159. The 5 WordPress Plugins I Put on ALL my Sites

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You know that feeling when you open your WordPress dashboard and see a plugin list a mile long—some you don’t even remember installing? I’ve been there too. But after managing a dozen WordPress sites for my own business, I’ve figured out exactly which plugins are worth using and which ones just slow things down. In this episode, I’m sharing the five plugins I always install and why they’re non-negotiable for things like security, SEO, performance, and overall peace of mind.

These tools are doing some serious behind-the-scenes work, from protecting your site from hacks to improving your search rankings and speeding up your pages. I’m also sharing my favorite drag-and-drop builder, why image compression matters more than you think, and the plugin I built myself to make daily backups and updates effortless. And if keeping up with all of this sounds like one more thing on your already-full plate, don’t worry, my WordPress Care Plan covers it all, with a team that’s got your back 24/7!

Links & Resources:

• WordPress Care Plan
• RankMath
• Imagify
• Solid Security
• Elementor
• Episode 104, 11 Best WooCommerce Plugins: What to Install and What to Skip
• Episode 141, Website Spring Cleaning: Improve Website Performance, Security, and Sales in 30 Minutes
• Follow me on Instagram @kristendoyle.co 
• Check out my Everything Page: a one-stop shop for savvy selling!
• The Savvy Seller Collective
• Join my private Facebook community: Savvy Teacher Sellers
• More resources for growing your TPT business
• Rate & review The Savvy Teacher Seller on Apple Podcasts

Show Notes: https://kristendoyle.co/episode159 

Feeling overwhelmed by all the things you think you need to do to grow your digital product business? Take the Savvy Seller Quiz and find out exactly what to focus on right now to actually move your business forward. 

 ➡️ Take the quiz at savvyquiz.com

Check out my Everything Page at https://kristendoyle.co/everything

Episode Transcript

Kristen (00:01):
If you have a WordPress site, I bet you love a good
plugin as much as I do, but Iknow sometimes it can be a
little overwhelming to figureout which ones you really need
and which ones you don't.
Plugins are awesome forexpanding the functions that are
on your WordPress site, fordoing things like giving you
security and improving yourperformance and all kinds of
those things. But it isimportant to only use the right

(00:23):
ones and not just add tons ofrandom plugins to your site if
you don't have a really goodreason to have them on there.
It might or might not surpriseyou to hear that I actually have
about 12 WordPress sites for mybusiness. Now, if you know me
personally, you're probablythinking, yeah, that checks out.

(00:44):
That sounds about right. If youdon't, that might sound crazy,
but remember, I'm a webdesigner, and I have coaching
and template sites and all ofthose things. So I do actually
have about a dozen WordPresssites for my business, and
across all of them, there arefive plugins that I always
install. So today I'm going toshare exactly which plugins make

(01:07):
the cut and why they are soimportant for handling
everything from SEO to securityto backups and performance.
Are you a digital product orcourse creator, selling on
platforms like Teachers PayTeachers, Etsy, or your own
website? Ready to grow yourbusiness, but not into the kind
of constant hustle that leadsstraight to burnout? Then you're

(01:30):
in the right place. Welcome toThe Savvy Seller. I'm Kristen
Doyle, and I'm here to give youno-fluff tools and strategies
that move the needle for yourbusiness without burning you out
in the process—things like SEO,no stress marketing, email list
building, automations, and somuch more. Let's get started,

(01:51):
y'all.
So these five plugins are mymust haves, because they handle
some really important things onyour website, but they don't add
a lot of extra bloat. One issuewith adding too many plugins is
that your site can getoverloaded and it can start to

(02:12):
have some performance issues, oreven plugin conflict issues
because you have too manyplugins installed. So these are
some that are nice andlightweight, and they do a great
job of their core function.
secondto help you make sure that
Alright, the first plugin that Ialways install is called Solid
Security. Now, if you do nothave a security plugin on your

(02:33):
site, you need one. Absolutelyhands down need a security
plugin. Solid Security is greatbecause it provides built in
firewalls, it prevents hacks andalso brute force attacks. Brute
force attacks are when bots areattacking your website just with
tons and tons of traffic orlogin requests and those sorts

(02:54):
of things, and they do that inorder to get the site to go
down. And Solid Security canhelp to prevent that, as well as
actual hacking attempts.
Another thing I love about SolidSecurity over some of the other
security plugins out there is itactually has some tools inside
to help you fix some reallycommon security vulnerabilities.
Things like, if your useraccount for you, the admin, the

(03:19):
main admin on your site is usernumber one, that is a hidden
vulnerability that hackers canexploit in order to get into
your site. And if you think thatyour site isn't going to be
hacked because it's so small, oryou know, who would ever want to
hack my site, keep in mind thatWordPress is the single most

(03:39):
popular website platform, whichmeans it is also the most
frequently hacked, or at leastmost frequently attempted to be
hacked.
So you really need to make sureyou've got a good security
plugin in place, and that you'refixing some of those
vulnerabilities, like havinguser one as an admin account on
the site, and Solid Security cancomplicated. So that's another

(04:09):
reason that I really love it.
you're doing the right things inorder to rank higher in search.
It helps you with things likeoptimizing your page titles,
adding meta descriptions,counting and checking your

(04:31):
keyword density on your posts.
And it also includes built inschema markup. Schema markup is
just fancy language for thisspecifically structured data
that helps search engines tounderstand your content.
So for example, a blog postwould have one type of data,
whereas a product would havedifferent types of data. A

(04:53):
product is going to have aprice. It's going to have
images, maybe even amanufacturer, depending on what
type of product we're talkingabout. And so schema markup just
provides the right type of datafor the different types of
content that are on your site.
Rank Math also includes built inredirect functionality, which
means you don't need an extratool like pretty links or

(05:14):
redirections in order to createthose link redirects that you're
probably already using. Ireally, really recommend Rank
Math over Yoast or All In OneSEO, because it gives you those
extra features and it's not asbloated as some of the others,
especially if you go in on RankMath and you toggle off the
modules you're not activelyusing. It can make it really

(05:38):
lightweight and keep fromslowing down your site.
Now, personally, I use andrecommend Rank Math Pro. I
include it in my care plans formy maintenance plan clients. But
even the free version of RankMath is better than the free
versions of Yoast or All In OneSEO. I would almost even argue
that the free Rank Math isbetter than the paid version of

(05:58):
Yoast.
Alright, plugin number three,this one is one plugin that can
help with your site speed alittle bit. And this one is
called Imageify. What it does isit automatically compresses your
images as you upload them, andit does that in a way that
doesn't reduce or diminish thequality of the image itself. So

(06:21):
your graphics that have text onthem, all of your photos, those
things will still have nice,sharp images and graphics on
your site, but the file sizeitself gets compressed.
Now, one little caveat with thisone, that doesn't mean export
giant files from Canva andupload them, because, you know,
you have Imageify and it willcompress. It's going to compress

(06:43):
the data within the file. But ifyou are downloading a 5000 by
5000 pixel file when you reallyonly need maybe 800 pixels wide
for a blog post image, then youstill have an image that is much
bigger than it needs to be. Soyou want to do the right size
when you export your images andthen also add this extra layer

(07:03):
of compressing the file itselfthrough Imageify.
One thing that makes Imageify amust have for me is that it
helps to improve page load time,and that's good for SEO, but
also just for user experience.
Nobody wants to sit around whilethey wait for images to load. I
love that Imageify has kind of aset it and forget it function.
So you install it, you activateit. It is paid, so you add your

(07:25):
API key and then it runsautomatically for you. With
those paid plans, you can alsobulk optimize all your old
images that you already had onthe site before you added
Imageify. This is another onethat I include in my care plan
for people who are on those, soif you're on a care plan and you
don't have Imagify, just let meknow, and I'll be glad to add it

(07:45):
for you.
Plugin number four is Elementor.
This is my go to drag and droppage builder. It helps me to
create gorgeous layouts and doit really easily and quickly
without having to type a bunchof code. Could I do it with
code? Absolutely. Do I want to?
No, I don't. So Elementor isgreat because it makes it really

(08:09):
easy for you to edit your owncontent. And I pick Elementor
over some of the other pagebuilders because I find that it
loads a good bit faster and itjust feels less clunky in
general than some of the otherbuilders, like Divi or Beaver
Builder.
An important warning aboutElementor, though. Don't use
Elementor for your blog posts,just stick to the regular

(08:31):
WordPress block editor. Somepeople call that the Gutenberg
editor. That is going to beimportant for you, just in case
you ever need to switch pagebuilders, it'll help you to
avoid formatting issues andhaving to redo, you know, maybe
hundreds of blog posts.
Another thing to keep in mindwith Elementor is, while I love
the freedom it gives you and theability to build really complex

(08:54):
pages easily, if you are not adesigner and you don't
understand what you're doing,it's really easy for people to
add tons of extra code blocks,extra containers or spacers to
your pages that you're creating.
So if at all possible, use sometemplates from some people who
do know how to build those pagesthe right way and customize

(09:16):
those rather than starting fromscratch. That'll help make sure
that you're not bloating thosepages the same way we talked
about how you can toggle offmodules in Rank Math to reduce
the bloat on your site. You wantto make sure even the pages you
build on Elementor have as fewcontainers and elements and
things as possible.
Alright, my fifth must haveplugin that I put on all of my

(09:40):
sites is actually my KD careplan plugin. This is my plugin
that allows me to automaticallybackup sites once a day. It is
monitoring my websites 24/7 forsecurity issues and downtime.
And yes, I did say security,even though I also use Solid
Security, I like having both ofthose on there. Solid security

(10:03):
is running once a day scans, butmy plugin is also just
monitoring 24/7 for any issuesthat pop up. So it's two layers
of security, and I think that'sjust so important.
It's also watching for downtime,meaning if my site goes down and
is not accessible, it will letme know. And it gives me the
ability to do safe plugin andtheme updates, where I can

(10:25):
easily roll back if somethinggoes wrong. And it really just
gives me such peace of mind,knowing that is there and that I
always, always, always havethose backups.
Now, even if you're not on mycare plan so you don't have this
plugin installed on your site,running your backups, you do
need to make sure that you havesomething that is backing up
your site every single day,because you cannot rely on the

(10:46):
ones from your web host, becauseif your site gets hacked, those
backups from your web host canbe one of the first things to go
sometimes.
Alright, so your action step forthis episode is go take a peek
at your plugin list right now.
If you have tons of plugins onyour site, maybe look through it
and see what you really do stillneed to have. I would say to aim

(11:08):
for under 20 plugins for awebsite without e-commerce shops
like WooCommerce or Easy DigitalDownloads or something like
that. And if you do have a shop,then I would still say, try to
stay under 25 or 30 plugins onyour site. I have seen as much
as 50, 60, or even more pluginson certain websites. And let me

(11:31):
just tell you, the more pluginsthat you have, the more problems
they can cause.
So go through and make sure youdon't have plugins on your site
that you don't actually use orneed anymore. Too many plugins
can cause some problems, likeslowing your site down, and they
can cause conflicts, becausesometimes plugin A doesn't play

(11:51):
nicely with plugin B. And if youhave 50 or 60 plugins on your
site, it can get really hard tofigure out which two plugins are
having the problem. Not tomention, the more plugins you
have, the more updates you needto make, the more potential
there is for trouble to come up.
Keep in mind, keeping yourplugin list short isn't just

(12:12):
about having a clean and a shortlist. It really is about
protecting your business, makingyour life easier in the long
run. But these five plugins willgive you some really great
security, SEO performance andsome peace of mind. So if you do
not have these plugins on yoursite, go and get those and then

(12:32):
take a peek at the rest and makesure you've done a little plugin
cleanup.
Now, if managing all of thisyourself sounds like one more
thing on your already fullplate, or you know you've been
ignoring your plugins and notupdating them, I would love to
help you with that. My WP careplan includes all of the paid
plugins that I talked abouttoday, as well as some others,
and my team and I handle allyour updates safely. We monitor

(12:56):
your site 24/7. In fact, a lotof times we fix the problems and
then let you know that theyexisted so you don't even
realize a problem has come upuntil we've already solved it
for you.
The team and I also update yourplugins and your website every
single week, and personally takea look at your site so you know
that someone is putting theireyes on your website to make

(13:17):
sure that everything looks good.
Now if you want that kind ofpeace of mind, you can shoot me
a DM on [e-mail] or you can
check out the link in the shownotes to learn more about the
care plan. Thank you so much forlistening today, and I'll talk
to you soon.