12 Best Wordpress Plugins

Hi Guys,

Following on from the last 2 days videos about setting up and customizing your wordpress blog. I've got some recommendations for plugins. You don't have to install these if you find that part complicated, but for those of  you who are familiar with how easy it is to do (and there are instructions on each website that I list), these are fantastic!

Here's my top 12. I invite you to comment on them or whether or not you have others that you recommend:

Adsense-Deluxe
http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/
Part of Google Adsense's terms of service is that you do not display more than 3 sets of Google Adsense ads on each page. Adsense-Deluxe allos you to place google ads as part of your template or in your posts, while ensuring you don't break Google's 3 ads rule.

Google Sitemaps
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/
By having a Google Sitemap, you'll be able to keep your blog as up to date in Google as possible. This Google Sitemaps plugin will create a sitemap of your wp blog that is Google compliant.

Feedburner Feed Replacement
http://orderedlist.com/articles/wordpress_feedburner_plugin/
This useful plugin forwards your feed traffic to feedburner.com. That way you can use their many cutting-edge features for subscriber analysis and feed presentation.

Gravatar
http://en.gravatar.com/
I just found this one today, it's a great service which shows up custom items associated with various email addresses of users who post comments on your blog. It's another way of adding more personality and splice to your blog.

Head META Description
http://guff.szub.net/2005/09/01/head-meta-description/
Many search engines, such as Google, display your description meta data in their search results. The problem is, wordpress usually uses the exact same meta data for each and every page on your website. By installing this plugin, you'll ensure that you ahve a dynamic description meta tag for every entry you put into your blog, which is automatically generated based on the page content.
 
Optimal Title
http://elasticdog.com/2004/09/optimal-title/
This is very essential for SEO purposes as it lets you put the title of your blog posts before the blog title, rather than after your blog's name.

All in One SEO Pack
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Some features:
* Automatically helps you to avoids duplicate content found on most typical Wordpress blogs
* Optimizes your titles for search engines automatically
* You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
* Automatically generates META tags
* Allows you to fine tune anything you want.
* It is backwards-compatibile with a lot of other plugins, such as ultimate tage warrior, auto meta and many others.

Related Posts
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-23-related-posts-plugin/
This is a great way of getting your readers to read more of your blog posts because it automatically displays related posts that you have made.

Permalink Redirect
http://scott.yang.id.au/code/permalink-redirect/
One of the frustrating things when you check through your stats is that wordpress urls with a trailing slash are the same as ones that aren't, yet show up as separate pages. It's also frustrating from an SEO perspective as many search engines treat these as separate pages. Luckily there's Permanent Redirect, which issues a 301 (permanently moved) redirect if anyone accesses your page via the non-permalink web address. This will help you from an SEO perspective and keep your stats clean.

Ultimate Tag Warrior
http://www.neato.co.nz/ultimate-tag-warrior/
Tags are one of the most interesting things that Web 2.0 has brought to the internet. Thanks to Ultimate Tag Warrior, you can join in on this and tag your posts. The main reason for tagging is that it assists in narrowing down for others what the post is about and it provides and easy way of getting around your site. It also give Technorati a great idea of what your post is about so that it can index it correctly. Technorati is another great place for driving traffic to your website, hence this is an essential tool.

Akismet
http://akismet.com/
Spam has got to be one of the most frustrating parts of owning a wordpress blog. It seems like the moment you've set up your blog, you start getting incoming spam comments. That's why you need to install the Akismet plugin, which eliminates a LOT of your comment spam problems.

WPCron for wordpress backups
http://skippy.net/plugin-wp-cron
Wordpress Database backup is included by default in editions 2.0 and above. However the plugin is much more useful if you also install WP Cron because it'll automate the backup process for you. This is a more advanced plugin and not necessary for newbie/intermediates who might find it tricky to set up.

I hope that you've gained a lot of value from this blog post. Please post your comments and suggestions for other great plugins.

All the best!

Mark

P.S Reminder: On Sunday Night at 6pm EST I’ll be running a LIVE teleseminar with 2 of the world’s best blogging experts. It promises to be packed full of great value and you’ll also get to ask questions live on the call, so be there if you want to discover web 2.0 blog traffic strategies, monetization strategies and much more! I will post the audio version of this call on this blog soon after it is released.

Here are the teleseminar event details: http://www.instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=2702478 (Tip: Set your alarm on your phone to remind yourself!)