Top 5 Essential WordPress Plug-ins

If you use WordPress as a blogging application or for your website, then chances are you already know how powerful, yet simple this platform is. Many popular blogs these days are built using WordPress, and the availability of widgets and plug-ins to customize each site is almost limitless.

So how can one choose the right plug-ins to install, without overdoing it and have your site suffer from plug-in overkill? As with most things, less is more.  I consulted with my friend and colleague Cyndi Papia of WordPress Guru and owner of Office To-Go to share her top WordPress Plugins with you.  And if you can only have a few plug-ins for your site, here’s Cyndi’s top picks to help you out.

1. Akismet – you’ll want something to stop SPAM comments from flooding your blog, so a SPAM filter is crucial to any site. Aksimet, developed by the WordPress folks themselves, is free for non-commercial users (and inexpensive for businesses – only $5 per month) and will help weed out those nasty bots and spammers looking to proliferate your comments sections is nonsensical words and trackback links.
2. All in One SEO pack – making your site easy to find to your audience is number one priority if you want it to thrive. This plug-in allows you to edit Title, Meta description, and meta tags for each of your entries – allowing search engines to look through your site more efficiently, using the keywords that your viewers are using to look for your blog.
3. Google XML Sitemaps – on the Internet, there’s no denying that Google is king of the search engines – if you’re not ranked on Google, you can forget about people finding your blog. This plug-in builds an XML sitemap just for search engines (including Yahoo! Ask.com and Bing), allowing them to index your site easily and retrieve it faster. Another bonus component? It notifies the search engines each time you put in a new blog post.
4. SexyBookmarks: Share/Bookmark/Email Buttons – let people share your content through email or on over 100 sites (including Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, Delicious) right from your blog.
   
5. Backup Buddy – You back-up your data on your hard drive, so why not your site? Just because your site is not on a physical drive in your home, doesn’t mean it’s 100% safe. Server errors, accidents or even malicious hackers can easily wipe away your entire blog.  This plug in backs up your databases automatically onto a server, via email or download it manually.

Of course, these are just the plug-ins to get you started when you begin building your blog. You’ll find a lot more out there, whether you’re focused on design, functionality or security – there’s a plug-in that’ll meet your every need.

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About the author

Terri Brooks helps entrepreneurs “overcome the overwhelm” of using online and social media marketing for their business. She understands their fears and feelings of confusion when it comes to marketing on Facebook, Twitter and blogs and shows them ways of Tasting The Internet…One Byte at a Time.

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