably adding lots of pages and posts. To help you stay organized and navigate the back-end of your WordPress website, this plugin creates an easy to navigate tree view since it shows hierarchical relationships at a glance. Not only does it help your SEO, but it also makes page creation 10x easier!
  2. Redirection — when you manage a website long enough, eventually pages will be retired/replaced with new ones. However, you don’t want to lose your hard-earned SEO equity. This redirection plugin is particularly useful when you redesign and reorganize your information architecture so 404 errors are minimized.
  3.  Yoast SEO — I really like that this plugin helps you use SEO best practices for pages and posts. We recommend handcrafting title tags and meta descriptions to optimize what appears on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). You can edit these directly on the page and see a preview.

These are my top picks for WordPress plugins. I’m testing new ones all the time, as I’m a stickler for security as well as speed performance. What’s your favorite?

Photo credit – Top: Pixabay
Photo credit – Bottom: Nogran SRO

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit

Category: Web Design & Development

About Massimo Paolini

Massimo is Co-CEO and Chief Data Scientist. On the web since the 90’s and a Google Partner since 2014, his expertise includes technical SEO, search marketing, marketing analytics/analysis, and online advertising. Massimo has an innate ability to sift through a sea of data, uncovering insights that formulate results-oriented strategies. He has taught Digital Marketing, Google Ads and SEO at UC Berkeley Extension since 2014—and presented at international search marketing conferences like SMXL in Milan.

Betty Kaufman
Betty Kaufman
2020-12-27
I have nothing but great things to say about the team at The Spectrum Group Online. For years, they've been managing my website, making sure it's up to date and that there are no issues. In the last 4 months, they've been running Facebook ads for me, and I'm thrilled with the results. Great ads. Tons of leads. A steady effort to improve the leads. Very responsive. If you want to be seen on social media, you should definitely talk to The Spectrum Group Online.
Vanessa Contreras
Vanessa Contreras
2020-04-13
I appreciate Spectrum’s data-based approach to digital marketing. They created a dashboard specific to the data points most important to our multi-location retail business. Even more importantly, they educated us and delivered insights that fed our digital marketing and e-commerce strategies.
Alison Salisbury
Alison Salisbury
2019-10-17
Spectrum has been managing my website for years. Technology and web security changes often, making it hard for a small business to keep up. I never worry because the Spectrum team takes care of the critical details. I particularly appreciate they proactively keep my website safe and secure. Peace of mind and great customer service. That's why I can highly recommend them!
Mark Feldstein
Mark Feldstein
2018-05-09
Our business grew, greatly due to the efforts of the Spectrum team. They are a focused company with great experience and plenty of talent to support their process. Jen Currier, in particular, is an excellent PM, who helped us every step of the way. They helped us re-design our website from the ground up and used tools such as Keyword Research and Heatmaps to help drive leads to our company. We had the best year in the history of our company, in part due to Spectrum's efforts. I do not hesitate to highly recommend them.
SantaCruz NonForceChiropractors
SantaCruz NonForceChiropractors
2017-07-14
Massimo and The Spectrum Group Online have been very effective at sending quality traffic to our website and generating phone calls for appointments. Massimo has always been professional, responsive, and ready to make useful suggestions as well as explain the many ins and outs of search advertising. I highly recommend him to any business wishing to use a skilled and professional search marketing expert to increase their leads and grow their revenues.
Google rating score: 5 of 5,
based on 6 reviews.
Previous Post: « Is Facebook Reading Your Mind?
Next Post: What Is White Hat SEO? »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Case Studies
  • Content
  • Links
  • Local SEO
  • News & Events
  • PPC
  • Sales
  • SEO
  • Social Media
  • Web Analytics
  • Web Design & Development

Recent Posts

  • Impact of Customer Reviews on Sales
  • Spectrum Named in San Jose’s Best 15 SEO Firms
  • 2021 Predictions & Trends
  • Spectrum Named Top B2B Company in California
  • Emerging Data Protection Concerns For A Remote Workforce

Footer

Spectrum Group Online

About Us
Certifications
Contact Us

spectrum@spectrum-group-online.com
(408) 883-2276
San Jose, CA 95129

Stay On Top Of Your Game

Digital Marketing never stands still. Keep up with the latest online marketing trends, sign up for our monthly newsletter. We promise no SPAM and no sales pitches.

Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Instagram YouTube

Copyright © 2021 Spectrum Group Online, LLC | All rights reserved | Privacy Policy | Site Map

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Non-necessary

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.