With almost every activity and business running on virtual machines, it’s about time you get on the wheel and launch your HVAC company site. With a website, you’re not only able to showcase your services and expertise but also attract clients and offer consultation remotely.
Creating a website can be done using several platforms; however, the best platform is WordPress, which is easy to use with drag and drop features. This means that you don’t need to learn to code to get your site up and running. Another great WordPress feature is its vast number of plugins that make it easy to optimize your website’s design and functionality on just a few clicks.
These software applications run on top of the WordPress software enabling extra features, depending on the nature of your business. Plugins help you create a great user experience for your potential customers.
From free to paid plugins, we’ve compiled a list of the best WordPress Plugins for HVAC sites in 2021. Read on to find out what will work best for you.
SEO Plugins
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a web page, making it high-ranking on search engines- most commonly on Google. Google has an algorithm that determines the ranking of search results. Although only Google knows which factors they use to rank websites and pages, SEO plugins use collective knowledge to put your website on top of that list.
According to content marketing expert Jen Barrell, high-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search. Here are some of the best SEO plugins that can help you achieve this on WordPress:
1. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a free WordPress plugin that enables you to gain more visitors from search engines to your website. It is a viral plugin used for the optimization of metadata and sitemap creation.
Yoast SEO takes full control over your site’s breadcrumbs and sets canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content. It uses readability and SEO analysis to ensure that you only produce quality content for both visitors and search engines.
2. GAinWP Google Analytics Integration for WordPress
This free plugin integrates two major features into your website – Google Analytics tracking and dashboard reporting. GAinWP also combines goal setup and reporting, and it does so within minutes.
GainWP gives you custom dimensions to track authors, publication dates, tags, and even user engagement. It gives you detailed page reports and post reports in addition to general Google Analytics statistics.
3. Autoptimize
One of the factors that Google uses to rank web pages is page speed. Autoptimize helps with page speed optimization by caching the page. This optimization can even improve your site performance when already on HTTP/2!
When your site loads faster, you have a better chance at rank high on Google. Use this free plugin to give you better page speed.
4. Smush
Smush specializes in optimizing your images turn on lazy load, compressing, resizing, and improving your Google Page Speed. You get it for free, and your pictures get compressed while visibly retaining their quality.
Smush is ideal for detecting incorrect size images, deferring offscreen photos, and is compatible with various themes, builders, and media library plugins.
5. Site Kit by Google
Site Kit is a free plugin made by Google, which collects and shares information with you about how people find your website. In a nutshell, it helps you know what content your users want to see. It gives you access to authoritative, updated insights from multiple Google products directly on the WordPress dashboard.
Site Kit is easy to manage, easy to understand and has a quick setup. In short, this WordPress plugin helps you know what content your users want to see.
SEO plugins are an essential tool to ensure that your HVAC website gains popularity among the right audience. You may want to watch this video to get a better understanding of how SEO works.
Security Plugins
WordPress security plugins add an extra layer of security onto WordPress websites. Hackers take advantage of vulnerabilities in a website, so you’ll need to keep your WordPress updated and secure.
Small Business Trends reports that 43% of cyber attacks target small businesses. Here are some security plugins you can install on your WordPress HVAC website that will protect you from such attacks:
1. Wordfence Security – Firewall & Malware Scan
Wordfence is a free WordPress security plugin that helps protect your website from security threats such as hacking, malware, and brute force attacks. It comes with a Threat Defense Feed, which is continuously updated to keep your site secure.
Wordfence blocks malicious traffic and limits login attempts to protect your site from brute force attacks. With this plugin, you can monitor visits and hack attempts that don’t appear in other analytics packages in real-time.
2. UpdraftPlus
For manual and automatic scheduled web site backup, this is the plugin for you. UpdraftPlus is free and is the most popular scheduled backup plugin, whose main job is to simplify backup and restoration.
With this plugin, you get a complete backup of your WordPress site. The information is either stored on the cloud or downloaded to your computer. If anything ever happens to your website, at least you have a backup to fall on. Don’t ever underestimate the importance of a great backup system.
3. WP Security Audit Log
WordPress Security Audit Log is another free WordPress plugin, whose job is to monitor user activity on your site. You can view all user IP addresses, logins, and what they were doing on your website. It lets you ease troubleshooting, ensures user productivity, and spot suspicious behavior before you get any security problems.
WordPress security plugins protect your site from malicious activity and, most importantly, help you keep on top of security threats before they happen.
Contact Form Plugins
Do you need an easy way for customers to contact you while avoiding spam? WordPress contact form plugins help you do just that. Contact forms allow you to interact with your customers, with options to update the form depending on the user’s response.
The WordPress contact form plugin we would recommend for an HVAC website is:
1. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms specialize in helping developers build complex form-related solutions.
It is a paid WordPress form plugin that allows you to configure your options, select your fields, and embed forms on your site. This plugin helps you avoid filtering through thousands of spam messages.
Gravity Forms will save you a lot of time and energy, which you would otherwise spend on growing your business.
Email Marketing Plugin
Have you been wondering how you’ll be able to send emails and newsletters to your HVAC clients? This type of plugin works to send out emails and increase your overall number of subscribers. It is the easiest way you can get your advertisements and promotions through to individual clients.
According to a study carried out by McKinsey & Co., marketing done by email is up to 40 times more effective than social media. Have a look at this particular WordPress marketing plugin:
1. MailChimp Newsletter
Mailchimp is a plugin that allows you to send out emails to up to 2000 subscribers. It can either create a form or integrate with any existing form on your sites, such as a contact or check-out form. This plugin is free and can easily give your company a little boost in sales.
Let email marketing work as your most exceptional salesperson.
Miscellaneous Plugins
These are a few WordPress plugins that we thought could give you extra perks during your WordPress experience. They are useful for interaction with your customers and relevant in getting feedback about your HVAC products.
1. LiveChat
LiveChat is a paid plugin that leads the industry in live chat software. It’s straightforward to install and set up their plugin for your WordPress site.
Additionally, you get a beautifully designed live chat support app that you and your agents can use on your devices. That means you can chat with customers while on the go, without having to log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Testimonials Rotator
Testimonial Rotator allows you to create a testimonial carousel and add rotating testimonials anywhere on your website. This WordPress plugin gives you the option to manually enter customer information such as feedback, job title, and photos. The best part is that you get all this for free.
Conclusion
From this article, you’ve learned about the types of plugins that can help you kick-start a great website. You will need all the resources you can get to improve yours and your customers’ experiences on your site. Using these plugins for an HVAC site, you will have an easier time following up on clients while keeping your website secure and working for you.
What is your priority for your WordPress site? Is it security, traffic, user experience? List them down and start small until you eventually build an HVAC site, which works best for you.
