WordPress works just fine straight out of the box. It has an impressive range of features. There are also modules which provide additional functionality. These are called plugins.

The following list of best WordPress plugins are those I have used (and in most cases still use) or have been highly recommended by others.

Comment SPAM

Akismet: Checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days.

SEO

Head META Description: Insert HTML META description tag: excerpt/content brief for post/Page, description for category, and blog tagline for everything else.
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Over the last year we have focussed on SEO to grow the traffic to this blog. We are just starting to see good results with traffic and revenues lifting (Although it hasn’t been reflected in Alexa raking).

Now its time to look at other methods of increasing traffic.

The most common advice is to build an email list. Having tried this in the past we have decided not to pursue because:

• If your accused of spam, there is a risk your whole online business will be shut down
• Spam filters shut out a lot of legitimate traffic
• The size of your email list cannot be measured in any way by search engines so it doesn’t count towards SEO.

So we have decided to build our RSS feed readership.

In researching best way to achieve this we learned a lot about Feedburner & SEO.
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Hostgator is consistantly one of the top rated hosting companies, both for their customer service and hosting performance.

Their hosting plans are very competitive but you can get an even better deal using a combination of the Hostgator discount coupons and our offer below.

Here is the coupon codes for the shared hosting plans (Hatchling, Baby & Business) and the reseller plans. The coupon provides a 20% discount your next hosting plan or order with HostGator. It is:

Use the coupon code hgnews05

If you’d like a WordPress blog or PHP Link Directory setup for free, then after you have signed up leave a comment below. In your comment please note your domain name and the date/time your submitted your order.

When setting up your wordpress blog you can select the theme of your choice, and you will also get few of my favourite plugins to make your blog very SEO friendly as well.

Your PHP Link Directory installation can be either the free of the paid version. Installation of a custom theme is not included not is the purchase of the paid phpld license.

To take advantage of this offer you must use this link for shared plans and this link for the reseller plan

Latest Coupon code:  Save 20% on your next hosting plan or order with HostGator. Use the coupon code hgnews05

If you’ve been searching for ways to keep visitors coming back to your blog, then I found something which may help

Enter:

Google to the rescue – they recently released Version 4 of their toolbar and added some awesome new features:

* Search Suggestions – When you’re typing in a search, similar searches are automatically displayed for you to choose from (Kind of like an intelligent autocomplete)
* Server-Side Bookmarks – Now you can save bookmarks and access them from any computer that has the (free) Google Toolbar installed!
* Custom Buttons – This is what I’m the most excited about (so is Matt Cutts of Google, coincidently) – these custom buttons will allow your visitors to stay up to date with your blog the easy way – automatically.

That’s right – automatically. All they have to do is click a link on your blog and your custom button will be added to their google toolbar. Then they will be able to easily visit your site, see what’s new via your RSS feed, and even search your blog – right from the toolbar!

To find out more go here WP Goobar