Don’t get me wrong, I love WordPress. I have been a WordPress exclusive user for almost 2 years. I used to use Joomla, but after several painstaking situations that nearly made me lose my mind, I took my friend’s advice and switched over to WordPress for good. It was the best move I ever made.

But I still have trouble painting the perfect picture that a lot of people try to paint of WordPress. WordPress does have its drawbacks, whether we like it or not. I compare it to Apple Computers. If you own a Mac, you will find it difficult to give even a small amount of criticism. You support the brand and have the kind of die hard loyalty that some companies only dream of. This loyalty is not realistic, and gives you unrealistic expectations, so when you get into a disappointing situation, you are far more disappointed than you should be with the resolve.

Back to WordPress for a minute. I have only run into this situation a few times, but when I do, it is insanely frustrating. I download a plugin, install it and get a big fat “FATAL ERROR” message. I talk to other people running wordpress, and can’t find a good answer as to why it works for them but not me. I am running the latest version of wordpress, and I am up to date with everything, so everything should be ok. I even tested the plugin on another blog (same server) with no error messages.  My only assumption is that there is another plugin conflicting with this new plugin, but I don’t know which one it would be… ARGH!

So, I think it’s fair to say that there’s something stupid going on here. I mean, the only WordPress installation that I EVER have problems with is this one (http://nicknorris.net/). It’s one thing after another, after another, and so on.

WordPress is one of the only frameworks that I have ever seen that is Search Engine Friendly straight out of the box. You don’t need to configure any of the source code or .htaccess. You simply install, change a couple of the site settings, and BAM! An SEF website is born…

If you’re anything like me, you want to maximize your search engine exposure, and you don’t want to do a lot of things manually. You want it done now, and you want it retroactively applied to your entire site. A few years ago, you probably would have laughed and called me unrealistic, but now… it’s a reality. Here is a list of 5 WordPress plugins that improve SEO, and they can be intalled, configured, and working in less than 5 minutes.

1) All In One SEO – Duh, right?! I know! If you are not using this plugin yet, you should be. Not only does it help you with optimizing your page titles and keywords, it also helps you adjust your follow/nofollow/index/noindex attributes. One of the latest features of the All in One SEO Plugin is that it AUTOMATICALLY canonicalizes your post URLs so no one can jack your content, and so you don’t have multiple indexed posts under tags/categories/etc… Simply put, it helps fight duplicate content penalties in search engines.

Download the All in One SEO Pack

2) Linkubaitor –  Linkubaitor is the easiest plugin ever. There are no settings to configure. It just is… Here’s what the Linkubaitor does. It creates an HTML box at the bottom of your post that your readers can copy/paste into their own blog/website. It uses the title of the post as anchor text, so it’s very good for SEO. The default color scheme is ugly, but you can edit it very easily in your plugins editor.

Download Linkubaitor

3) Headspace – Ok, so Headspace is similar to All in One SEO, but it’s smaller and has less configuration options. Originally, Headspace was the only plugin that allowed for canonicalization, but once Google introduced that they will be including the header tag for canonicalized URLs in their index data, everyone else jumped on board.  Headspace also allows you to add Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and other tracking code directly into your posts. Also, if you use other SEO plugins for WordPress, you can import the settings.

Download Headspace (Headspace2 SEO)

4) SEO Friendly Images – Never underestimate the power of search engine friendly images. SEO Friendly Images plugin automatically adds the ALT and TITLE attributes to images. It’s also RETROACTIVE, and will fix all of the old images on your site, so it’s never too late to have SEO Friendly Images.

Download SEO Friendly Images

5) AskApache Google 404 Plugin – I know that I have written about this before, but everything bears repeating. This plugin is a godsend. It customizes you 404 (not found) page, and gives a list of similar posts by keyword. Also, if you move your blog from one diorectory to another, it creates clean 301 redirects to the new URLs seamlessly. I LOVE THIS PLUGIN!!! You can even edit the plugin source code so it works with your adsense account, and you can make some extra money!

Download AskApache Google 404

What are your favorite plugins for WordPress SEO?

So that’s my list and I’m sticking to it! I don’t want to see a bunch of emails about things that I left out (i.e. Sitemaps XML, Automatic SEO Links, Robots Meta, etc…) I just created this list as a way to show appreciation for the developers who create amazingly helpful plugins for wordpress. If you have suggestions, you can leave your suggestions in the comments.