I am a big fan of WordPress, primarily for it’s search engine performance. I have been ranked to #1 or #2 for some select search terms relatively quickly (less than 1 month), and I can usually find a new blog post indexed within a couple of hours. Here are my favorite WordPress plugins, and feel free to vote for your favorite at the end:
1. All in One SEO Pack – this is a great plugin that will help manage all of your SEO automatically. Each time you post a new blog it will attach a title tag, meta description and keywords per the settings that you determine.
2. Google XML Sitemaps – this is a nice way to keep Google automatically informed of any updates you make to the site. XML is the protocol Google prefers to get updates, and you can monitor your sitemaps using Webmaster Central. While this won’t directly affect your search results, it will give the crawlers an efficient way to gather information from your site.
3. Redirection – this plugin will take care of all your 404 issues and properly redirect them to existing pages. This can happen if you go back and change your slug on a a page or blog post. Google Webmaster Central also has a utility to detect your 404′s. This one will only work for WP 2.7.
4. Tweet This – one of my favorite plugins, where it will include a Tweet This, Ping This, Digg This or Plurk This button (various styles) at the bottom of your post. Not sure why they chose Plurk over Stumble, but the new release has nice Apple-ish buttons and more control over where you want the buttons shown.
5. WPtouch – my new favorite plugin which re-draws your blog layout fit for an iTouch or iPhone. I love the simple layout and ease of navigation. Really simple to install.
6. AddToAny – this plugin will incorporate a dropdown of all social media links. Works similar to Share This, but the button itself has more recognizeable bookmarks that folks are familiar with.
7. Math Comment Spam – an additional filter to Akismet, this plugin will add a field to submit a comment that will be “2 + 4 = ” and the person submitting will simply need to enter the answer. This plus Akismet, and I have gotten zero spam so far.
Based on these plugins, which one is your favorite?
