I love wordpress. I really do. A good part of this is because I just love the power of plugins.
If you don't know a plugin is a snippet of code that controls various functions on wordpress. Basically allowing anyone to make changes to the look, feel, and functionality to a WordPress blog without getting their hands dirty with php programming code.
Here is my list of 8 Essential FREE wordpress Plugins:
- Ozh' Admin Drop Down Menu: If you are used to working in the admin section of WordPress you see a left hand navigation be default. This plugin moves the navigation links to the top of the screen in "Sucker Fish" style, making you a one click wonder navigating the back end of your blog.
- Google Analyticator: First of all, you do have Google Analytics installed on your blog, right? It is free after all, and without some kind of tracking mechanism how will you ever know if you are getting any traffic. It always amazes me when a business owner who dotes on her store customers whims and wishes will completely live in the dark as far as web traffic. This isn't 1995 after all, and you should be learning all you can about your web traffic; where it comes from and what it is looking at while there is a good start. As a huge added bonus this plugin puts a Google Analytics Summery right into your wordpress dashboard for a quick health status of your blog traffic.
- All in One SEO Pack: This plugin assumes that you want traffic to your website. One of the best ways to get traffic from your high quality blog posts is to have great SEO optimized Title and Description tags. The Title and Description tags are what Google and the other search engines show to people when they do a keyword search. We have all done searchers where we know exactly what link we were going to click based on those first few snippets of the post that we saw. What most people don't know is that you can control that text. For more information on SEO (Search Engine Optimization, check out my SEO Page.)
- Robots Meta: This one is a little geeky, and also falls under the SEO category, but stay with me here. Because of how WordPress works as a content management system, you have lots of files and folders that are used for Admin purposes, but don't necessarily want people or Google coming to check them out. This plugin will blog Google and people from finding these pages and will keep all your visible content visible and neat, and leave the code hidden.
- Dagon Design Sitemap Generator: If you want a sitemap on your page visible to people this plugin will do it. Why, because helping people find their way around your site is just plain good hospitality.
- Broken Link Checker: You know it and I know it and the search engines know it. Broken links suck. This plugin will check on your outbound links and notify you in the dashboard if you have a link that is broken, so you can update or delete it.
- MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer: By default WordPress "Pings" whenever you edit a post or page. A ping is simply a way to notify search engines that they should come to your site and check it out because you have new, fresh content. But, new and slightly updated are not the same. And if you are doing a lot of test work, or making a lot of small edits, you don't want to over ping and look like spam and risk getting banned. This assumes that you want traffic to your site.
- Plugin Central: I think it was in the Hobbit where they talk about the lesser rings and the "One Ring to Rule Them All." This plugin doesn't exactly rule the others, but it will help to keep them updated by notifying you of any changes in your WordPress dashboard. From there, updating them all is as simple as one click. A huge time saver. I always recommend (but rarely do) backing up your blog before updating any plugins, especially updates in bulk like this.
If you have a website or blog and would like to find out how to get more traffic, or better monetization of the traffic you have now. Contact me.
Questions, Comments or brilliant suggestions? I always love to hear from you.
Travis
