10 Effective WordPress Plugins for Your Blog

WordPress offer a huge variety of functionality that makes it one of the best blogging platforms. Plugin functionality and feature is the strongest reason why it is the first choice of bloggers.

There are thousands of WordPress plugins available for different requirements. WordPress plugins can be downloaded, installed and use absolutely free. Here is a list of 10 useful WP plugins; I would say these are ‘a must’ for any WordPress blog:

Google XML Sitemaps Generator
This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of WordPress blog. This format is supported by Google, YAHOO, Ask.com and MSN Search. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.

All in One SEO
This is one of the most popular WordPress plugins, it take care of SEO tweaks for WordPress blog pages or blog as a whole. It covers features like canonical URLs, Navigation links, Avoids the typical duplicate content, it also support CMS-style WordPress blog, and many more!

Redirection
WordPress plugin makes it easy to manage 301 redirections, it also keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This plugin helps you to redirect blog pages without modifying .htaccess file, saving the changes, and uploading, it shortens the path of redirection. You just have to log into admin panel, create the new redirect and the process is done. In addition to that, it also offers you some nice tracking. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation

Sociable
This Plugin automatically add links to selected social bookmarking sites on your blog posts, pages and in RSS feed. You can choose from a variety of 99 different social bookmarking sites! WordPress 2.6 or above is better to use.

Digg This
Digg This is a wordpress plugin that helps to integrate blog more with the Popular Social Networking Site, Digg. It displays a small Digg Icon at the bottom of every post which allows the user to submit your story to Digg, just by clicking it.

TweetMeme Button
The TweetMeme button plugin allows you to easily integrate the TweetMeme button into WordPress blog. The plugin automatically displays the button into your content and your feed. It easily allows your blog post or page to be retweeted. It provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been retweeted throughout Twitter.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
YARPP gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content within your blog. This plugin is a great way to make the visitors stay longer on your blog.

WordPress Database Backup
As the name of this plugin suggest, it allows you to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database. In short, if you install this, you don’t have to collect and save database manually. This plugin will take care about it.

Google Analytics for WordPress
This plugin adds Google Analytics tracking code to all pages within the blog. It automatically tracks and selects all outbound links from within blog posts, comment author links, links within comments and links in Blogroll.

MyFTP WordPress Plugin
Manage files on your server from within WordPress. It is also possible to create new folders and upload complete directory structures. Hence, WordPress administrators no longer need to rely on using a stand alone FTP client to edit, delete, uploads and create files and folders.

Last but not the least, there are many more useful WordPress plugins. But, I mentioned these plugins because I’ve tried and tested them, and it worked for me to save time and improved the capability of my blog. Hope it helps you too!