17 Essential WordPress Plugins That You Need Running On Your Blog

Why am I going to share with you the 17 Essential WordPress Plugins that you need running on your blog?

Well, for one…I love WordPress. Wait….wait…wait…I mean, I LOVE WordPress.

I absotively posilutely believe that WordPress is, by far, the best blogging platform that you could choose to have your blog running on.

Google, Yahoo, and Bing love WordPress, too! And if it’s good enough for them….it sure as hell is good enough for me.

Now, believe me when I tell you that WordPress is very powerful out-of-the-box. You can’t go wrong with using the plain-vanilla version of WordPress.

But…the insanely genius part of WordPress is that they made it possible for other developers to extend the capabilities of WordPress through the use of plugins.

So, today, I wanted to share with you 17 Essential WordPress Plugins that you need running on your blog right now.

Essential WordPress Plugins List

1. All In One SEO Pack – The All In One SEO Pack WordPress plugin optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines. You will be able to optimize the Title, Description, and Keywords for each post and page. If I didn’t add it to the essential WordPress plugins list, I would probably get a whole backlash of negative comments. This is one of the first plugins that you have to make sure you install into your WordPress blog.

2. Comment Luv – With CommentLuv you can reward your readers and commenters by automatically placing a link to their latest blog posts at the end of their comment. This is a great way to promote your contributors as well.

3. Comment Redirect – Redirect commenters who just made their first comment to a page of your choice. Many marketers choose to redirect their commenters to a page where they can opt-in to their email list. You can see why this made the essential wordpress plugins list.

4. Top Commentators Widget – This plugin allows for a little more incentive for visitors to comment as they will be showcased in the ‘top commentators’ sidebar section on your blog.

5. PopUp Domination – PopUp Domination allows for a javascript popup to display on your blog and is an excellent tool to increase your email opt-ins.

6. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin generates a special XML sitemap that is submitted to the major search engines and helps them to better index your blog. Personally, I’ve seen my posts indexed with Google within 10-15 minutes of being posted.

7. SEO Slugs – Removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs to improve SEO. You might want to double check your slugs when using this plugin, though. Sometimes it doesn’t make much sense. Just keep an eye on it.

8. SEO Smart Links – SEO Smart Links provided automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.

9. SEOPressor Unlimited – The plugin made the essential WordPress plugins list because, although it’s not free, you will want to run this bad boy so you can almost guarantee top ten positions on Google for your chosen keyword.

10. What Would Seth Godin Do – Seth Godin advocates using cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your site. This plugin implements that idea. The gray box that I have at the beginning of this post is the WWSGD plugin in action.

11. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – You can see at the bottom of this post that I recommend other posts for you to read on my blog. This plugin displays a list of related entries on your site and feeds based on a unique algorithm.

12. SexyBookmarks – Adds an attractive social bookmarking menu to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three.

13. Facebook Share (New) – Make it easy for your visitors to share your content on Facebook. This plugin adds a button which allows you to share posts and also shows the number of times the post or page has been shared throughout Facebook.

14. TweetMeme Retweet Button – Adds a button that easily lets you retweet your blog posts. Similar to the Facebook Share (New) plugin.

15. FD Feedburner Plugin – Redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed seamlessly and transparently to Feedburner.com. Although there isn’t much emphasis anymore on RSS feeds, it’s still quite nice to see the stats that Feedburner provides.

16. Follow Me – Provides a fixed tab on the right side of the page that makes it easy to share your social profiles with visitors and redirect them to your profiles.

17. WordPress.com Stats – If you’re a stataholic, then you’ll understand why this made the essential WordPress plugins list. Provides number of visits, search engine keyword results, and out clicks. Comes in handy if want your ego rubbed a little. Use of this plugin does require that you have a WordPress.com account.

What Should You Do With This List of Essential WordPress Plugins?

Download them, install them, and use them. Although there are a few more plugins that I use on my blog, these are by far the most essential.

You will see an increase in traffic, an increase in readership, and more readers converting into leads for your business.

Leave a comment below and share what you think about the list of plugins above. If you have other essential WordPress plugins that didn’t make this list make sure you share them too.

Related posts:

1. Popup Domination WordPress Plugin – Is it Worth It?
2. Three Ways to Install a WordPress Plugin
3. How I Generated a Blog Traffic Increase of 273% in One Week
4. How to Never Run Out of Things to Blog About
5. How to Get Your Blog Indexed in Google in Under 24 Hours