*We've updated this post with the latest tools and plugins for your enjoyment and benefit.*

Wordpress is probably the easiest and most malleable blog tool on the web that functions on Apache. Although it doesn't permit complete customization, it does provide a solid blogging tool with many additions to keep you're information and SEO needs satisfied.

We don't use many plugins, but over the past 12 months Distinct SEO has learned a few things through trials and tribulations. Here is a list of some of the plugins we use ideal for building a community and optimizing wordpress blogs.

Top Wordpress Plugins for Search Engine Optimization

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the their web service for spam. Originally I never used the services, but after my blogs became popular I got the API key and turned it on. So far it has solved the blatant spam junk from hitting my comments.

Custom Query String

With this tool you can change the number of posts displayed when viewing different archive pages including the home page. That means I can dictate the number of posts per page for feed, comments, archive, categories, home, and more pages.

Peter's Custom Anti-Spam

Akismet does the job, but before I had this installed. It provides added protection against spambots. It prevents a number of bots from posting in the comment section. Initially this plugin prevented trackbacks but the update has solved this bug.

SimpleTags

This plugin permits each post to have unique lists of Technorati tags. You have to insert the tags manually which is sometimes a drag cause I forget to do it.

Subscribe To Comments

This is a good way to give people a chance (to remind them to come back) to return to your blog when somebody responds to a comment they've made.

Text Control

Get rid of special characters within the body of your text. Convert " into " and not &@#$ (or whatever it is.) This ensures there are no keywords mucked up with special characters. (This doesn't help in the titles though.)

Wordpress Mobile Plugin

One thing with Wordpress is you can extend your reach to different audiences easily. This plugin enables you to facilitate mobile visitors. A mobile friendly version of your blog displays. The best part, you can get you own Admob advertiser number and start making money from the ads (since the developer included Admob within the plugin).

WP Cache

We don't use WP cache often, only when traffic climbs, but this plugin is supposed to return a c

WP Navi - Pagination

Heres is a solution for pagination on your blogs. Trying to get some pages out of the supplementals? Well this will help pass Page Rank from your homepage to some deeper archive pages. Read the full instructions on how to apply.

Feeburner FeedSmith

Are you signed up at Feedburner? You should be because it offers a wide array of analytics information about your feed subscribers. This plugin enables you to maintain your own feed on your own web site, redirecting to your feedburner feed rather than forcing you to replace it with your own....

Popularity Contest

This is a good way to give people an idea of what's popular on your blog and hopefully encourage them to stick around and read some more. A good tool to build a sense of community.

Enforce www. preference

Although you can do the same thing with .htaccess, many people do not have the skill to edit the file safely. This ensures that not only will your blog redirect http:// to http://www., but index.php redirects to /.

Text Pattern

Unfortunately, we hit a major snag with our blog one day. On one site we moved a forum to a subfolder from the index, and the blog to the index. This caused problems. All protected directories were being re-directed to the 404 Wordpress error page. This was a major pain in the butt and no matter who we chatted with, no amount of .htaccess monkeying could fix the problems. All our Apache gurus couldn't find a fix, but after some careful searching we did find one, that was actually very simple. Visit TextPattern for more details.

WordPress Database Backup

On-demand backup of your WordPress database. easy to install, easy to use if you're permission are right. This comes with the basic wordpress install.

WordPress Adsense Deluxe

Used to incorporate adsense (or any ad type) within each blog post.

This was a rundown of the plugins we use on most of our blogs. There are a few more we use for individual blogs like Youtube and Textlinkads plugins. Otherwise, the key ones used above are noted. You'll see we did not include any meta tag plugin because the ones we've encountered weren't any good.

We have also included a few mods to the styles and headers for things like title tags, and social bookmarking. I didn't link most of them since this is a quick post, but just do a quick Google search and you'll find it. If you have trouble just leave a comment and I'll send the link to you. Hope this helps you run a successful blog in the future!

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