Self-hosted WordPress blogs are probably the fastest way to get to the top of the natural search engine listings. There are literally thousands of WordPress plugins available but here I will discuss just a few that help with SEO and ultimately top search engine rankings.

The main WordPress plugin that really helps with SEO and search engine rankings is All in One SEO Pack This plugin does several very important things. The latest version of this plugin has options for adding your WordPress blogs home title, description and keywords. The most advantageous option for SEO is the Rewrite Titles option. This option will display the more search engine friendly title of your post before the name of your blog in the title tag. Helping the keywords in your post title getting picked up first by the search engines.

The other WordPress plugin that helps with search engine rankings is Google (XML) Sitemaps. Installing this plugin will build a sitemap for you WordPress blog and automatically notify Google of any updates. There is also an option to include Yahoo with the inclusion of a Yahoo application ID.

Using the keyword rich title of your post in the URL will also help with SEO and search engine rankings. This can be done using a custom Permalink structure. Read more about custom Permalinks here: WordPress Custom Permalink Structure

These plugins and options as well as good keyword rich titles and of course good original content all contribute to top search engine rankings. Continued use of these tactics will get you in the top of of the search engines in no time. Don’t believe me? check this Google search for WordPress Guides. This site, running on WordPress, is on the first page of Google for the term WordPress Guides in under a month. It doesn’t even have a page rank as of the post it is so new.

This post was inspired by Carl Hendricks of Home Based Business Prosperity Carl asked this question on the Ask WordPress Max Questions About WordPress How do plugins - WordPress or otherwise - help your blog rise in search engine ranking? Visit his blog Home Based Business Prosperity and website CEHMagic. Thanks Carl for contributing to the blog!

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AdSense-Deluxe is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin for WordPress 1.5+ (including WP 2.0) for quickly inserting Google or Yahoo! ads into your blog posts, and managing when and where those ads are displayed.

If I installed your blog then Adsense-Deluxe should already be installed and would just need activated and configured. If it is not already installed you can follow these instructions watch the WordPress videos below or contact me to do it for you.

Installing the Adsense-Deluxe For WordPress plugin is very easy, just copy the adsense-deluxe.php file to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory. So if your blog were installed in the root directory of your site login to your hosting accounts file manager, go to the “wp-contents” folder then the “plugins” folder and place the file in there.

Now login to your WordPress admin panel, go to “plugins” and activate the Adsense-Deluxe For WordPress plugin on the right. Clicking the main “Options” panel should now present you with a new “AdSenseDeluxe” subpanel click that and let’s get started.

In the options for AdSense-Deluxe plugin page on the right click “(Add New)”, under “New AdSense Block” put a name for your new block, if this is your first one it will revert to the default name so it really doesn’t matter what you call the first block. Now just paste your AdSense code in the “AdSense Code” box and click “Add AdSense Block”

Adding additional blocks will now add the name of each new block, for example if you create a new block called “new” will return a name that looks like this:

<!—adsense—>

Placing the ad blocks into posts is as simple as pasting in the name of the block where you want the ads to appear, but you must paste them into the “code” box and not the “Visual” box in the “Write Post” screen. You could write your post in “Visual” mode and then switch it “Code” and paste the AdSense block wherever you want.

There is an Adsense-Deluxe drop-down box that can be used from the Write Post panel but only if you chose not to use the visual editor when writing. To turn this option off go to Users, then the Your Profile subpanel and uncheck the box next to “Use the visual editor when writing”. Now the AdSense Deluxe drop-down box will only appear after you click the “Save and Continue Editing” box when writing or editing a post. Simply place your curser where you want your AdSense ads to appear in the post and select what code you want from the drop-down box.

I suggest creating a post template filled with all your AdSense codes (and anything else you may want), just start a new post called “Post Template” and save it without publishing it. Then when you write a new post open the post template in “Code” copy the code and paste it into your new post. Now delete what you don’t want in your new post, add the new content and publish.

Adsense-Deluxe is one of the WordPress plugins that is very versatile and you can use it for more than ads, you can put anything you want into the “AdSense Code” block and display just about anything you wish. There are also some advanced options for using it in templates in the read me file.

Grab the AdSense-Deluxe WordPress Plugin over at the Acme Technologies Zeitgeist blog.

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I am constantly messing with my blogs and trying new plugins and checking out new WordPress themes. Up until lately I used a plugin called the Installer to upload WordPress themes and plugins from the dashboard. But the Installer plugin is no longer supported by the author and it is very hard to find.

Not to worry though because there is another plugin that does the job just fine called OneClick. Taken from the authors site:

“Oneclick is my first wordpress plugin. It allows uploading of a plugin or theme without the need of manually uploading by FTP, allowing the upload from the Admin panel. All you have to do is browse for the zip file and click “upload” and the plugin does the rest.” - Anirudh Sanjeev

This should be the last WordPress plugin you need to install (if your hosting account allows .php uploads. More on that later…

Installation is the normal plugin installation procedure:

1. FTP upload the entire Oneclick folder to wp-content/plugins.
2. CHMOD (change the file permissions) of the following folders to 777

• wp-content/themes/
• wp-content/plugins/
• wp-content/plugins/oneclick/

3. Activate “OneClick Installer” from your dashboard plugins menu.

Using Oneclick is pretty straight forward, from the main Dashboard panel click the OneClick Install subpanel. Browse to the .zip file to upload, choose the file type from the drop down box and click Upload. OneClick only supports uploading .zip files at this time so there is no reason to inzip any of the plugins and themes before using OneClick.

After the file is uploaded you can activate the theme or plugin from their respective panels. If you don’t get a notice like show below then you may have the same server side issues I had with my hosting account.

I had to contact my hosting account and explain to them that WordPress could not upload files from within the dashboard. You can test this before you install OneClick by trying to upload a file from the write post screen just below the post editor. If you can’t upload ask your hosting account to fix this probably because of security issues for access to the tmp folder.

OneClick is one of the best plugins for people who are always tinkering with their WordPress blog. Grab it over at Thought Outflux.

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WordPress out of the box is already superior to Blogger and, in my opinion, one of the best blogging platforms for bloggers. But to max out WordPress you really need to get all the right plugins installed and working to your advantage for optimal performance and viral traffic generation.

I know the Internet is filled with posts about the best WordPress plugins but hey I can start one too right?

Here is a list of the Top WordPress Plugins For SEO And Web 2.0 I posted on one of my other blogs.

• Adsense-Deluxe - Place Google AdSense ads in your WordPress posts.
• Adsense-Deluxe+ Widget - Place Google AdSense ads as a widget. Requires AdSense-Deluxe Plugin. I don’t use this, as you can see all my AdSense is within the post.
• Akismet - Akismet is one of the default plugins, it checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”
• All in One SEO Pack - Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.
• FeedBurner Feed Replacement - Forwards all feed traffic to FeedBurner while letting through some important User-Agents.
• Google (XML) Sitemaps - This generator will create a sitemaps.org compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog, which are supported By Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
• Gregarious - The ultimate social bookmarking plugin.
• MyBlogLog Widget - Adds MyBlogLog widget to your blog.
• OneClick Installer - Upload themes and plugins from the dashboard.
• Smart Update Pinger - Replaces the built-in ping/notify functionality. Pings only when publishing new posts, not when editing.
• Social Bookmarks - Social Bookmarks adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.
• Subscribe To Comments - Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
• Tagalize It - - Create tagged text by enclosing the text to be tagged in one of the following. [TAG-Tec] [Tag-Ice] and [Tag-self].
• Ultimate Tag Warrior - Ultimate Tag Warrior is a tagging plugin, that’s heavy on tag visualization.
• What Would Seth Godin Do - Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors.
• WordPress.com Stats - Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.
• WordPress Database Backup - On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

Most of these are for Web 2.0 and SEO, like all the social bookmarking plugins I included. In fact with all the Web 2.0 buzz around the web lately it seems a new social plugin pops up every day.

I know there are literally thousands of plugins available nd this list will grow and change over time. I also know everyone has their list of favorite WordPress plugins, so what do you think I should add to the list?

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