Scan of 140K Sites Reveals Best WordPress Plugins

An analysis of 140,000 sites hosted on managed WordPress host Kinsta revealed the WordPress plugins that users judge to be the best. These findings highlight how publishers prioritize performance, SEO, and user experience.

10. Schema.org Structured Data – Schema Pro – 1.75%

Adding structured data is critical for SEO and in general for making it clear for search engines and AI what the content is about. Only 1.75% of the 140,000 sites scanned by Kinsta use a standalone Schema plugin. The reason may be that users are satisfied with the structured data functionalities offered by SEO Plugins.

The Schema Pro WordPress plugin offers a wider selection of structured data types than most SEO plugins and it also offers the capability to add custom structured data automatically across the entire site targeted to specific kinds of posts or at the individual page level.

9. XML Sitemap Generator for Google Plugin – 2.17%

Sitemaps are helpful for encouraging search engines to crawl web pages efficiently in a timely manner. But only 2% of sites use it, likely because a basic version of this functionality is native to the WordPress core and it’s provided by all WordPress SEO Plugins.

Like the dedicated Schema Pro Structured Data plugin, the XML Sitemap Generator for Google Plugin offers greater flexibility than built-in XML site generators found in most SEO plugins but with only 2.17% use it’s clear that SEO plugins are a perfect fit for most WordPress users. The advantage of using Schema Pro Structured Data plugin is that it offers greater flexibility but that might be just for edge cases.

8. Broken Link Checker – 3.27%

The Broken Link Checker is a plugin that checks for broken links but is not commonly used in this sample of sites. Google Search Console offers a report of 404 errors discovered by Googlebot which indicates broken internal and external links. The broken link check can also be accomplished with a software app like Screaming Frog.

The Broken Link Checker plugin offers a cloud-based scanner and a local checker that uses website server resources to monitor the entire website for broken links.

7. SEOPress – 4.81%

SEOPress is the seventh most popular plugin in the sample of 140,000 sites that are hosted on Kinsta. It’s a fairly popular plugin with 300,000+ installations. all-in-one SEO plugin that facilitates content optimization, schema implementation, and redirection management.

6. All in One SEO – 5.11%

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.

5. Imagify – 11.62%

Imagify is am image optimizer that reduces image file sizes to improve website loading time. The popularity of these kinds of plugins may reflect the lack of image optimizing skills of the average WordPress user as it’s an easy thing to optimize an image before uploading it. Less than 12% of sites on Kinsta have installed it.

4. Rank Math – 18.32%

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

3. WP Rocket – 19.10%

The #3 most popular plugin is for performance optimization, demonstrating how important website performance is for publishers. WP Rocket performs file minification (makes code smaller but removing blank spaces), lazy loading and database optimization. WP Rocket made their plugin compatible with Kinsta so that caching is handled at the server level by Kinsta instead of at the PHP level by the plugin. Handling caching at the server level is faster and uses less server resources. Caching at the server level is one of the benefits of a managed WordPress server.

2. Redirection – 26.85%

The Redirection plugin is used by almost 27% of users, which is curious because redirection is something that can be handled in the built-in redirection manager tool in Kinsta’s dashboard. I use the Redirection plugin on some of my sites and it does a lot more than redirects. The plugin features 404 error reporting which alerts users to a problem like a typo in the URL of an external or internal link, which can be fixed by redirecting the typo to the correct URL. The plugin can also set security headers, which is useful for strengthening site security.

1. Yoast – 57.95%

Yoast is the most popular plugin installed on sites according to the scan Kinsta performed on 140,000 sites. In a way it’s not surprising because Yoast is installed on over 10+ million websites and is a trusted brand.

Takeaways:

The choice of plugins suggest what concerns WordPress users the most,  SEO, website performance, and proper site functioning.

Search Optimization

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

Website Performance

Over 30% of managed WordPress host users in the surveyed sample of 140,000 sites are concerned enough about performance optimization to install plugins (WP Rocket 19.10% and Imagify 11.62%).

Site Health Maintenance

Over 30% of sites are concerned that their sites are working properly, as evidenced by the amount of users that install the Redirection and Broken Link Checker plugins.

Brand Trustworthiness

Over 95% of WordPress users turn to a name brand plugin:

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

These findings suggest that trust and reliability, comprehensive functionality, and ease of use are important factors guiding the choice of WordPress plugins. It’s possible that trustworthy word of mouth recommendations and brand awareness also play a role in plugin choices.

Notable in this survey of plugins that users consider the best is that security plugins did not make the list. This is likely because Kinsta provides built-in WordPress security, including two firewalls and enterprise-level DDoS protection.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero