I updated to WP 2.7 and had nothing but problems. The most important of which was the NoFollow Free plug-in stopped working and all my comments went No-Follow. I went to the forums and saw that many were having worse problems than me. I have since gone back to 2.6 until the bugs are worked out.
The good news is that developer is working on the 2.7 upgrade of that plug-in now.
Anyway, I suggest you guys think before your upgrade, I am not saying that it's bad, I just wish I had waited for everyone to catch up and for them to work out the bugs, instead of jumping on it and wasting 3 days trying to deal with the issues, not to mention the stress!
A BIG thanks to Hostgator for helping me to restore the blog to where it was, as I said they are the best website host!
Here is my list of must have WordPress plug-ins for SEO, visitors, subscribers and for admin user friendliness.
Search Engine Optimization Plug-Ins
1. All-In-One SEO Pack - A must have for optimizing your post pages for relevant keywords. This will give you the Meta Tags module for customizing meta tags for every post, as discussed in Website Traffic that Converts.
Make sure to check the box - Overwrite Titles - in the settings of the plug-in. This will ensure that your site wide Title and description does not automatically get inserted into all your posts. Then use the All-In-One SEO module that will appear below each post so you can customize the Title Tags, Description and keywords of the Meta Tag.
It also provides some other great features. One, is if you have your keywords in your blog title you can set the plug-in to automatically have all your posts and blog pages have the format: Post Title | Blog Title in the Title/Meta Tag. This really helps for on-site SEO.
If you don't have your keywords in the blog title, you can just enter you blog keywords instead: Post Title | Keywords
2. SEO Smart Links - Internal link building plug-in. It is very important to have a comprehensive deep internal link building strategy on all your blog pages, as discussed in Internal Link Building for On-Site SEO. Automatically inserts your desired url's with related keywords of your choosing within your blog posts.
3. Google XML Sitemaps - Google says: "Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover."
Google needs that sitemap in an XMl format and this plug-in creates it for you, and has lots of customization settings.
4. Home Page Excerpts - For those that want to avoid the duplicate content penalty and still have their entire posts on the home page.
It is much more search engine friendly to have excerpts of your posts on the home page rather than your recent post in its entirety as some bloggers have. But, if you must this plug-in makes blogs that use full posts on the homepage more search engine friendly. It also gives flexibility to people that want to use both full posts and excerpts on the homepage.
The Google duplicate content penalty applies here and that is why the content of your posts should be displayed fully in one location only, and that is the single post page. The Homepage Excerpts plug-in can be used to reduce this duplicate content while keeping full posts on the homepage.
5. Excerpt Editor - This one allows for a lot more customization of excerpts all over the blog and provides a convenient place for creating and editing excerpts. It can also add custom excerpts for blog pages, which is only possible with a plug-in.
- Append excerpts from the most recent posts or from the sub-pages to all Posts and/or Pages.
- Set pages and posts that you want to eliminate from showing excerpts
- Replace the content with excerpts on the Home page, all archive pages and/or all tags pages.
- Set number of words in excerpts & customize the actual excerpt manually, lots more...
6. Google Positioner - Track your blog for your keywords in Google.
- Track relevant keywords that you want to rank for with a rising curve
- Track your rank for those keywords
- Add regional settings
- Add competitors to compare, lots more...
Visitor Retention and Bounce Rate Plug-Ins
7. Dagon Sitemap Generator - Sitemap for your visitors and NOT for Google. It is always good to have a sitemap on your websites for visitors to have another option for navigating through your content. This is especially crucial for blogs since navigation can be difficult.
This is a great sitemap generator and allows for lots of customization, you can see mine at here. Just create your sitemap and then link to it on your blog, I have mine as a page in the top nav bar.
- Support for multi-level categories and pages
- Category/page exclusion
- Multiple-page generation with navigation
- Customize listing order
- Show comment counts and/or post dates, much more...
8. Similar Posts - Another navigation and SEO must have. Automatically pulls your related posts based on current post content and lists them at the bottom of each post. Engages visitors to stay longer and provides a deep linked blog, which Google loves. Also, allows you to fully customize how posts are generated, like based on tags, categories, keywords etc...
9. Collapsing Categories - This one is great and really improves the navigation and accessibility to your posts. Forms a collapsable set of post links in the sidebar under their respective categories, allows you to select the icon and order of post listings, allows you add RSS link for categories and much more.
When a visitor clicks on the icon the category will collapse and show all blog posts within that category, as opposed to the WordPress default that takes the visitor to a page of excerpts when they click on a category and often does not list ever post.
Increase Subscriber Count Plug-Ins
10. FeedBurner FeedSmith - This plug-in redirects ALL possible ways that readers can subscribe to your blog and sends them to your Feedburner count, can cause a significant count increase for that Feedburner subscriber widget and allows you to track every possible subscriber.
11. What Would Seth Godin Do - Nifty plug-in that inserts a fully customizable message based on a cookie only to first time visitors to your blog asking them to subscribe or do whatever you want.
12. Comment Relish - This plug-in can help increase your readership and RSS subscription rate by simply sending a short ‘thank you’ message to users when they first comment on your blog. Fully customizable message, where you can solicit, beg and bribe a subscription from that commenter 
Admin Plug-Ins
13. Better Comments Manager - Do you hate having to go to each of your posts to reply to your readers comments? I do!!
This one allows you to reply to your comments from within admin panel without having to visit the site. Plus many other admin user-friendly features, for your admin comments section. Check it out at the link and see screenshots and all the great features.
14. Broken Link Checker - Checks your blog for broken links and notifies you in the dashboard. Very user-friendly and has many settings for personalized options.
15. WordPress Data Backup - Truly a must have, DON'T wait till you get hacked or lose your content some way, believe me you don't want to live with the regret!
This plug-in has many options for delivery of your backup file and how often you want back up done. I have mine set to daily, because you never know when you will lose your data!
What are your favorite plug-ins?
Thanks for another awesome list of useful information!! I recently upgraded to 2.7 and fortunately, everything still works! (At least I think so) I have definitely heard of people having a fair share of problems – glad you got things sorted back out to the old version!! In all honesty, I just upgraded for the sake of upgrading – I didnt find anythning THAT much better with the new version
Taris Janitenss last blog post..Stopping to Help and Why You Should Too
I prefer Platinum SEO, over All-in-One SEO. It has everything AIO has, and more…
Niche Titanss last blog post..My First Day Using Twitter for Marketing
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@Niche Titans, I’ve heard this quite a few times now. However, not one has mentioned what these sure fire extras were and why I shouldn’t live without them.
Dennis Edells last blog post..UPDATE: Free Permanent BackLinks: Are You A Subscriber Or Following Me On Twitter?
@Dennis Edell, Well, I will write a post on my blog similar to your post above, touting why I love Platinum SEO (and I think since I wrote the comment above, I found yet another reason why I love it… stay tuned, and maybe you can give me some link love for enlightening you…)
Niche Titanss last blog post..General Marketing vs Niche Marketing
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@Niche Titans, call me jaded, but I’m not easily enlightened these days….give it a shot though.
Dennis Edells last blog post..UPDATE: Free Permanent BackLinks: Are You A Subscriber Or Following Me On Twitter?
@Dennis Edell, Hey…. I made a post on my blog about Why I prefer Platinum SEO over All-in-One SEO plus a list of other SEO plugins.
The post: SEO WordPress Plugins
Niche Titanss last blog post..Top 5 SEO Plugins for WordPress
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@Niche Titans, I’m replying to your tweets about it…just replied to the last one also.
Dennis Edells last blog post..Threaded Comments Have Arrived! Edit Comments Is Coming…
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
Ohhh great post! I got lots of things to say here. Muahahahahah! LOL
I already use all but 3, which I just downloaded.
SEO Smart Links (I’ll have to read a bit more on what it does), Dagon Sitemap Generator (I already use and am happy with dagon’s contact form too), Collapsing Categories (Very cool, as I’m all about “ease of use”).
For excerpts I use Post Teaser – it’s the only one I found that doesn’t mess with the full feed.
8. I went through a bunch of these including SP. I finally settled on Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, and consider it awesome! Very customizable…..almost too much so. LOL
11. Imay be having a strange issue with this, thanks for the reminder.
12. Commonly known as Comment Rubish for the 1st several months after inception. it has it’s good points, but P L E A S E do not set it to distribute after every single comment…..you will lose more then you gain.
13. No longer needed if you’re running WP 2.7
14 AWESOME TIME SAVING PLUGIN – DOWNLOAD IT NOW.
Although I’m having a wierd and almost comical problem at the moment; I’ll post about it.
15. Just don’t be paranoid like me and set it to download daily backups….with 3 blogs, that’s a lot of stored backups….switching to weekly. LOL
You definitely hit some of my faves, but i will also be posting (with a trackback
) all the ones I use. 
I’ll shut up now, I think it’s dinner time…..
Dennis Edells last blog post..Free Permanent BackLinks: Are You A Subscriber Or Following Me On Twitter?
@Dennis Edell,
I Love You Dennis, you’re still the Internet’s #1 Spaz!
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@JR,
She loves me, she loves me not….still not sure how i should take *spaz*
Dennis Edells last blog post..UPDATE: Free Permanent BackLinks: Are You A Subscriber Or Following Me On Twitter?
@Dennis Edell,
lol, always in a good way baby!
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@JR, aww shucks
Dennis Edells last blog post..UPDATE: Free Permanent BackLinks: Are You A Subscriber Or Following Me On Twitter?
@Niche Titans,
Really? I have never even heard of that one, will definitely check it out!
@Taris Janitens,
I’m glad the upgrade worked out for you! I too was not impressed with 2.7, and I actually found the new dashboard much less user friendly than 2.6
JR,
Thanks for the heads up on 2.7. I have heard some good things and bad and I was waiting to see what you thought. I am in no hurry to be the first to upgrade so I will wait for awhile till things work out.
In fact, I still use a black and white TV because I’m not sure they have all the bugs of the color ones figured out yet.LOL
Anyway, I’ll get working on this plugins, it looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Andy@onlinechristianbusinessopportunitys last blog post..Christian Home Based Business and PPC
@Andy
lol, you know you’ve skipped the a whole generation of tv, we’re onto HD now?
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@JR, HD is such a crock of crap meant to steal your money (‘scuse me)
I had this discussion the other day with a buddy, I said “I clean the dust off my screen and look; HD!”
LMAO!
Dennis Edells last blog post..UPDATE: Free Permanent BackLinks: Are You A Subscriber Or Following Me On Twitter?
@Dennis Edell,
LMAO, I agree my old projection TV has a better pic that many of those flat screen HD’s I’ve seen on display.
Thanks for the heads up on WordPress 2.7. I definitely need to wait until more kinks are worked out- I need all the help I can get.
Great list. I was using a few of them but added 3 or 4 more today. I, like Dennis, like the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. I think I am really going to like the SEO smart links once I get into it.
Jen@TipsFromANetworkMarketers last blog post..Tips From A Network Marketer- 2009 Goals
@Jen
Hi Jen and welcome!
Great list, thanks and bookmarked. Some of these I hadn’t heard of and I’m going to use immediately. I’ve been thinking of writing a post about SEO plugins. I’ll link back and add a few that aren’t here.
seowordsmiths last blog post..Paid Links vs. Directory Submission Services
@seowordsmith,
Thanks, glad you found it useful!
@JR, I’ve tried Collapsing Categories but it’s not working – either in widgets or configuring it myself. I can make a drop down, but I don’t want that, I want the arrow list. Any suggestions?
seowordsmiths last blog post..Paid Links vs. Directory Submission Services
@seowordsmith,
I am not sure what you mean by arrow list?
@JR, Oh, sorry, I mean the clickable arrow the way you have it for your categories.
seowordsmiths last blog post..Paid Links vs. Directory Submission Services
@seowordsmith,
What happens when you set it up? I mean what happens when you try to click? I tried to go over to your blog and see it but I guess you took them off? Or is it on another blog?
@JR, Nothing happens when I try to set up a hierarchy. I’m thinking this is a theme compatability issue. (Apologies for cluttering your comments with tech support stuff).
seowordsmiths last blog post..Paid Links vs. Directory Submission Services
@seowordsmith,
That’s okay, it might be a theme issue, I suggest you go over to plug-in author’s website and see what he has on there, usually these guys write fixes and have comments with similar problems.
First of all let me agree with you about Hostgator. Not only do I also use them for my hosting I used to work there several years back. They are really the best there is in my opinion when it comes to web hosting.
That being said this is a really impressive list of plugins. I have been usign workpress for awhile but there are a few here that I was not aware of that sound really cool. I’m going to check them out now. Thanks again.
Gerald Weber SEM Groups last blog post..10 Examples of Creative Twitter Uses
@Gerald Weber SEM Group,
My pleasure Gerald, I know I am always seeing such lists from other bloggers, and no matter how many I see I always find a plug-in or two I did not know about.
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
@Gerald Weber SEM Group, duuude, ex-employee in good standing? Can I name-drop?
Dennis Edells last blog post..UPDATE: Free Permanent BackLinks: Are You A Subscriber Or Following Me On Twitter?
@Dennis Edell,
Not a problem.
Gerald Weber SEM Groups last blog post..10 Examples of Creative Twitter Uses
Thanks for the post. Do you cloak your links?
@~C,
No, I do not, too many potential issues.
@~C,
Do you? Have you found any advantages with it?
Great article, thanks for the advice will definitely look at it for my next project. Interesting comment about DoFollow and wordpress 2.7.
I have 7 of these plugins in your list. My favorite ones are Broken Link Checker and WP Data Backup.
Peter Lee
work from home ideass last blog post..How Good Content, Blog Marketing Drives Massive Traffic
Fantastic post there. Really good plugins. I have bookmarked this page.
Money Money Moneys last blog post..Landing Page Optimization
@Money Money Money,
Thank you, glad it could help.
Follow Me on Twitter @: yansusanto
(3 comments)
Awesome list, JR. I’m not aware of Google positioner. Never heard of it before and for the rest, I’ve used them all on my blog. The only difference is that I use Platinum SEO instead which is the successor of All-In-One SEO.
Yan
PS: I’m yet to upgrade to WP 2.7 for the same reason that some plugins are not compatible yet. Probably will do so when 2.7.1 is out.
Yan@Blogging Tipss last blog post..101 Blogging Tips I’ve Learned in 2008
@Yan
Good idea to wait, a couple of my plugins have just now upgraded for compatibility and I am sure they will all follow soon.
I love to use all in one seo pack in my wp blog, however, some people tell me that using platinum plugin is also great, what do you think about that?
thanks.
seo tests last blog post..Best Content In The Busby Test Competition
@seo test
I have not used Platinum, but I also have heard that it’s better, but I do not know why, try it out and let us know
Follow Me on Twitter @: thekevintan
(8 comments)
I saw in another post you recommended KB Linker, but here you recommend SEO smart links. Which is better?
Kevin Tan recently posted..The All-In-One Social Media Platform- Friendfeed
@ Kevin
Both are good, I use SEO Smart Links for most of my blogs, it’s easier to use because it automatically looks for keywords in posts and links back to the proper posts that are related to those. And, you can also add manually any words you want linked to in the post to any urls you want to link to. Really good for affiliate links as well.
That Google Positioner looks great. I will be installing it right away.
I hope it still works.
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