List of free WordPress Plugins I use on my Blogs
1. Kwayy HTML Sitemap
This plugin will create a visual site map for your website. You get a short code to paste on the Sitemap page and you are set. Very easy. A sitemap is very important for the browser navigation. The inter linking of your pages and poast are important for SEO too.
Here is a link to the plugin page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/kwayy-html-sitemap/
2. ELI’s Related Posts Footer Links and Widget
This plugin is important to me for inter linking my pages. At the end of each post this plugin will create links to related links on your blog. This is great for SEO.
Here is the link to page: http://wordpress.org/plugins/spostarbust/
3. Google Analytics for WordPress
Google Analytics will give you loads of stats and details of user behavior, clicks, geographical stats and much more. There are some people that say you should not add this because Big G will be able to monitor you. I use it to see what pages are visited most, bounce rate, time on site, geo and keywords used to find me.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/
4. Cookies for Comments
I delete Akismet plugin on all my blogs and install this free plugin to combat spam comments on my blog. This is the only plugin I have seen Matt Cutts recommend to use on your blog.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cookies-for-comments/
5. Contact Form 7
This is a free contact form that you can modify for your blog. This must be the most used contact form plugin on the net with almost 20 million downloads to date.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/
6. Hide WordPress Version
This is a hacker hardener. It will not protect you from hackers, but it will make it harder to find your blog.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hide-wordpress-version/
7. Limit Login Attempts
This is another hardener for your blog. This will lock your website as soon as some robot tries to guess your login details of your blog.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/limit-login-attempts/
8. WordPress Firewall 2 or Wordfence
This is another hardener. This WordPress plugin monitors web requests to identify and stop the most obvious attacks.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-firewall-2/
or use Wordfence which is more up to date
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/
9. Platinum SEO Pack
I always used All in One SEO but for the last 2 years I have been using this one for completing meta tags for each page. I also use the no follow feature to block crawlers from indexing my Disclosure and Privacy Policy page. All these pages look the same and I don’t want to penalized for it.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/platinum-seo-pack/
10. Pretty Link
This is a very handy plugin to make your affiliate links look like pages on your website.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pretty-link/
11. Google Sitemap Generator
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
All of these plugins are very basic in what they do but they will help your website rank and give the search engines some love to rank.
Do you have any free plugin that you can recommend?
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