Best Keywords for Blog Posts via KeywordCorralMooonetize and Optimize with Wordpress Plugins
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It seems that every time I visit a blog, I see features that I didn’t see on the previous blog. With so many different developers and designers out there, I often wonder what kinds of plugins and which ideas really are best for a website. The list below will summarize a few of my favorite plugins. These are the plugins that help me to optimize, and monetize my blog most efficiently.
- Optimizing
- Akismet Spam Blocker: This is an absolute must! Blocking comment SPAM can be a constant challenge without this plugin. All you have to do is get the free API and click “activate”. I think that some people are hesitant or just plain lazy and end up not getting the needed API for this plugin. It’s free, it reduces your workload automatically, and it works!
- All-In-One SEO Pack: This plugin is really a must for any blogger or website developer. “This plugin is streamlined for some best practices for Wordpress SEO”. The All-In-One SEO pack helps you to effectivey raise your search engine ranking on a page-by-page level by adding tags, descriptions and titles more efficiently.
- CForms II: Every blog needs a contact page. Although much more than just a contact page form builder,CFormsII is a full-featured, AJAXian plugin that makes it easy for you to create forms and add them to your pages. Including SPAM protection like CAPTCHA imges is a snap. Although the interface may seem a bit complex, this plugin is really the Cadillac of forms for Wordpress.
- Google XML Sitemaps: Submitting your sitemap to Google manually can be a time consuming task. Lucky for us, there is this free plugin that does it automatically after every post. Not only does it keep Google abreast of your updates, it also helps to increase your findability on web searches.
- ShareThis: Social Bookmarking is a great way to gain site visitors. Accounting for a large chunk of traffic and exposure, adding links to sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon is now really easy to do and takes just one mouse click.
- Viper’s Video Quicktags: Adding video content to blog posts can be a real pain. You can’t really do it in the visual editor and sometimes the code just doesn’t work properly with Wordpress. Viper’s video quicktags helps to ease the process and makes adding video to your posts a snap.
- Monetizing
- AdSense Manager: Do you have Google AdSense? Then you know that sometimes adding the code to your site is not as straightforward as you’d like. With this plugin, you can automatically generate AdSense code and position the ads via widgets.
- FeedBurner FeedSmith: I’m not really sure if this belongs in this category or if it belongs in the “optimization” category. FeebBurner FeedSmith helps you to easily make available and visible your FeedBurner feed. The reason I have this here is that I monetize my RSS Feed, so if you don’t have or use FeedBurner to manage your RSS, you really should!
- PayPal Donate: If you want to have an easy way for your readers to send you money, than this is it! Adding a quickly recognizable PayPal button to your posts or pages, this plugin makes it easy for you to receive money through PayPal.
- RSS Footer: Tying in with the above mentioned FeedBurner plugin, RSS footer is the “how” you monetize your RSS feed. Adding affiliate links or paid advertising is a snap and you can be as creative as you want to be in how to monetize the feed.
- Triggit: I’ve been using Triggit now for about a week. It’s so easy to add links to Amazon, Commission Junction, Shopping.com, and others, this plugin makes monetizing your blog really easy.
- WP-Amazon: Amazon.com is one of the world’s biggest online retailers. Now adding contextually relevant links to your posts is a snap!
I hope this list has given you some sense of how easy it is to manage your blog. The links above are free plugins that help me to optimize and monetize my blog, and I hope you find them useful. What plugins would you add to this list and what kind of plugins do you wished existed for Wordpress?
Nick is a 20-something full time grad student and full time IT guy. Specializing in Information Architecture, he often dabbles in online projects. His latest project, a blog at http://www.learnhow2earn.com, is a blog that details his online money making experiences. Like what he has to say? Check him out and drop a comment!
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Hey Nick,
You’ve listed some good plugins here for a new blogger. While it has some merit, I’m still not convinced of the value of listing commonly know plugins. The formatting of the post is awful. There’s a tiny column running down the page listing all the plugins. Perhaps it’s just my browser. If not :???:
Also, there are some typos. I believe you meant Akimet Spam Blocker not BLOGER. This leads me to believe that the post was not proofread.
While this is certainly not a personal attack on you Nick (I really enjoyed your last post), it raises some questions about the quality of posts being published on John Cow dot Com. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I understand that the Cow is away, but I still think there is a better solution.
What are your thoughts?
P.S. I not a mean guy, I just want to see one of my favorite blogs me successful!
*Askimet
hmmm….thank you, your information :mrgreen:
It’s good to see people using my rss footer plugin in so many creative ways :) Thanks for the link!
Akismet :-)
@Hafiz: You’re absolutely right, I did mean blocker.
While I do proofread my posts a minimum of 3 times, I am human and sometimes things do get by my “filter”. I’ll see what I can do to fix that right away. Now, per the “skinny column” thing, I’m not sure what that’s all about. That may be a problem somewhere else because it looks fine on my end.
All the best,
Nick
You don’t have to flame! (Though the tiny column is quite annoying.) Everyone knows what he meant by Akismet, let sleeping dogs…sleep.
I will testify that the AIO SEO plugin is the most valuable plugin ever created. Although, I would hate to moderate hundreds of spam comments a day, so Akismet is at a very close second.
Great list, Nick and congrats on another guest post! :smile:
@Hafiz: Unfortunately I am unable to change the spelling after a post has been published. I hope that this type-o hasn’t changed the worth of my post. This brings up an interesting question: Do small typeo’s really impact the meaning of a post?
@Fat Kid Unleased: Thanks! I’ll check out AIO SEO and glad you liked the post.
I have tried the donate button and had just one donation. Better than nothing and much apprecaited!
@ Nick - I took the liberty of fixing the “skinny column” for you (since I have admin access). It’s really my fault anyway, since the banner image that caused the problem was down to my plugin. :oops:
Back on topic: there is one plugin that I want to draw to people’s attention, that works amazingly well in combination with Askimet. It’s such a simple plugin, you might normally overlook it. The TanTan spam filter is like a pre-filter, and stops the really obvious spam ever getting to Askimet:
http://www.simonemery.co.uk/202/fighting-spam-the-simple-way/
I installed it on my own blog when I started getting large amounts of spam, and now moderation is so much easier, because I hardly have any Askmiet entries to look through. I’ve asked the Askimet guys to add in a pre-filter to their plugin, but doubt they will.
As for monetising, can I be a little bit selfish and mention OIOPublisher? Both the free and paid versions seem to be worthwhile for those who use them. :grin:
Personally I would preferred Shylock Adsense.
http://www.planetlowyat.com/blog/introduce-shylock-adsense-wordpress-plugin/
Hey, even i wrote a Plugin post recently. I hope no one minds of i leave a link
http://www.satishsays.com/2008/01/17/10-wordpress-plugins-to-make-life-simpler/
Thank for the mention of Triggit. I am glad its working well for you.
Zach
@Simon,
Thanks for fixing the skinny column thing. As for OIOPublisher, is that the plugin that does the inline ads for this site?
@ Nick : I think a typo sometimes impacts the meaning of a post. If I’m reading a guest post, I might be turned off that the author makes a typo. Although it’s not that big a deal, it might leave a bad first impression. However, if I’m reading a blog that I am familiar with spelling mistakes don’t matter to me at all. I read blogs that provide me with meaningful content, and one small typo won’t really affect that.
I decided to submit a guest post myself and I’ve fair amount of work into it. Hopefully it gets published!
Nice plugin list Nick. I’ve found All-In-One SEO to be very helpful. I’m going to give the Viper Vid plugin a shot… sounds like it will make adding vids pretty easy.
Great list. I have most on my wordpress blog. And I got to say that most of them on your list is a must have. I made myself a top 15. Akismet is the most important one imo.
Great post!
Great post! I definitely need the Amazon plugins.
@Hafiz - Worthwhile proofing your own comments if you’re going to go down that path … “I not a mean guy, I just want to see one of my favorite blogs me successful!”
@ Neil Duckett - Perhaps, but I wrote that comment with emotion and I was intent on submitting it. Making a typo in a comment isn’t a big deal compared to a post. Besides, the path I was going down wasn’t really about the typo. My main point was that I didn’t feel that a list of commonly know plugins would benefit readers.
Interesting post, I’ll keep this in mind.
-Mike
@ Nick - No problem, and yes, OIOPublisher does the inline ads (and all the other advertising display) for this blog.
Really interested. Pluggins will do great. Thank u
Thanks for the list, some good WP plugins I missed. Cheers.
Boston Bachelor
Already installed most of the plugins, you’ve listed and more. I was just wondering whether the “Save to del.icio.us • Stumble It! (1 Reviews) • Submit To Propeller • Digg This! • Share on Facebook” is a plugin or has it manually been written. I wanted to add a similar thing on my blog but have no idea.
As for monetizing WP plugins, I would suggest also WPAds (I am not the author, but the plugin really rocks). What the function is it creates zones on which you can place ads, and then rotates them. It works just great for adsense, banner or any other type of ads (i am actually using it for different purposes).
A nice compilation tho ;)
good list John and it seems every month theres a whole new list.
Earn money through all this sounds interesting. :smile:
Nice plugins collection, thanks for sharing
I to use some of these plugs and the All In One SEO Pack is probablly the best set of SEO options you will ever see. If only vb had so many seo options :)
We use most of the plugins mentioned, the feedburner one is pretty cool.
How about Adsense Ready WP Themes? I’ve used it on one bog, and its CTR upto 30%, but 20% on average.