Listed below are some of the best SEO Plugins for WordPress, which either enhance WordPress features or just make things easier.

SEO
Meta Robots WordPress Plugin – Adds meta tags automatically to posts
Aizatto’s Related Posts – Adds related post information to posts and feeds
Cross-Linker – Set up commonly used words to link to posts or redirects (also useful for affiliate links)
Sitemap Generator – Automatically builds and HTML style sitemap
Google (XML) Sitemaps – Automatically build and ping multiple sitemap services with an XML file
HeadSpace 2 – A monster plugin that lets you rewrite titles, meta data, and host of other features watch the video on the page for the full list of features
SEO Title Tag – Don’t need all the power of Headspace try SEO title tag
SEO Slugs – keeps slugs from becoming too long

Utilities
Secure Form Mailer – makes building and integrating multiple and custom forms easy
FeedBurner FeedSmith – Makes integrating with feedburner easy
Feed Footer – Adds advertising, copyright or other custom messages into feeds
Flickr Photo Album – Integrate your flickr photo’s, albums, sets, and groups into your website
flickrRSS for WordPress – add photos from any flickr RSS feed into your website
Future Posts Calendar Plugin – A calendar that shows which days you have posts scheduled to publish, very helpful for multiple authors and scheduled posts.
Full Text Feed – Lets you use the “more” tag and still publish full feeds
GoCodes Redirection Plugin – Add tiny URL style functionality into your blog
Got Banners – Makes adding advertising banners quick and easy without having to monkey with the template
Highlight Author Comments – Makes giving authors comments a different style much easier
Objection Redirection! – Makes setting 301’s (especially lots of them) easy as pie
WordPress Organizer – Makes adding and managing uploads and images easier
Who Sees Ads – Makes ads or other elements conditionally displayed
Absolute Comments – Makes replying to comments and managing them much easier
Photo Dropper – Makes adding Creative Commons licensed photos from flickr quick and easy
Search Pages – Lets the search box search both posts and pages
Permalink Redirect – Keep urls with parameters from being indexed
WordPress Mobile Edition – Display a simple stripped down version of your site to mobile users
WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin – Save yourself thousands of hours of time upgrading WordPress
WordPress Database Backup – Automate backups of your blog

Social Media
Increase Sociability WordPress Plugin – Display custom messages for people who came from social sites like Digg and Stumbleupon
ShareThis – add buttons for social networks under the share this icon
Subscribe to Comments – let people subscribe and be notified when new and follow up comments are made
What Would Seth Godin Do – Display a message to a new visitor on your blog
Twitter Tools – Integrate twitter functionality into your blog

Maintenance
Close Old Posts – Closes old posts keeps them from becoming spam targets and maintenance issues
Search and Replace – Lets you easily search and replace information in your database
Simple Tags – Manage and get tag suggestions for all posts

Reports and Analytics
Blog Metrics – Gives you comments and stats on monthly and author levels
Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports – get feedburner and google analytics in your wordpress admin section
Search Meter – Find out what people are searching for on your site

When working to optimize your website for search engine use, there are many tools and techniques that you can use. In the following article, we will discuss HCards, microformats, address data and whether or not these tools and techniques matter for SEO optimization. Before you use any of these SEO tools, it is a good idea to know what they are and how they are used.

Hcards are a microformat that are used for publishing contact details of companies, people or other organizations. When using an HCard, these contact details with be put into arbitrary XML, (X)HTML or RSS, which are microformats. HCards allow parsing tools to obtain this contact information, which will allow the information to be mapped, indexed, searched or loaded into an address book/data program. This microformat may or may not be useful to you. For example, if you are working on a project that is more locally driven, HCards are not something that you will desperately need to implement. HCards are something that you will want to use on bigger projects, as they will start to give you an increasing pull with search engines. If you have the time, HCards are something that you could try out to see if they help your website’s SEO optimization. Microformatting of any sort will give your website some increased pull in the search engines. The results you will get may vary.

Address data can be helpful in SEO optimization if used correctly. In fact, address data can do more for your site than just SEO optimization. Some people and companies check websites for address data to tell whether it is trustworthy or not. The address data is looked upon by these people or companies as a sort of anchor to the real world. They will be able to tell whether or not your website and it’s information is legitimate. If you are interested in having address data on your website that will allow people or companies to verify your legitimacy, a Google Profile will be very useful to you. If you do use address data on your website, it will help with your SEO optimization as well as make you legitimate.

Applications for the Apple iPhone – often referred to as Apps – can help drive significantly more traffic to your web site in a number of ways. Here’s why:

1.) You can create apps that make it less difficult to use your web site on an iPhone. For example, PayPal offers an application that enables phone users to easily conduct transactions in their accounts. FedEx and USA Today provide similar programs.

2.) Offering specialized iPhone apps for download on your site can also drive more traffic to it, even if they are non-Internet applications (like games). Fewer apps exist for it than the major systems like Windows and Linux, so it isn’t as hard to compete for traffic.

3.) Programmers can submit their free or commercial apps to Apple for inclusion in the iTunes App Store. If successful, this has the potential to drive much more traffic to the associated web site and expose many Apple users to it for the first time.

4.) Applications which refer to or interface with your web site remind people to continue using it, making them more likely to become repeat visitors. Gaining regular repeat users is far preferable to always having to attract new visitors.

Why is this important? In early 2008, Nielsen Mobile estimated that approximately 2,300,000 Americans use the iPhone and about eighty-two percent of them connect to the Internet with it. Such a large number of users offer great potential for web site traffic and sales.

iPhone ownership also likely indicates that a user is willing to purchase fairly expensive products and services, which adds to the value of working to enhance iPhone-based traffic.

Many such apps also work on the iPod Touch, a somewhat less costly alternative to the iPhone. Ensuring compatibility with the Touch should drive additional traffic to your site.

Even if you haven’t heard about Google Suggest, you may have seen it in action while typing a search query on Google. As you type, it displays suggested search phrases in a drop-down menu below the search box. Here are seven great things about using Google Suggest:

1.) It can make entering long search queries much faster; searchers may use the mouse pointer or down arrow key to select a desired suggestion, after only typing a few letters.

2.) Because its content is partially based upon other searchers’ queries, Google Suggest is great for learning about what sort of things people are searching for on the web.

3.) Google Suggest can be helpful for getting new writing ideas on a particular category you are interested in; just type in one or two words describing the subject.

4.) This Google feature is also great for helping you remember the names of places, songs, products, and other things that you can only recall a portion of.

5.) It lets users preview how many results there are for a particular word or phrase. The number of results is listed to the right of each suggested query (in no particular order).

6.) Additionally, this tool makes it easier to search for words you don’t know how to spell. Type the first few letters of the word, and there’s a good chance the rest will be suggested.

7.) Google Suggest pops up quickly and works under most major web browsers. It doesn’t require the installation of any extra software or new browser plug-ins.

If you prefer to use another search engine, it may have an equivalent to Google Suggest. Yahoo! has “Search Assist” and Ask.com offers “Search Suggestions”. These are quite similar, except that they don’t show the number of results alongside each suggestion.

Google.com offers its Webmaster Tools service to all webmasters free of charge. The tools provide a range of useful statistics, the ability to communicate certain search listing preferences directly to Google, and diagnostic features that list search optimization errors to correct.

Google Webmaster Tools holds great importance to webmasters for two main reasons:

1.) It gives webmasters a “look under the hood” of how Google works, which provides them with a greater understanding of search result rankings and indexing.

2.) It enables webmasters to get a better idea of what Google “thinks” about their web sites, how the Google “spider” sees them, and what improvements could be made.

MANY USEFUL FEATURES

In addition to interactively helping webmasters better comply with Google’s guidelines, Webmaster Tools can automatically perform various useful services like creating a Robots.txt file, counting links, or generating custom 404 error page messages.

Webmasters can not only find out what Google search phrases brought visitors to their sites, but the searches that made their pages show up in results. This holds importance because it may be used to determine what pages need more attractive description tags.

Site listing preferences like URL style (show “www” in results or not), image search inclusion, country-specific targeting, and “spidering” frequency, may be set in Google Webmaster Tools as well (under the “Settings” tab).

OVERALL IMPORTANCE

It is of the most importance that Webmaster Tools gives webmasters clear information on how to make their sites more acceptable to Google, the top search engine. This has the potential to raise a site’s position in results, considerably increasing its traffic.

However, the Webmaster Tools service does not replace Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tasks like META tag creation, keyword density enhancement, or link building. It also doesn’t take into account the policies of different search engines like Yahoo and MSN, which also hold importance.

OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Do other major engines offer Webmaster Tools equivalents? To some extent, yes. MSN/Live has the Live Search Webmaster Center (webmaster.live.com), and the “Webmaster Resources” section of Yahoo! Help offers some useful links within their site. Ask.com has a page oriented to webmasters as well.

ABOUT GOOGLE.COM

According to their web site, Google was incorporated in 1998 and relocated to Mountain View, CA (its current location) a year later. Google’s importance to webmasters grew as it rapidly became the top engine in following years, and Webmaster Tools was established in 2006.

Considering that this service is free and easy to register for, there is little reason for webmasters not to give it a try.