Meta Content 

1. Change the permalink in settings to %postname% – Makes the url much shorten and keyword of the page title directly under the domain name
2. Install plugin “Wp no category base” – eleminates the “category” folder so the catergory is closer to the name
3. Install “SEO slugs” – remove stop words from your slugs once you save a post, so you won’t get those ugly long URL’s when you do a sentence style post title
4. Install HeadSpace2 SEO – HeadSpace2 is an all-in-one meta-data manager that allows you to fine-tune the SEO potential of your site. Use this to make the title of your blog the title of your page. Put %%title%% in the title. Very powerful plugin, let’s you customize the page title, description, tags, and even let you add JavaScript and Stylesheet to each type of pages.
   1. Optimize the “read more” text with HeadSpace2 SEO under the Pages setting- Changes the default “more” text link to something meaningful – %%title%% – full story
   2. Check header.php and make sure wp_title(); and it looks like wp_title(”) to have full control of the header
5. SEO Friendly Image – Adds ALT and TITLE text to your images.
   1. save time from naming images, this plugin will auto generate alt and title for the image which includes %title = title of the post, %name = file name, %category , %tags
   2. ALT: %title TITLE: %title Photo
6. Add Breadcrumbs – Not sure which plugin is best to use.
7. Google XML Sitemap – generated an xml sitemap which makes it easier for Google to index the pages. Sends updates to the search engines whenever there is new content.
   1. Notify Yahoo about your updates
8. Google XML Sitemap for Videos – This generates sitemap for all the videos on your blog
9. Simple Tags – list all the tags as well, auto complete and suggestions, makes tagging very easy, auto have suggestion tags, and offers a flexible tag cloud widget
10. Yoast WordPress SEO – Has many of the features
    1. Shows title and description results just like it would show on Google
    2. Go into indexation and make the other area non indexed – this will remove some duplicate content
11. All in One SEO Pack – This plugin adds a lot of the SEO features. Once install change status to enable.

On page SEO 

1. Yet another related posts – Plugin shows related post to get readers to navigate around as well as build links
2. Automatic SEO links – Able to set up automatic links to words
3. Install wp-pagenavi Pagination –

Speed up WordPress 

1. WP Super Cache – turns pages into static html pages (might have issues with
2. WP Minify – reduces the number of files served by your web server by joining Javascript and CSS files together.
3. Yahoo! Yslow – is an extension for the Firefox add-on Firebug. It analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages. Also try the performance tools online at GTMetrix.
4. Use Google Libraries – allows you to load some commonly used Javascript libraries from Google webservers. Ironically it may reduce your Yslow score.

Other Essential Plugins 

1. Ultimate Google Analytics – keeps track of all the action that’s happening with Google Analytics
2. Disqus commenting system – The most popular commenting system

Other services 

1. Feedburner – keeps track of all the feeds that pull your RSS feed
2. CBnet Ping Optimizer – Pings services only when you make new posts not when you make edits
3. OnlyWire – Still need to research
4. Tiny MCE Advance – adds more features to the text editor such as CSS formatting

Social Networking Plugins 

1. Follow Me – This adds a side bar where users can joing the social networks from blog. Enter details for Facebook and Twitter
2. SexyBookmarks – Add bookmarking to bottom of every post – Change setting to “Most Popular”
3. WP -> Twitter – Post blog post to twitter with url and tags with hashmarks
4. FB like and Twitter to bottom of each blog post

Admin Plugins

1. Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu – Moves the menu to the top from the side