SEO Plugins for Wordpress
Posted on September 7th, 2006by Michael Gray in Blogs, SEO, Tools
This post is old and outdated, for a new version please visit SEO Plugins for Wordpress Part II
In the past few months I’ve gotten quite a few requests from people asking what plugins I use here and on other sites, and which ones I reccomend, so here’s my list with annotations.
Essential Wordpress Plugins
These plugins go on 99% of the wordpress installs I do. I’ll only leave one off if there’s a very specific reason for it not to be there.
Akismet - This one actually comes with wordpress you only need to get a liscence to activate it. Unless you have need for spam in your blog this is one the most effective tools for stopping it. Very little actually gets through and very little gets flagged as a false positive.
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - Let’s be honest once you’ve got a site over 50 pages maintaining a sitemap by hand is tedious and inefficient. This plugin has quite a few options and takes care of all the grunt work for you.
Organizer - This plugin allows you to create and upload files from the web browser without having to fire up your FTP program. It’s especially helpful on blogs with multiple users who aren’t tech savvy. The only downside is if they don’t know the “rules” things can get messy and disorgainzed very quickly.
Feedburner Replacement Plugin - Let’s you keep your feedburner feed on your domain.
Objection Redirection - This plugin by Dax is one of the most powerful and useful plugins I use. It let’s you redirect old and broken url’s to clean and fresh url’s without you having to touch an htaccess file.
Google Sitemaps The Google Sitemaps Webmaster Central program by Google is absolutely one of the most helpful things Google has ever put out. If you are fixing your own site or someone else’s there’s no better way to figure out what a search engine thinks about your site. This plugin updates and rebuilds the XML file everytime you make a new post and ping’s google to tell them about it. It’s especially helpful if you publish on a predetermined schedule. Warning make sure you have the file permissions set correctly or this won’t work properly.
Wordpress Database Backup - If there is one wordpress plugin you absolutely need this is it. It gives you the ability to backup the core database tables and any other tables you specify. The backups happen on demand or on a nightly schedule. While it might be against TOS what I do is set up a dedicated gmail account for each wordpress blog. I then set this plugin to backup the tables every night and email the file to a gmail account. Viola a free daily incremental offsite backup.
Permalink Redirect - In the event some wise guy tries to mess up your blog this keeps things neat and tidy.
Highly Reccomended Plugins
These plugins go on most of my installs but not all of them
Search Pages - This plugin ties the built in search function in wordpress to the pages. The default installation only searches blog posts. This is an absolute neccesity if you are using wordpress as a CMS and not a blogging tool.
Search Meter - Looking at search logs to find out who’s searching for what can be a valuable tool for figuring out what’s right and what’s wrong on your site.
Static Homepage - If you want to use wordpres as a CMS instead of a blog this plugin makes the homepage magic happen.
Cool Stuff
Not necessary but sometimes pretty helpful
Adhesive - Allows you to stick a posting to the top overriding the standard chronological order of things.
Adsense Deluxe - A powerful way to control adsense from a master level on your blog.
Adsense Injection - Another Dax special that randomly inserts Adsense somewhere in each posting. Not advisable for the control freaks, definitely advisable for sites with lots of returning readers who don’t normally click on Adsense.
Bunny’s Technorati Tags - A simple and easy interface for tagging in each blog post.
Bread Crumb Trail Generator - A little tricky to configure but very useful once you do. Especially nice when used on a static website.
Feed Copyrighter - Let’s you add copyright info to your feed. Makes it easy to track and follow scrapers.
Moderate Trackbacks - Not used as much as it once was Akismet catches most of the spam, but I keep it around as a backup.
Postie - A very powerful tool if you do remote posting via email. Takes a little tinkering to get it set up right but once you do it’s hands off. Combine with cronless postie for regular automated checking.
Related Posts - Automagically creates a list of related posts.
Recent Posts and Recent Comments - Shockingly these two plugins give you a list of recent posts and recent comments, go figure.
Flickr Photosets - If you are doing anything with flickr this plugin kicks ass letting you tie it into your wordpress bog. Especially nice if you’ve upgraded to flickr pro and have multiple albums, see an example.
Top 10 Posts - gives you the top 10 posts by views, very hackable see my top 100 posts for an example.
WP Cron - Makes all sorts of wordpress housekeeping features happen automagically. Just be sure to activate the main plugin first before any of the others or things may not work properly.
WP - Admin Bar - Puts a really nice navigation bar up for users who are logged in.
WP Contact Form - A very simple no frills contact form.
Use with Extreme Caution
These are specialty plugins that you really should know what the heck you are doing before you touch them as they could seriously mess things up if you aren’t careful.
Bad Behavior - Does a really good job at keeping out robot scrappers. Also does an excellent job at blocking people who have their user agent set as bot. Also does an amazing job of blocking bots that you may want to let in. Not very configurable.
Custom Query String - Let’s you set the number of posts to appear in a category or monthly archive page. Can result in some really huge files.
Subdomains by Category - Very cool but also dangerous if you don’t know what the heck you are doing.
Popularity: 48% [?]
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September 7th, 2006 at 6:56 am
Excellent post. Thanks for drawing my attention to all of these plugins
September 7th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Great Post Mike!
I’ve just installed Static Home page for one of my sites. I’ve decided to make a site using Wordpress as the cms, but not make it look like a blog.
WOOWHOO…go me!
September 7th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
YES! - This was the list I was looking for. Thanks for sharing!
September 8th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Hawaii
cool idea
September 8th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Thanks Mike, this will keep me busy for a bit.
all the best…
jon
September 11th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Thanks for this list Mike!
Do you know a plugin developer by chance? I would like to outsource development of a wordpress plugin for my search term analytics tool.
September 19th, 2006 at 5:18 am
Thanks Micheal very handy list!!
September 23rd, 2006 at 6:17 pm
I have been looking for ages for a definitive list of plugins for WordPress. Thanks for coming up with this absolute treasure trove.
Mike
September 25th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Am I right if I say that Dagon Design Sitemap Generator and Google Sitemap (the plugin) both create a google sitemap file? I already have GoogleSitemap, do I need the other one?
September 25th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
Not everyone can crawl the xml file
September 26th, 2006 at 12:05 am
oK I just understood the difference
nevermind!
September 28th, 2006 at 7:42 am
October 6th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Just a quick note to say that I believe that Contact Form ][ is the next generation of Contact Form above.
Thanks again for posting this, Mike. It really is an excellent resource.
October 22nd, 2006 at 11:42 pm
If Bad Behavior blocks a bot, you can be sure it’s one you do not want coming around.
If you find a counterexample, I’d love to hear about it. But be sure to notify the bot’s author first, as it’s likely their fault.
October 23rd, 2006 at 12:56 am
It took me 6 months to get back into technorati after bad behavior blocked their bot
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:57 am
What plugin did you use to generate your social bookmark links to Digg, Netscape, Yahoo, etc? I’m new to blogging and I haven’t found a plugin that allows both the icon and textual link.
Thanks,
Steve
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
my tags are hand generated
http://www.wolf-howl.com/tools/social-bookmark-script-widget/
However you can get the same thing using sociable
http://push.cx/sociable
January 6th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Thanks for the post! When I follow your link to the plugin Adhesive, it links to a page with no download option. How did you get your plugin?
January 13th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Very helpfull tools. Do you know any good newsletter plugins og similar tools?
February 17th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Very useful list thanks
As you know for some reason WP don’t include the WP-Backup plugin with their 2.1 release which is a shame as the new V2 of the plugin available from:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
Allows you to schedule backups to be automatically emailed to you at a set frequency. Very handy!
February 20th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I am new to wordpress. yesterday I downloaded wordpress MU to manage my blog directly from the server that host my web page. I found this info very useful as I am not very sure how plugins for word press work
Cherrs!!!
February 27th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Thanks for posting these, it will prove really useful. Well done!
March 5th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Thanks for taking the time to post this, i’m sure many of these plugins will be very useful once i get around to integrating the blog into my own website.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:18 am
Good post. I wasn’t looking for any of those plugins, but I’ll sure use some of them.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:59 am
http://www.xytfy.com 翻译公å¸
http://www.xytfy.com/bj/ 北京翻译公å¸
April 10th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
This is a great SEO article with very helpful SEO tips.
Frank
http://supaz.wordpress.com
April 11th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Great list, thanks. FYI, the “Feedburner Replacement Plugin” has moved here > http://orderedlist.com/wordpress-plugins/feedburner-plugin/
April 12th, 2007 at 8:34 am
haha ,very good !
April 17th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Tags hand-generated? I saw few sites like HG tags
http://www.allseo.ru
http://www.mastertext.spb.ru
but they have problems witn sql
May 18th, 2007 at 8:07 am
excellent word mate. Thanks a lot!
May 25th, 2007 at 7:00 am
thx for the great lists of plugins
May 28th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Great Plugins Thank You !!!
June 7th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Fine seo plugin: wpSEO. english too.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
awesome list… thanks for taking the time.
Are there any more plugins that directly relate to SEO or making wordpress more SEO friendly?
July 11th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Great post. By the way I am developing a SEO plugin myself. Already made several cool features, gonna be. I’ll write here when it is done
July 20th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
great info and must try it ..
July 27th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Tons O’ Plugins… Tons O’ Fun
Ton’s O Thanks
NC Tech Team
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:40 am
This is a great list of plugins. This type of list is priceless for the new kid on the block.
Thanks
Vic
August 6th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Excellent list, thank you very much, it really helped me
August 8th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Thank’s. This was VERY useful.
Did not know that there was so many useful plugins.
SteinP
http://steinp.net
August 12th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
What a great list! Nice one for sharing that!
August 16th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Best plugin vote from me!
August 28th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Great list!
I have a lot of code or shell scripts on my blog, do you know of any plug-ins that can help with formatting?
Thanks!
September 15th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
good site..
September 16th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Thanks for the plugin list. I discovered a couple new plugins that I had not been previously aware of as a result. Thanks for that!
September 20th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Yep, thank you for this great list, I found exactly what I needed. I think there’s just missing Seo Title Tag
September 30th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Thanks for the plugin list.
http://www.kremole.com
September 30th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Thank’s. This was VERY useful.
http://www.videokup.com
September 30th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Excellent list, thank you very much, it really helped me
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:55 am
I use a few of those tools but I had no idea there was so many. I have bookmarked this site. Now just need to find the time to work my way through the list
Mnay Thanks
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:02 am
Thank you very much !
Just letting ya know.
However it seems that the link to http://jp.jixor.com/plugins/bread-crumb-trail/
and http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/archives/2006/02/02/wordpress-related-entries-20/
are broken
October 5th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
thank you
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:25 am
Something is missing. wpSEO-Plugin for WordPress.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:35 am
Excellent post. Thank you.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:33 pm
does anyone know if the ‘Recent Posts’ and ‘Recent Comments’ plugins work with WP 2.3.x?
November 4th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Very useful list , Must use on a blog for search engine optimisation
Thanks
Tulip
November 13th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Great list, thanks for sharing!
December 4th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Wow!
Long list. It would take some time to try these all out.
Thanks!
December 6th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Thanks for your informations.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Great. This is a very good list for anyone using wordpress. I will print this list out and use it!
- Bookmarked ya!
October 30th, 2008 at 10:54 am
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