There are a lot of plugins available on the web for the WordPress blogging
platform. Many bloggers know that they at least need basic SEO plugins in
order to boost their position in the search engine rankings. While some
bloggers may also search for specific plugins based on specific needs that
they have for their particular blog, there are some plugins out there with
functionality that bloggers may not even know they need! Here are some
unique WordPress plugins that all bloggers can use that will do "the little
things" to help your blog reach the top of the search engines.
SEO Post Link:
Your post slug is the portion of your post's URL that represents that
particular post. WordPress automatically generates these URL-friendly
versions of your post title for you, which means that every word of your
post title usually ends up in your post's URL. This can definitely hurt your
rankings in the search engine because long URL's are generally not search
engine-friendly. People are not searching for generic keywords like "what",
"the", and "should", but if these words are in your title they will show up
in your post slug and reduce the value of your most important keywords.
Plugins like SEO Post Link take care of this for you by allowing you to
remove unnecessary words from your post slug, thus increasing the search
engine value of the more popular keywords in your post title. You will also
be able to specify a certain number of characters for your post slug, which
will help make your post's URL more memorable and user-friendly.
SEO No Duplicate:
It is now common knowledge that search engines can penalize blogs that make
a habit of using duplicate content (content that you or someone else has
already posted elsewhere). However, sometimes bloggers need to use duplicate
content on their WordPress sites. If you need to utilize duplicate content,
you can use the SEO No Duplicate WordPress Plugin to indicate to the search
engine the preferred version of your post. It will automatically make sure
that the canonical for your post page is set to the permalink. As a result,
you will be able to tell the search engine which post should be indexed and
which one(s) should be ignored so that your blog doesn't get punished in the
rankings for using duplicate content.
SEO Tag Cloud Widget:
It would seem that using tag clouds, with all of those important keywords
clustered in one location, was one of the most SEO-friendly things that you
can do for your blog. However, you may be surprised to learn that most tag
clouds are generally not well optimized for search engines, rendering them
useless for most bloggers' SEO efforts. This is where the SEO Tag Cloud
Widget can help. This WordPress plugin will use a search engine-optimized
HTML markup to display your tag cloud in a way that is SEO-friendly and will
actually help boost your rankings. Then, you will be able to display your
tag cloud on your blog's sidebar knowing that search engines are indexing
all of those important keywords and crediting them to your blog.
SEO Friendly Images:
It seems that few bloggers pay attention to the images in their posts these
days. This is probably because many bloggers don't know the power of images
in boosting blog traffic and visibility in the search engines. Many internet
users search for images each day, and the "alt" "and "title" tags attributed
to your images describe your images to the search engines help match the
keyword search with relevant image results. To put it simply, getting the
tags right for the images on your blog can result in hoards of traffic from
image searches. SEO Friendly Images will help you with this by automatically
giving all of your images proper "alt" and "title" tags so that search
engines can properly index them.
WP Geo:
If you blog for a business with a specific location, you definitely want to
pay attention to geo-tagging in your blog posts. What is that, you ask? It
simply means attributing a specific location to your post or image. There a
numerous reasons and advantages for doing this on your blog. Besides
reminding your customers where you are, it can give you a boost in the
Google Places ranking, which is a plus when users search for businesses of
your type that are located in your area. WordPress plugins like WP Geo will
allow you to set an actual physical location for your blog post and add a
Google Map to your page.
Nofollow Case by Case:
Bloggers who have experienced problems with spam probably like the fact that
the default setting in WordPress produced "nofollow" links when people
comment on a blog post. In layman's terms, this means that when people post
comments on your blog, search engines will not count any links that they
post with those comments as legitimate backlinks to their site or blog
because search engine spiders will not be able to follow it anywhere (hence
the term "nofollow"). This is great news for people who have had problems
with spammers in the past. However, bloggers should also be aware that this
often puts people off from commenting on your blog posts because they will
not get anything out of it for their own site
What WordPress users need is a way to decide who gets "link juice" and who
doesn't. The Nofollow Case by Case plugin will help you with this by
allowing you to have a say in which links posted by users will be "nofollow"
and which will be "dofollow". Then, you'll be able to encourage comments on
your blog while keeping the spammers at bay.
If you have any questions or comments please contact me.
Regards Gerald
Website: http://www.webcraft.ws
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws
Twitter: WebcraftGuru
Facebook: Webcraft Guru
I'm protected by SpamBrave
http://www.spambrave.com/
Comments