WordPress Plugins For Search Engine Optimization

As blogging becomes more common, so is WordPress. For many WordPress users who host their own WordPress blog sites, most of time it is of interest to have them listed on the Search engine, such as Google, MSN or Yahoo. In order to do so, the site must be search-engine friendly, and the technique to do it, is through Search Engine Optimization, or SEO in short. Now, in WordPress, things are much easier, because of the availability of plugins, but which ones are useful?

I did a little research and found out more than what I expect. Read on to find out....

The following are some of the highly recommended (critical) plugins that any serious WordPress blogger should never do without, unless for some serious reasons.

Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if the comments look like spam or not. This is exceptionally helpful when you have a large number of posts and comments are generated almost everyday. Note that, a WordPress.com API key is required to use the service. Spams are captured under the Manage category, and will be automatically deleted after 15 days.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
This is not the same as Google Sitemaps plugin. In fact, it is a true sitemap generator which is highly customizable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel. Some of its features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and many other options. If you are into SEO, this is one you should not miss.

Google Sitemaps
Submitting WordPress sitemap to Google Sitemap can never be easier with this plugin. This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of the WordPress blog.

Objection Redirection
This plugin gives users the ability to redirect incoming traffic based on pattern matching. A great work by Dax, considered to be one of the most powerful and useful plugins. In case of old and broken URLs, this plugin safely clean and refresh the URL without any .htaccess intervention.

Optimal Title
It changes the order of the post and blog titles in the title tag. It is very helpful in terms of both SEO and usability by showing unique post titles first and common blog title second. It is an essential plugin to have.

Permalink Redirect
In the event that links are accessed by alternative link, this plugin ensures that pages and posts are always accessed by the permalink. Otherwise, a 301 redirect will be issued on alternate links.

Post Teaser
The “Post teaser” plugin simply shows a specified number of words from the beginning of the post.

Recent Posts
This plugin displays recent posts. It is allowed to display as many posts, pages or both as you like. It can support a number of days, of past days or just a fixed number of posts.

Related Post
It allows you to display as many related posts as you want, as well as post excerpts. However, you may want to stick to about 1-3 so as not to over-clutter your blog site.

Search Pages
The WordPress Search only runs through posts and not pages. This plugins makes search queries on contents at both pages and posts. It is particularly useful when you have created several useful and important pages.

Thumbnail Gallery Generator
This is no ordinary plugin, if you know how to use it well. It is fully optimised particularly for SEO, by generating thumbnails of recent posts. The idea is to provide more internal linking which can help with the search engine. In addition, it can also be used an image summary. Examples can be found at SoftSift and Coolest-Gadgets.

WordPress Database Backup
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. With the WordPress Database Backup, it can save the backup to the web server, or send to an email account. This is a MUST to have, especially if you do not want to experience the worst, such as server crash, data lost, or even wordpress upgrades. Always backup backup backup.

Some other recommended plugins, though not SEO-related, but may be relatively helpful to you.

Script Enabler
Enables you to use script tags in your posts without them getting horked up by WordPress. This comes in useful when you want to manually place your Google Adsense or Chitika Ads in the post, without having them removed by WordPress's javascript filter.

WordPress Reports
Generates reports from Google Analytics and Feedburner. This plugin is particularly useful if you are one who constantly checks on your site's statistics and reports.

WP-Cache
WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and then building the page from the database. WP-Cache allows the site to serve hundred of times more pages per second, and to reduce the response time from several tenths of seconds to less than a millisecond.

WP-ContactForm
Nothing much to introduce, but this is extremely helpful contact form. I wonder why it wasn't included as part of the WordPress installation, which I feel it should. It is a simple drop in way for users to send a message to you.

WP-UserOnline
Add a UserOnline feature to your WordPress site. It is able to detect the number of visitors, users and even bots that are currently accessing your site. Furthermore, the plugin also recognises the user logging onto the site at that instant.

The following are some fanciful plugins that make your site a little more interactive than normal.

Digg This
Use this plugin if you constantly submit blog article to Digg website. This plugin provides instant real-time visual for readers to digg your site, at the same time, display the number of Diggs the article has received.

Jalenack's Wordspew
Fancy a live shoutbox on your WordPress site? Then this plugin is a must. It uses AJAX as a backend, such that users can chat freely from your blog without refreshing the page! It utilizes the Fade Anything Technique for extra glamour in the AJAX Shoutbox.

Live Comment Preview
Shows instant preview of your comments as you type.

As far as these Search Engine Optimization (SEO) WordPress plugins can help to boost your WordPress site, ultimately it still boils down to the content of your site. Without quality content, your site is as good as empty and don't expect it to go far. Always remember that what attracts readers to visit your site is basically because of the rich content on your site, not because of these SEO plugins.

Hopefully these little tricks help you in your embarkment to a better and well-organized blog site!