A list of essential plugins to get you going when you install WordPress for your small business site.

Not
all of these may be seen as essential, and you may argue that other
plugins may function better. This list is my standard list when
setting up a site, because I find that they get the job done, and
they make my life easier. I have included the standard description
that the plugins use to describe themselves, with added notes of why
I included it on this list.


All in One SEO Pack


Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Search Engine
Optimization is such a big deal to have your posts and site noticed.
There are other plugins for this function, but this one sets the
standard in my mind.


Version 1.6.4 | By Michael
Torbert | Visit plugin
site






Contact Form 7


Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. I found
that coding a form is not so difficult, and there are other plugins
that can help you create some fancy forms, but this one really is so
easy to use, and it gets the job done. It allows users to create
different forms (think “contact me”) for different tasks
in a clear way.


Version 2.0.1 | By Takayuki
Miyoshi | Visit
plugin site






Easy Gravatars


Add Gravatars to your comments, without requiring any
modifications to your theme files. Just activate, and you’re done! If
you are not setting up a blog style site, then you do not need this
one. A gravatar produces an image for the comment author when he does
not have one. It makes the comment section look better.


Version 1.2 | By Dougal
Campbell | Visit plugin site






Google XML Sitemaps


This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of
your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search
and YAHOO. Sitemaps are essential part of marketing your site,
because they give the search engines the data they need to direct
users to your site. This plugin generates the sitemap for you, and it
allows you to add pages that may not be part of the standard site.
Look at my sitemap, and you will find modified versions of the pages
that originally made up this site when it was dedicated to home
inspections.


Version 3.1.4 | By Arne
Brachhold | Visit
plugin site






HeadSpace2


Meta-data manager on steroids, allowing complete control over all
SEO needs such as keywords/tags, titles, description, stylesheets,
and many many other goodies. Meta-data is information stored on
your site to help search engines discover what a page or site is
about. This plugin adds some basic data that every post should have.


Version 3.6.30 | By John
Godley | Visit
plugin site





MobilePress


Turn your WordPress blog into a mobile website/blog. More users
are accessing our sites through mobile devices. This is great,
because we can reach them when they are thinking about us, rather
than later, when the inspiration to buy may not be as hot. The
problem is that our sites are designed to be seen on computer
monitors. If your site is not easy read on the screen of the latest
mobile toy, you have missed a chance to connect with a potential
client. This plugin helps solve that issue.


Version 1.0.4 | By TinyImpact
| Visit plugin site





No Self Pings


Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site. Well, I do
not care for most pings, which are like comments telling readers that
the post they are reading is linked to on another site. Often these
pings are a form of spam. What is worse is that your own site could
be setting up pings, when you have other ways to let the visitor know
about other posts. This plugin stops them.


Version 0.2 | By Michael
D. Adams | Visit
plugin site





Redirection


Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors.
Eventually, you will find that you have moved a page, changed the
link (permalink) of a post, or removed a post. With this plugin, you
can redirect the user to the new position of the page or post,
instead of having them fumble through the site.


Version 2.1.22 | By John
Godley | Visit
plugin site





Robots Meta


This plugin allows you to add all the appropriate robots meta tags
to your pages and feeds, disable unused archives and nofollow
unnecessary links. Like HeadSpace, this plugin is adding meta-data to
your site. In this case , you are telling the search engines what
not to include or to include.


Version 3.2.2 | By Joost
de Valk | Visit
plugin site





SEO No Duplicate


This plugin helps you manage your search engine duplicate content,
by setting your post page’s canonical to the permalink. Search
engines do not like duplicate content (sort of), but you also want to
make each page and post title unique. This plugin adds meta-data that
will help tell the search engines what is what.


Version 0.3.2 | By Thaya
Kareeson | Visit
plugin site





SEO Slugs


Removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs to
improve SEO. Maybe not really necessary, but I find that this
helps me make a better link for the search engines by removing some
common words to get down to the heart of the title, which may very
well be the keywords you are targeting.


Version 1.0 | By Andrei
Mikrukov | Visit
plugin site





SEO Smart Links


SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in
addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more. There
are some really fantastic plugins out there like Apture and Balloon.
Apture is great if you have a site where you want to enrich the user
experience. With this plugin, I do create a better experience for the
user by showing them where a related post may be through a link in
the post. This happens to also help with your search engine
optimization.


Version 2.1 | By Vladimir
Prelovac | Visit
plugin site





ShareThis


Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail
and posting to social bookmarking sites. Questions on configuration,
etc.? Make sure to read the README. Everyone is going social. I
share my findings with friends. This plugin allows users to share
your site with others. The other methods, but this is a commonly used
method that produces a clean look on the site. More for blogs, but it
can be used on any site.


Version 3.0.1 | By ShareThis
| Visit plugin site





Simple Tagging


Simple Tagging is another tagging plugin for WordPress: smarter,
better, faster :-)


As semantic applications become more
common, tagging will increase in importance. WordPress out of the box
has a tagging feature, and this makes it easy for the user to
discover posts on your site with related tags. This plugin enhances
the tagging features of WordPress. Version 1.7 | By Amaury
BALMER | Visit
plugin site





SpamTask


Protects your blog from comment spam, using advanced spam
filtering methods. All spam robots are caught effectively. Mentioned
in my last post. This is turning out to be a good alternative to
Akismet.


Version 1.3.3.2 | By Jenruno
| Visit plugin site





WordPress Automatic Upgrade


WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade
the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by
wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade
instructions. Thanks to Ronald
Huereca for making the plugin run in automatic mode. Oh wow
has this made working with the site so much easier. The ability to
upgrade WordPress and the plugins automatically has been a blessing.


Version 1.2.5 | By Keith
Dsouza | Visit
plugin site





WordPress Popular Posts


Retrieves the most active entries of your blog and displays them
with your own formatting (optional). Use it as a widget or
place it in your templates using <?php get_mostpopular();
?> Not all
themes have this feature, and you do see it more on blogs. If you are
selling products, and the products are listed individually on posts,
you will be able to show visitors popular items. I like the fact that
this can be placed anywhere within your theme’s template.


Version 1.5.1 | By Héctor
Cabrera | Visit
plugin site





WP-Click-Tracker


Tracks all links in posts. Maybe this is more interest to me,
since I am a data junkie. A new site may not have many visitors and
consequently clicks on links, but once you do start building up
traffic, this plug in gives you the data to understand what interests
your users.


Version 0.5.1 | By Eric
Lamb | Visit
plugin site





WP Super Cache


Very fast caching plugin for WordPress. Your files are stored
on your site in a cache, which makes it easier for the pages to load.
This plugin helps you manage this storage. This is important for
sites as they get bigger.


Version 0.9.6.1 | By Donncha
O Caoimh | Visit
plugin site WP Super Cache must be configured.





Yet Another Related Posts
Plugin


Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for
display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows
customization of the display. Not typically available on a theme,
but a great way to have your visitors explore your site by looking at
posts that are related to the one that they are reading. The longer
the user stays on your site, the better that they will become a
customer. I am under the impression that this plugin makes the server
work a bit though, which means that your site will take longer to
load. If this is an issue for you, you may want to rely SEO Smart
Links plugin more.


Version 3.0.8 | By mitcho
(Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) | Visit
plugin site





Yoast Breadcrumbs


Outputs a fully customizable breadcrumb path. Breadcrumbs are
the navigational elements that allow a user to go to the different
levels of where the post is connected. For example, you could have
Home>Category 1>Category 2 or subcategory 1>post title.
Again, this gives the user the option to explore the site. Some
themes have this navigational system built in, but this plugin makes
it simple to include breadcrumbs on your site. This plugin will also
add a feed on your dashboard from the developers site.


Version 0.8.4 | By Joost
de Valk | Visit
plugin site





There
they are. Again, some of these plugins may not be needed, but I feel
that they enhance the user experience ( a key factor in site design
to me), while helping the search engines find you.