Plugin-tizing the site to optimize search engine visibility, increase traffic & improve stickiness of the blog
Now that the site is up & running the next thing will do is personalize it with some plug-ins. Plugins by definition are simply add-ons to your site which add functionality & personality. There are many types of plugins but right now I’m only concerned with plugins that will help increase the sites visibility to search engines, increase traffic & help build a community around the site to keep readers coming back.
I’m using Wordpress to publish this site so below are a list of plugins blog’s just shouldn’t live without. If you are not using Wordpress, why not?! 
Kidding, but I’ve used a few different publishing software applications and Wordpress was the best of the lot by far. But I digress, on to the goods!
A handy plugin that can add Google Analytics to your website without you needing to code one single set of <>’s. The best feature of this plugin is it will track which outgoing links your users click on - i.e. the ones that don’t traditionally register in your logs.
Allows you to easily implement AdSense, YPN, & Chitika ads in your blog, & even inside individual posts. The plugin also allows you to customize the way ads look or appear on your site without ever having to go to your Adsense control Panel.
Optimal Title is a WordPress plugin that mirrors the function of wp_title() exactly, but moves the position of the ’separator’ to after the title rather than before. This allows you to have your blog name tacked on to the end of the page title instead of having it appear first. Simply put it will make your site more visible to search engines.
Using some WordPress plugin magic, and user agent detection, this plugin simply forwards all your feed traffic to FeedBurner. The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well.
Social sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon & Del.icio.us are extremely important tools for driving traffic to your site. The sociable plugin makes it easy for your readers to share your articles to the top social sites.
This plugin allows commenter’s on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenter’s to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.
Like I said before, there are many types of plugins & I’m sure I neglected to mention some top quality ones. To see a list of all existing plugins view the Wordpress Plugin Directory.
