Scan of 140K Sites Reveals Best WordPress Plugins

Scan of 140K Sites Reveals Best WordPress Plugins

Wordpress plugins refer to a software component that enhances a website by adding specific features or functionalities. Plugins integrate with the WordPress core, enabling users to expand their site’s capabilities without writing custom code.

They can range from simple tools such as contact forms and SEO enhancements to complex solutions for e-commerce, security, and performance optimization. They are essential for customizing and optimizing a WordPress site to meet specific needs and preferences.

List of most popular plugins for SEO and performance :-

1. Schema.org Structured Data – Schema Pro 1.75%
2. XML Sitemap Generator for Google Plugin – 2.17%
3. Broken Link Checker – 3.27%
4. SEOPress – 4.81%
5. All in One SEO – 5.11%
6. Imagify – 11.62%
7. Rank Math – 18.32%
8. WP Rocket – 19.10%
9. Redirection – 26.85%
10. Yoast -57.95%

Schema.org Structured Data – Schema Pro

Adding structured data is important for SEO and for making it clear to search engines and AI what the content is about.

1.75% of the 140,000 sites scanned by Kinsta use a standalone Schema plugin.

Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP adds Google Rich Snippets markup according to Schema.org guidelines for structuring your site for SEO.

XML Sitemap Generator for Google Plugin

Generating XML and HTML sitemap for website with ease using the XML sitemap generator for Google, plugin enabling you to improve your SEO rankings by creating page, image, news, video, HTML, and RSS sitemaps.

Sitemaps enable search engines to crawl web pages efficiently and promptly. While only 2% of sites use it, likely because a basic version of functionality is native to the WordPress core.

The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress-generated pages as well as custom URLs

Broken Link Checker

Broken link checker monitors your WordPress site for broken links and missing images.

It enables you to fix them proactively and protect your SEO. It detects issues 20x faster and more accurately than other plugins, thanks to cloud-based link checking. They scan your pages, posts, comments and custom fields, spotting broken or redirected URLs and giving you a quick way to fix them all from one centralized dashboard.

Google Search Console offers a report of 404 errors discovered by Googlebot which indicates broken internal and external links.

SEOPress

SEOPress is a powerful WordPress SEO plugin to optimize your SEO, boost your traffic, improve social sharing, build custom HTML and XML Sitemaps, create optimized breadcrumbs, add schemas/Google Structured data types, manage 301 redirections, and so much more.

It is the seventh most popular plugin in the sample of 140 K sites that are hosted on Kinsta.

It is a fairly popular plugin with 300,000+ installations. All-in-one SEO plugin facilitating content optimization, schema implementation, and redirection management.

All in One SEO

All in One SEO is the most powerful and user-friendly WordPress SEO plugin in the market, due to features like AI assistant block, AI image generator, and AI search optimization (LLMs.text).

All in One SEO is the original WordPress SEO plugin started in 2007, and over 3 million website owners and SEO experts use SIOSEO for higher SEO rankings.

The sixth most popular plugin is highly popular online, with 3+ million installations. On Kinsta, it’s installed on 5.11% of sites in this sample.

Imagify

Imagify is the most advanced image optimization plugin to help you optimize images, and in fact, you can easily resize and compress images, and convert them to WebP and Avif.

Image optimization is simple and straightforward. The plugin lets you optimize images in one go with its asynchronous bulk optimization option.

It’s easy to use the best image compression plugin for better site performance. Speed up your WordPress site and improve Core Web Vitals thanks to Imagify’s state-of-the-art image optimization process.

Less than 12% of sites on Kinsta have installed it.

Rank Math

Rank Math is a Search Engine Optimization plugin for WordPress that makes it easy to optimize their content with built-in suggestions based on widely accepted best practices. It also enables users to customize important SEO settings easily.

With Rank Math, you can control which pages are indexable and how your website appears in search results.

Rank Math is a popular SEO plugin with over 3 million installations worldwide. It is not surprising to see that almost 20% of sites hosted on Kinsta use it.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is considered the best caching plugin for instantly boosting your website speed. It is a premium caching plugin that helps improve your website’s loading speed and search engine ranking, offering a variety of automated features like file optimization, improved lazy loading of images, and much more.

Its features include-

• Page caching
• Browser caching
• GZIP compression
• Cross-origin support for web fonts
• WooCommerce Refresh Cart Fragments Cache
• Optimise Google Fonts

WP Rocket is the #3 most popular plugin for performance optimization, demonstrating how important website performance is for publishers.

Redirection

Redirection is the most popular redirect manager for WordPress, with which you can easily manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This helps in reducing errors and improving site ranking.

Redirection is designed to be used on sites with a few redirects to sites with thousands of redirects.

Almost 27% users use the Redirection plugin, which can be handled in the built-in redirection manager tool in Kinsta’s dashboard.

Yoast

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin designed to help webmasters optimize their WordPress websites for search engines.

Since 2008, Yoast SEO has helped millions of websites worldwide improve their visibility and SEO performance.

Yoast SEO automatically handles much of your site’s technical SEO, freeing you to focus on your content.

Yoast SEO helps in maintaining your website’s SEO health:

• Cornerstone content tools to organize and prioritize key pages
• Front-end SEO inspector to view and edit titles, descriptions, and schema live
• SEO roles to delegate plugin access securely across teams
• Regular 2-week update cycle to ensure compatibility with the latest SEO standards and search engine changes

Yoast is a trusted brand, installed on over 10+ million websites. It is the most popular plugin installed on sites, according to the scan Kinsta performed on 140,000 sites.

Key Takeaways

SEO is a strong concern to WordPress users, with a combined total of 86.19% of users using an SEO plugin, and most users are satisfied with the built-in features of their SEO plugins. (small percentage of users installing structured data plugin (1.75%) or XML sitemap generator (2.17%))

Over 30% of managed WordPress host users in the surveyed sample are concerned enough about performance optimization for plugins. (WP Rocket 19.10% and Imagify 11.62%)

Over 30% of sites are evidenced that they are concerned about their sites working. (users install the Redirectional and Broken Links Checker plugins)

Trust and reliability, comprehensive functionality, and ease of use are important factors guiding the choice of WordPress plugins. This is estimated by the following findings:

• Yoast 57.95%
• WP Rocket 19.10%
• Rank Math 18.32%