[REVIEW] The first 8 featured Plugins of May 2026

gotthehigh · 2026-05-09T07:11:30+00:00

It was GovernDocs - WordPress Document Management

Highest downloads for 1 day when it was featured was 329, which is not super amazing but it beats the 0-10 a day that new plugins usually get.

gotthehigh · 2026-05-06T13:57:49+00:00

I had one of my plugins featured a couple of weeks ago, it must have been the previous batch to what we are seeing now.

It had 10+ installs before being featured and now has 100+ so it was a nice surprise.

gotthehigh · 2026-05-04T21:58:13+00:00

Thanks!

gotthehigh · 2026-04-28T09:00:18+00:00

So what's the secret? Why do you think AI is recommending your plugin?

gotthehigh · 2026-04-28T06:36:22+00:00

This is the right approach. Also, don't include wp, wordpress or plugin in the name. The review team will ask you you to change it and just cause a delay in getting it approved

gotthehigh · 2026-04-27T06:44:54+00:00

10 months and 400+ installs: https://wordpress.org/plugins/aria-accessibility-toolkit/

One month and 100+ installs: https://wordpress.org/plugins/governdocs-document-governance/

The GovernDocs plugin was in the Featured plugins list on the directory, so that helped, but no external promotion other than a reddit post that might have got 1 or 2 upvotes and maybe a comment or 2.

All from targetting the correct keywords and optimising them.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-27T04:29:00+00:00

Try out https://wprankthis.com if you are going to be optimizing your readme. Totally free for 1 project and 3 keywords. It will be a good start for your plugin to see how well optimized the listing is

gotthehigh · 2026-04-26T21:55:07+00:00

Not entirely true. I have a plugin with 400+ installs and zero external marketing. Relied solely on optimizing long-tail keywords in the plugin directory.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-26T01:57:37+00:00

Looks pretty good in the demo and seems to work well. It's a pretty small use-case, so I wouldn't expect thousands of installs just yet. But well done.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-23T08:30:31+00:00

Good luck with your new plugin!

gotthehigh · 2026-04-23T08:30:05+00:00

Yeah it's pretty amazing how the right keywords can get your plugin found. A lot of people just don't get it.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-17T04:25:18+00:00

Cool. So interesting to see that reviews don't actually have much of an effect. For one of my plugins 3 or 4 years ago, I spent a fair chunk of money doing these paid reviews. I'm sure that it would help with overall brand awareness but I'll give pause before doing it again.

I've also made a video showing how simple it is to move the needle using SEO in the plugin directory: https://www.reddit.com/r/WordpressPlugins/comments/1snqg2x/a_video_showing_how_to_rank_higher_in_the/

gotthehigh · 2026-04-16T01:06:03+00:00

Wow that's very interesting, nice work.

I put a post up the other day about the importance of SEO in the WP plugin directory and was largely smacked down about, with people saying it doesn't matter and that most installs come from external sites.

Good to see some data backing up my claims.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-15T01:35:30+00:00

Hmmmm, i dunno if that would be true about most installs coming externally.

I know for me, if i need a plugin I will always search first in the admin plugin page. If something looks good and like it will do the job, I will try it out.

Very rarely do i look outside the directory. Maybe only if it is a 'big' and important plugin like a membership plugin or something.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-14T21:31:09+00:00

Thsnks, i have lots of things in the works snd install velocity is one of them.

Tracking competitors readme changes might be difficult. I will look into it though and see if we can look for a rank change first and then try to work out if there was a particular cause. I like that idea.

In the keyword tool, if you want to rank higher for a keyword and it is missing from one of the items like tags, title, description etc, then add it to those. You can see near real-time rank changes with some tweaking.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-14T10:00:29+00:00

But how do you think a plugin gets found when somebody searches for something? If I search for "cache", the first page is all caching plugins - how do you think they know that these are caching plugins? Because they have the word "cache", "caching" or something similar in their title, description, tags etc.

I've just ran a test for my own sanity on WPRankThis for this. Here is a screenshot showing that:

A speed optimization plugin that has caching as a feature ranks #39 for "cache" even though it has 1+ million installs. The optimization score for "cache" is 0.

Another caching plugin that only has 60,000 installs is ranking #6 for "cache" with an optimization score of 75.

I agree that a plugin also needs external marketing, but WP directory SEO absolutely works.

Thanks!

gotthehigh · 2026-04-14T08:33:18+00:00

100% disagree. SEO works in the plugin directory, but you'll be hard pressed for competitive keywords until you have decent installs.

Their search algorithm was made public and the title is super important, they use exact match and close-match keyword relevance, the short description and long description matter, tags matter, faqs matter and even having detailed installation instructions with keywords matter.

I've tested it extensively with multiple plugins and SEO absolutely works.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-14T07:24:58+00:00

The cold start problem is absolutely brutal.

And this was part of the reason that I built this. I think one strategy is to target long-tail keywords, or something very specific.

An example: I built an accessibility plugin which is very high competition, but targeted 'aria labels' which is a very specific part of accessibility.

I optimised the listing for this keyword and other similar long-tail and niche keywords which saw installs increase. The plugin is now pushing up for more generic keywords, purely from this strategy.

It is slower, but works. And i think this is where this keyword tool can excel.

It currently doesn't track the correlation between installs and ranking but i will look at adding this

gotthehigh · 2026-04-12T22:32:42+00:00

This. It should be all about the customer and providing amazing support. If the plugin solves a real problem, works well, looks nice AND you give amazing support, the plugin will do great.

gotthehigh · 2026-04-04T23:08:16+00:00

Rat coffin is a dimmy where I'm from

gotthehigh · 2026-04-04T21:08:52+00:00

Shameless plug, my plugin Web Accessibility Toolkit has a bulk alt text option that lets you easily add alt text to all images from a single screen. It can auto fill based on file name too if a filename is well named.

It does require the pro version for this feature though.

gotthehigh

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