Wordpress wasn’t really designed for SEO, but many plugins have been developed to enable better features to make a blog more SEO-friendly. I’ve been using Wordpess as a blogging platform for the last few months and after talking to some friends who wanted this information, I thought I would write about the set of plugins that I have found useful from an SEO perspective.

Not only are these fantastic and free, these Wordpress plugins are from all over the world. I have never seen a concise list of recommendations on these, so I thought I would make my own list. I am not saying I am an expert at this point – but I’ll try to share what I have learned so far. Many of these developers have a donate button on their site – if you feel that their plugin has been useful, you may want to make a donation.

You can set up a Wordpress blog and never use a plugin. But to do some of the cooler things, and to use the widget ready templates and themes, these plugins extend the capabilities of your blog.

Note: Be aware of the version of Wordpress you are using to be sure you download the plugin that is compatible. See: Wordpress Plugins Compatibility.

I am going to list the plugins that I use in this post. Future posts will include information about setting up a new Wordpress blog and how to upgrade to the latest Wordpress version. Another post: http://www.wordpressthemestudio.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-database-backup-and-maintenance is a list of Wordpress management plugins (for database backups and maintenance).

First – the plugins I like to use and that I recommend you start with (I’ll make this a list of my top 7 plugins and below that I will explain their use and where to download them):

• All-in-one SEO Pack
• Ultimate Google Analytics
• Wordpress Duplicate Content Cure
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Cforms (cformsII)
• Add This (button or drop down)
• Tags to Technorati
  

All in One SEO Pack - Described as “Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.” This plugin helps you add title tags, descriptions and keywords to your blog posts. There are more features you can read about, plus a video tutorial (and you can download it) at: Wordpress All In One SEO Pack

Ultimate Google Analytics – Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.  Ultimate Google Analytics Plugin

Wordpress Duplicate Content Cure – Whether you believe duplicate content will hurt you (or if such a thing exists) this plugin claims to be a very simple, yet effective SEO plugin that prevents search engines from indexing wordpress pages that contain duplicate content, like archives and category pages. Duplicate Content Cure.

WP-Sticky 1.40 – Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog. Modified from Adhesive by Owen Winkler.  http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/ (You won’t need this with running WP 2.7 and above because those versions have this “sticky” feature built in.)

*Cforms (cformsII) – cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Wordpress Google Site Map Generator

WP tags to Technorati – Simple plugin to convert Wordpress 2.3’s tags to Technorati (’http://technorati.com’) links.  Wordpres Tags to Technorati

Add This (button) – A button that helps readers add your blog to social bookmarking sites. http://www.addthis.com/

Plugins for ads, adsense, and ad management – I doubt you need to use all of these. I’m going to use them one at a time to test them. A note about these ad managment plugins: I need to explore them more and write more about each in a later post.

Adsense Manager – Control and arrange your AdSense & Referral blocks on your Wordpress blog. With Widget and inline post support, configurable colours.  http://www.mutube.com/

WP admanager – This new Plug-in enables you to make use of much improved Banner management features at WordPress blog. https://www.ohloh.net/p/wp-admanager/packages

Adserve - AdServe is the advertising server for WordPress. You could setup your banner campaigns using different sized banners, set available impressions and count resulting clicks! Optionally AdServe links ads to blog users so that one could check the campaign results within the Dashboard!  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adserve/

This is the basic list of plugins I like, but I’ll probably be adding to this list as I start learning about and using more of them.

*Note: Cforms II has a new update (version 10.5) but it requires that your server is running PHP5.

Technorati Tags: best wordpress plugins, blog help, SEO, Wordpress Plugins