15 Best SEO Plug-ins for WordPress Blogs

Which plug-ins should you be using on your blogs?  Which plug-ins will help if you really want to be effective from an SEO or Search Engine Optimization standpoint?

If you are using your blog for Internet marketing or as a CMS (Content Management System) website then you’re definitely going to want to add some effective plug-ins.

When writing Posts for SEO, here are the 3 most important things that you should do:

1. Look up keyword phrases Recently my favorite tool to look-up keyword phrases has become Google’s since they added the number of searches last month:

http://www.reallifepurpose.com/googlekeywordtool

Here are some more tools for looking up keywords and phrases:

a. The SEO tool would be #2 on this. SEO Book Keyword suggestion Tool
b. Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool (Affiliate link)
c. I also would count in the ability to find out what other sites are using for their keywords, which would take a subscription to a site such as http://www.spyfu.com

2. Put the Keyword phrases in your Title

3. Write on the subject using your keywords.

Here are the top 15 (plus some) Search Engine Optimization plug-ins for WordPress in random order

After some extensive searching and trying out different plug-ins I came up with this list of the top 15 Best plug ins. I also consulted with Coach Terry Dean who has a high page rank on his blog. I gleaned from His monthly Mentor Club which is excellent and His Internet Lifestyle System, which can be found at http://www.InternetLifestyleSuccess.com.

1. Google Analyticator

Google offers a free service called Google Analytics. This SEO plugin adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics. You definitely want to track what is going on at your website.  This plugin will help you to get up and going without having to install the code in the html portion of your blog.

This plug-in is not a necessity. There is an easier solution if you know any HTML- Simply add the Google Analytics code to the bottom HTML or footer of your theme.

Find some more helpful links for WordPress plug-ins by categories: tracking,  analytics,  google, stats

2. Google XML Sitemaps

This plug-in will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. When you create or edit a post your sitemap is automatically updated and all the major search engines (Google, MSN search, Yahoo) are notified about the new entry. Google loves sitemaps and this plug-in is an absolute necessity.

Find some more helpful links for WordPress plug-ins by categories: xml, xml sitemap, Live, Ask, msn, yahoo, google sitemaps, sitemaps, google

3. All in One SEO Pack

Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines. This is why its called the SEO Pack.(Search Engine Optimization).This plugin will help you to control factors such as Titles, Descriptions, Keywords, and Duplicate Content. There’s not much more to say. You definitely need it, especially if you don’t have a premium theme like the Thesis theme I’m using on this blog which optimizes my titles, descriptions and keywords for me.

Be sure to check out: WP Security Scan and search engine optimization plugin title meta description, meta keywords meta seo google and Post for more information.

4. Enforce www. Preference

This SEO plug-in will help preserve your permalinks by enforcing your no-www or yes-www preference (http://example.com/ vs. http://www.example.com/) and will strip off index.php from the ends of URIs.

When it comes to permalinks, I should also mention that I use a custom permalink code. Go to settings, then Permalinks, under common settings, check custom structure and add /%postname%/” (without the quotes) to the field and then save the page. This will allow each page to show a description based on your title and as opposed to a bunch of random numbers.

Check out these related links for similar plugins: canonical url domain www

5. Popularity Contest

Would you like to see which of your posts are most popular? Then Go to AlexKing.org and install this plugin. This Search Engine Optimization plug-in will help you discover popular posts by tracking your views and comments which are given a configurable point values to determine popularity.

More of these types of plug-ins can be found at stats, statistics, trackback, comment, view, feedback, popularity, and popular

6. Share This

Also at AlexKing.org you’ll find Share This.  Your visitors can share your content via social bookmarking sites and/or by emailing e-mailing the post to a friend when you install this popular plugin.  This plugin supports the Share Icon project . For those who want a localized version or do not like using widgets, the ShareThis Classic pluginis still available.

Be sure to start here: to customize the look of the ShareThis widget on your site as well as register for tracking of your sharing events.

Then have at it with these related links:: yahoo my web, windows live, google bookmarks, aim, stumbleupon, socialize, myspace, Facebook, NewsVine, blogmarks, Blinklist, Furl, Tailrank, Reddit, technorati, Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, Digg, network, social, bookmark, e-mail, email

7 .What Would Seth Godin Do

Invite first time visitors to sign up to your mailing list. When you use this plug-in for SEO, new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!” After 5 visits the message disappears. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location. As you may have noticed at the top of this post, I customized it to include my aweber optin form.

8. Simple Tags

What’s the benefit of Tags? Tags are a good way to organize large quantities of content on your blog. Search engines love tags. When you use tags your keywords will be displayed more. Many search engines use keywords for the all important page rank. High page ranks equals more traffic. If keywords are so important for page ranks then we should definitely be using tags. Besides manually adding tags any help from a plugin is beneficial.

There was once a very good tool called the Ultimate Tag Warrior I am waiting on the author to update this tool for wordpress applications 2.3 and higher. Until then, Christine offers a few other alternatives which she calls “things”: Here they are:

• Tag Suggest Thing
• Embedded Tag Thing
• Tag Managing Thing
• Inline Tag Thing
• UTW Theme Compatibility Thing

After doing some searching, I found this popular and “simple” plugin  for Search Engine Optimization called Simple Tags

Simple Tags help you manage your tags for your posts. Here’s some of the benefits It covers :

• related tags
• AJax Admin features
• Tags suggestions from Yahoo
• Term Extractions API,
• Tag The Net and Local Tags with AJAX request,
• auto tags
• and even auto link tags in post content.

Download Simple Tags and also check out these similar links concerning tags import, 2.5, 2.3, navigation, tagging, administration, admin, tags, posts, tag

9. Bookmark Me Plugin For WordPress

This SEO plugin for WordPress lets you easily add links to social bookmarking sites like delicious, Digg, Yahoo and many more to your entries. I also found their free theme called the Semiologic theme to be quite nice since it offers a lot of customization features.

Besides these related links, Facebook, stumbleupon, delicious Digg bookmarks social bookmark and bookmark page Post you may also like the Sociable plugin which Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. If that doesn’t work for you, try the All-in-one Bookmarking Button which Adds the SocialMarker.com bookmarking button at the bottom of every post.

10. Social Bookmark Creator

There are still more Search Engine Optimization tips along the lines of social bookmarking. The Social Bookmark Creator plugin makes creating pre-coded social bookmark links very easy. This SEO plugin can tie right into your blogging software or you can create links from static pages.. Buttons include Google Bookmarks, StumbleUpon, Squidoo, Del.icio.us, Spurl, Digg and many more.

Related plugins can be found at bookmarks, social bookmark ,and  bookmark.

11. Dofollow

From Semilogic, The same authors of the Bookmark Me plugin comes Dofollow. This is a simple but effective wordpress plugin for search engine optimization because It lets you remove the evil “nofollow “ attribute from your comments.

Why is nofollow evil? The following comment is from 13 Reasons Why No Follow Tags Suck. “The NoFollow link attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, due to the amount of blog comment spamming.” So if you’re a good guy you’ll get rid of the evil “Nofollow” attriburtes in your blog.

More links:; comment;, ;edit, ;comments

12. WP Ajax Edit Comments plugin

While we’re commenting on plugins for editing comments, both users and administrators can edit comments using the WP Ajax Edit Comments plugin;. You may also want to watch this video on the Ajax edit comments plugin.

Similar links can be found here: admin comment edit comments AJAX

13.. Breadcrumb NavXT

This Search Engine Optimization plug-in generates breadcrumb trails from different locations for your WordPress blog. These trails represent the hierarchy leading up to the current page rather than the actual path taken to arrive at the current page. These Breadcrumb trails can be customized to suit your needs and are a good supplementary navigation system that aid in site usability.

What’s a breadcrumb? Is it for the birds? Breadcrumbs are a secondary navigation. Sitemaps are number one when it comes to navigation. Breadcrumbs aid your visitors in understanding where they are in relation to the rest of the site. Also, the visitor can click on a link to access higher levels on your site through breadcrumbs. What’s more, since breadcrumbs are small, they take up very little space.

Here are some related plugins:navigation breadcrumb

14.Comment Timeout

Comment Timeout closes comments on old posts on your blog. It also allows you to keep comments open for longer if you have recently had any comments. Version 2.0 also helps with per-post settings, extends discussions for popular posts, sends comments to a moderation que and even gives advance warning when a discussion is about to close.

Here are some related links widget, comments

15. Akismet

Last, but not least, don’t forget to activate your Akismet plugin which will greatly reduce spam. You’ll need to look up your WordPress.com API key to use it.

Related plug-ins can be found at spam comments and Akismet

Most Popular WordPress Plugins

Many of the Search Engine Optimization plug-ins I have mentioned are listed in “WordPress Most Popular Plugins.”

Would you like to see the most popular plugins in random order?

Here are the highest ranking plugins for wordpress by number of downloads.

The All in One SEO Pack is at the top of the list.

Note. I am not using this plug-in because I’m using the Thesis Theme and it already includes these benefits.

If I had to choose only one plugin for Search Engine Optimization purposes I would probably go with the Google XML Sitemaps Plugin since Google places a lot of importance on a site having it’s own map.

Also don’t forget to add these important links to your blog or website for optimum SEO benefits:

• About
• Privacy Statement
• Site Disclaimer
• Disclosure Statement
• Terms and Conditions
• Spam Policy (AUP)

I trust that these WordPress SEO plugins will help you to optimize your blog for maximum Search  Engine  Optimization and business building effectiveness. For now, I have installed most of these plugins on this site. That said, I am open to new SEO plug ins. You may know of some excellent plugins that I am not familiar with. I appreciate any comments or suggestions that you may wish to offer.

Experience Real Success With Life Purpose,

Greg