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Recommended plugins for wordpress

Gerae Lindsey — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:05:43 +0000

Here are the WordPress plugins I recommend, and use on my own blogs.

1. HeadSpace2 – Download HeadSpace 3.6.27 Here

HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks. With it you can tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that improve your page ranking, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more.

2. Link Hopper – Download Link Hopper v.1.3

This plugin is a MUST HAVE for all of my affiliate sites using WordPress.

If you run a Wordpress installation and want to use affiliate links, it can get a bit ugly. Wouldn’t it be nice to link to www.yoursite.com/hop/name instead?

Historically, this is usually accomplished with a standalone PHP redirect, or a line in the .htaccess file.

Now you can do it through the Wordpress administration. This plugin allows you to configure a hop name, and a hop destination. When you link to yoursite.com/hop/TAG/, the visitor will be redirected to your chosen destination.

3. SEO Friendly Images – Download SEO Image Here

SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.

TITLE attribute play lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.

4. SimpleTags – Download Version 2.0 Here

If you are using Technorati to increase your blog traffic, you definitely want to consider using SimpleTags. Some of the themes I am using have this built-in. Very nice.

SimpleTags is a WordPress plugin that will allow you to easily generate Technorati tags at the bottom of your blog entries. There are several plugins already available for this purpose, but they all require you to use custom fields within WordPress. The SimpleTags plugin eliminates this need, so you can now easily generate tags with your preferred method of posting, be it by email, a blogging tool like w.bloggar or from WordPress itself.

5. WP-Print – Download WP-Print 2.50 Here

This plugin is great if you are providing articles users might want to print and read later.

Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

Which plugins are you using on your blog? Share your favorites below.

Improving SEO with your blog title tags

Gerae Lindsey — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:48:14 +0000

Well it took me 2 months but I *finally* installed and set-up the SEO Title Tag Plugin I mentioned back in July. Good thing I waited so long, it was so difficult to install – NOT! I had it up and running in under 5 minutes. It was super easy, just FTP, activate and edit a few variables. I love it. Incredibly easy to manage.

Do yourself a favor and don’t be a procrastinator like me. Download this and install it now if you haven’t already done so.

Why this will help my blog and yours too (go install it now!):

Adding (or fixing) the title tags of your pages can often generate quick and appreciable differences to your rankings.

Title tags are considered one of the â€œbig threeâ€ as far as the algorithmic weight given to them by search engines.

When calculating a sites relevance to a search, most search engines consider the title tag as one of the parameters and display that content in search engine results pages.

Good enough for me.

My favorite part about this plugin, aside from the fact that’s EASY to manage, is that you can use it to specify individual tags for the main page, categories and pages. This is very important. I see sites that use the same exact tags for every single page in their website. Tags should be specific to the page they are used on.

Title and meta tags are not a magic ingredient that will send your site straight to the top. I’ve seen many top sites that do not utilize them and I have no clue how they rank so well.

But they do help, so don’t forget to use them okay?

SEO title tag plugin

Gerae Lindsey — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:59:06 +0000

So note to self – the next time you make a goal of writing in your blog daily, make sure you have internet access! It just might be helpful – DUH! We just moved into our new house and I didn’t have internet all week.

I was beginning to experience withdrawals. But now I am back on.

The new house is nice, empty but nice. We go back to Utah for the rest of our belongings in 2 weeks. The house really echos which has been scaring the crap out of my son but hopefully it won’t once we get some stuff in here.

I have been trying to focus on improving my own websites and after reading an interview with Sugarrae over at Learning Geek, I have been reviewing the plugins she recommended for blogs. I decided to start with the SEO Title Tag plugin, Sugarrae feels that this one is a MUST for SEO.

A short blurb from the website:

SEO Title Tag makes is dead-easy to optimize the title tags across your WordPress-powered blog or website. Not just your posts, not just your home page, but any and every title tag on your site! If this plugin, along with a few hours of keyword research and copywriting of optimized titles, doesn’t make a significant impact on your search traffic, you’re doing something wrong!

So my to-do list this weekend is short – download the plugin, install it and start using it.

I think even I can manage that

After receiving a recommendation from Lynn Terry, I signed up for a newsletter from Paul Short. I’ll let you know what I think of it. Signing up gives you access to a free Slipstream Marketing report.

I’m off to read it now while I share some Cheerios with my youngest.