3 WordPress plugins every small business owner needs

One of the great things about WordPress (our content management system of choice) is just how darn flexible it is. With themes and plugins at your disposal, you can accomplish just about anything in WordPress.

I thought it’d be fun to look at three plugins I think every small business needs on its WordPress website. They’re all free and easy to install, and they’ll help take your site to the next level.

WordPress SEO

WordPress SEO is for more than just SEO: it can add other important features to your site
WordPress SEO is for more than just SEO: it can add other important features to your site

It’s a bit obvious, but WordPress SEO is essential for any small business website. True, it’s one of the most installed WordPress plugins, but I still think it’s important to include because many people install it and don’t bother to learn how to use it!

When you harness its full power, WordPress SEO not only helps make your site friendly to search engines, but it also improves things for casual visitors and your fans who share your content. It has built in support for OpenGraph tags, which make your stuff look good when shared on Facebook, and also makes it possible to display breadcrumb navigation on your website. It also has a built in SEO auditing feature, which scans blog posts to see if they’re up to snuff.

Learning how to use WordPress SEO is essential: don’t just “set it and forget it!”

Editorial Calendar

Get an overview of upcoming content on your site with the Editorial Calendar plugin
Get an overview of upcoming content on your site with the Editorial Calendar plugin

If you do any kind of serious inbound/content marketing, a post calendar is essential so you can make sure you’re pushing out regular content. You can set up such a calendar inside Google Calendar, Trello, or similar tools, but why not build it into WordPress?

Editorial Calendar does the job with aplomb. The calendar is easy to use and integrates beautifully with WordPress. It also makes it easy to quickly create new drafts, so you can build out a content schedule in no time. And if you need to reschedule a post? Easy, just drag and drop your post to a new date. You can also edit a post without leaving the calendar, and quickly see unscheduled drafts sitting in WordPress.

WP Popup Plugin

Make it easy for your users to subscribe to your mailing list with WP Popup Plugin
Make it easy for your users to subscribe to your mailing list with WP Popup Plugin

Email popups are hardly popular, but the reality is that they work. Unfortunately, a lot of popup plugins are expensive and require yearly licenses. It’s not that they aren’t worth it—a lot of the time, they are—but if you’re just starting out, you might not want to spend that kind of cash up front.

Instead, you can download WP Popup Plugin. It’s not the most beautiful plugin in the world, but it gets the job done quickly and (relatively) painlessly. You can easily adjust the text and link the form to your MailChimp account, and you can also tweak some basic colours. It’s not the best, but it does its job well and for the best possible price: nothing.

Your favs

Do you have a favourite plugin you think other small business owners should use on their WordPress sites? Share in the comments below.

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photo credit: 416style cc

2 Comments »

  1. Julia Roy wrote:

    Instead of WP Pop Plug I would recommend App Sumo’s List Builder WP Plugin http://sumome.com/#install. Lots of ways to customize and integrates with all the major email list services.

    Comment — March 29, 2014 @ 5:20 pm
  2. Dev wrote:

    +1, Julia. SumoMe is a fantastic new popup box plugin for WordPress.

    Comment — May 2, 2014 @ 2:47 am

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