If I had to set up a brand new WordPress site today, these are the 7 essential plugins I’d install before doing anything else. After running WordPress sites for years and testing countless plugins, I know exactly which ones are actually worth it — and which ones just bloat your site and slow everything down.
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WP Rocket
Site speed matters. A lot. Google uses it as a ranking factor, users bounce if your site takes more than a few seconds to load, and a slow site just feels unprofessional. Your site’s performance is the foundation of your business success.
WP Rocket is the best performance plugin available. Yes, it starts at $59 per year for one site, but it’s worth every penny. It handles page caching, cache preloading, GZIP compression, lazy loading, CSS and JavaScript minification, and database optimization — all without touching any code.
If you’re serious about your website as a business, not just a hobby, WP Rocket is a no-brainer investment.
Rank Math
If you want people to actually find your website, you need to optimize it for search engines. Rank Math gives you way more features in the free version than any other SEO plugin.
You get multiple focus keywords per post, schema markup (rich snippets) to help your content stand out in search results, and a 404 error monitor to catch broken links.
The Pro version includes an advanced schema generator with formats like FAQ, Dataset, Movie, and Podcast Episode, plus Content AI that analyzes your competitors’ top-ranking articles and suggests the right headings and keywords for your posts.
Imagify
Images are a huge factor that slows down websites. When you upload photos straight from your phone or camera, those files are several megabytes each. With 10-15 images on a blog post, your page will load painfully slow.
Imagify automatically compresses your images when you upload them to WordPress, reducing file size without sacrificing quality. It also works on images you’ve already uploaded, so you can optimize your entire media library with just a few clicks.
The free version gives you about 200 images per month. Paid plans start at just $5/mo for up to 5,000 images.
Start optimizing your images with Imagify →
BackWPup
This plugin might not make your site look cooler or get you more traffic, but it might save your entire business one day.
Imagine this: you update a plugin, something breaks, and suddenly your entire site is down. Or worse — it gets hacked and everything disappears. This happened to me more than once when I was starting out, and it’s absolutely devastating.
BackWPup creates a complete backup of your entire site — your database, files, plugins, theme, everything. You can set it to run automatically and save backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, or your computer.
It takes 5 minutes to set up, and then you never have to worry about it again. Don’t skip this one.
Hubbub
If you want people to share your content — and you definitely do, because that’s free traffic — you need to make it as easy as possible.
Hubbub adds social share buttons to your posts, so readers can share your content to Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or whatever platform you want with just one click.
Pinterest has consistently been my top traffic source, and a big part of that is because I make it ridiculously easy for people to share my content.
Pretty Links
If you’re doing any kind of affiliate marketing or just want to make your links look professional, you need this.
Instead of sharing ugly affiliate links like “amazon.com/dp/B08XYZ123?tag=youraffiliateID-20” — which looks spammy — you can create clean, branded links like “yoursite.com/recommends/camera.”
Pretty Links also gives you click tracking, so you can see which links are actually getting clicks and what your audience cares about. Plus, if you ever need to change an affiliate link, you update it once in Pretty Links, and it automatically updates everywhere on your site. No hunting through dozens of old blog posts.
Grow by Mediavine or Kit
Not building an email list from day one is one of the biggest mistakes beginners make. Social media platforms can change their algorithms overnight. Google can update and tank your rankings. But your email list is yours. Nobody can take that away.
Option 1: Grow by Mediavine — Completely free with pop-ups, inline forms, and slide-ins. Forms look modern and professional, and they integrate with most major email marketing platforms. Start building your email list with Grow by Mediavine →
Option 2: Kit (formerly ConvertKit) — Has its own form builder built right in. If you’re already using Kit for email marketing, this is the obvious choice. Their free plan lets you collect up to 10,000 emails — the highest free plan among email providers.
You can even create forms with Grow by Mediavine and connect them with your free Kit account for the best of both worlds.
Your email list is your most valuable asset. It’s how you build real relationships, drive traffic, and make money long-term. Try Kit here →
I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.