WordPress seems to be the undisputed blogging platform of choice for the majority of bloggers, and especially for bloggers who have an internet or affiliate marketing business blog.
There are literally thousands of plugins available for added functionality for your wordpress blog, and some of these plugins can be especially useful for some of the functions of your internet business website such as optimizing your site for the search engines.
While not all plugins are particularly useful, depending on what you want to do and what your website’s function is, there are a few must-have plugins for maximum benefit from your blog that should actually be on any blog, especially if getting traffic to you site is important to you (and who doesn’t need traffic?) and some others that just add nice little bells and whistles to your site, which is nice too.
This is a list of a few plugins below that have been proven to maximise the potential of your affiliate marketing website, and some that are helpful for any type of site.
1. All-In-One SEO Pack – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Essential plugin for optimizing your posts/pages for relevant keywords. Use the All-In-One SEO module (which will appear beneath each post after installing plugin) to customize the Title Tags, Description, and keywords of the Meta Tag.
To ensure that your sitewide Title and Description do not automatically get inserted into all of your posts, you’ll need to check the box titled “Overwrite Titles” in the plugin settings. Has lots of other great features.
2. Broken Link Checker – http://w-shadow.com/blog/2007/08/05/broken-link-checker-for-wordpress/
Checks your posts/ pages (whenever the WP admin panel is open) for both internal and outbound links that don’t work, and for missing images. Notifies you on the dashboard if any problems are detected, and is very customizable and user-friendly. Very useful plugin!
3. SEO Smart Links – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-automatic-links/
An internal link building plugin that automatically links keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories, and tags on your blog. The plugin allows you to choose your own keywords and set of matching URLs.
4. Google Positioner – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-google-seo-positioner/
Keep track of your keyword performance with this plugin with a rising curve showing you that you are ranking better and better for your chosen keyword.
5. Collapsing Categories – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/collapsing-categories/
Forms a collapsable set of post links in the sidebar under their corresponding categories. Improves navigation and the accessibility to all of your posts. With this plugin, rather than your visitors clicking on a category and being taken to a page of post excerpts (WordPress default), the category will collapse when clicked on and all posts within that category will be shown.
6. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sitemap-generator/
This plugin creates an HTML sitemap (clickable links) for your WordPress powered site, which gives your visitors another option for navigating through your content. Highly customizable with lots of great features.
7. Google XML Sitemaps – href=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
Automatically creates an XML sitemap for your WordPress blog to provide search engines with the information they need to get your blog indexed quicker. Also lets Google know about deep, hidden pages on your site that it might not “otherwise discover” – helping you to get these pages indexed and included in the search results.
8. WP Related Posts – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-23-related-posts-plugin/
Displays a list of posts that are similar or related to the current post (based on the post’s content) at the bottom of each of your posts. Another highly customizable plugin that provides a deep-linked blog for the search engines, and more related posts for your visitors to click on.
9. Post-Plugin Library – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/post-plugin-library/
The Post-Plugin Library does nothing by itself but must be installed to provide shared code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, Popular Posts, and Recent Comments plugins.
10. WordPress Data Backup – http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/
Installation of this plugin should be a priority on any website, BEFORE you lose your content due to a server failure, hacking, or whatever other disaster. An absolute must! You also have the option of how often you want your backup performed, and having your backup file delivered to you. It’s highly recommended that you set this to ‘daily’.
