Search Results Archives: February 2010

Squidoo Can Play a Central Role In Any Social Media Marketing

February 19, 2010 at 1:00 pm Filed in:Blog | Latest News | SEO No Comments

As a knowledge sharing platform, Squidoo can play a central role in any social media marketing, brand reputation or search engine optimisation campaign. From a business perspective, creating and maintaining a lens offers an opportunity to reach out to your target market on an informal level, sharing tips, knowledge and advice about company products and services.

Squidoo is very well rated to by the most popular search engines and is rapidly becoming too good an SEO opportunity to pass up. Within the lens you can add links back to your own web site so an authority lens can make a big contribution to better site rankings overall.

Getting Started

Get the basics out of the way – create a user account, log in and familiarize yourself with the easy to use dashboard. Click the ‘create a lens’ button and then decide on a name. At this point, you must keep basic SEO principles in mind. Your Squidoo lens is a chance to take up another spot on the search engine results pages so you’ll want to include your product name, company name and priority keywords if possible. Keep the title short and catchy.

Squidoo allows you to rate the lens in much the same way as films are rated – most will be suitable for all audience, but take time to read the other options just in case some material is unsuitable for certain audiences. At this second stage you’re also invited to choose your own Squidoo URL. Again, keep in mind SEO optimisation principles and branding considerations to give visibility a helping hand.

With the lens now named, you can start to add keywords. Although you’re limited to three initially, you can add more later so choose the most relevant three for the moment.

First Updates

When you complete the set up process, you’re presented with the basics of a good lens. Among the choices when you first begin to add content to your new Squidoo page are welcome text, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, a guestbook, Google Blog search and Amazon voting.

You probably won’t be able to complete each of the modules straight off (you may need to enlist the help of other departments or hunt down relevant pictures for example) but make an appointment to start populating the modules you don’t complete at this first pass. A good Squidoo lens will take a lot of time and work to create and maintain but it’s worth putting in the extra effort to give your page a chance of appearing in the SERPS. There are millions of mediocre lenses just as there are millions of blogs and community pages that were left to fade into obscurity after the first flush of enthusiasm. A mediocre page won’t contribute to your ranking positions or drive traffic to your web site though so do try and keep to a realistic update schedule.

Using Modules

Regular updates are essential but that doesn’t mean that you have to write reams and reams of text. Of course, if you have white papers or insights into any aspect of your industry or product use, it pays to add them to your lens but if you’re short on time, you can get creative with the pre-loaded modules that Squidoo offers. A great way to ensure cohesion of message is to link your Squidoo lens to your other social media outlets – you can do this by going to Add Modules at the top of the dashboard and then selecting the new content type you would like to load in.

The best lenses blend a variety of modules to create a useful, informative page that visitors will return to time and time again. Link to your eBay shop to generate additional revenue, add Twitter Follow or Lists to increase your Twitter followers, add Wikipedia knowledge, slideshare, even videos from Saturday Night Live.

Optimisation

Whatever kind of content you add, make sure to always include relevant tags for the post and link back to your own web site where appropriate. You can use HTML code within text modules, so choose anchor text wisely and try other optimization tips such as the use of H2 and H3 tags for longer chunks of text. Remember, you want to apply as many SEO techniques as possible to make your lens stand out in the SERPS. This will ultimately drive more traffic and brand awareness your way.

About Footprints-SEO.com

Footprints-SEO.com is an internet marketing company whose priority is to make your organization rise above the competition, we are a group of talented and dedicated individuals with a passion for search engine optimization. We will custom-tailor marketing strategies that are right for you and your business, while ensuring top search engine optimization and web-site design.

Footprints-SEO.com has the answer to all your internet marketing needs.

Why Link Architecture is a Crucial Part of Your Website Design

February 19, 2010 at 12:49 pm Filed in:Latest News | SEO No Comments

In an ideal world, a search engine spider would start at the homepage of your site and crawl through each subsequent page in turn until it had processed every part of your domain. In practice, search engines can struggle to find each page. If your sitemap isn’t up-to-date, for example, and no inbound links have been built from external sites, a search bot may not know that a new page even exists. This is where SEO of your internal linking comes into play.

While search engines are becoming more sophisticated in their ability to crawl through a site and can follow text links, hyperlinked images, and image maps contained within graphics, they still struggle to crawl and follow dynamic HTML pages, JavaScript, and content built in Flash. If the search engines come across this type of content, they may stop their exploration and not crawl any deeper into the site. This is very bad for your SEO efforts, as the more pages crawled on the site, the more search results you will appear in. If the spiders can’t crawl through the whole site, you’ll inevitably be missing out on some listings.

Link architecture is a crucial part of your site design and search engine optimisation strategy . It controls the process of directing the flow of traffic from one page to the next. It can help address the problem of new pages not being found and be used to help search engine spiders circumnavigate their way around Flash or JavaScript road blocks rather than abandoning the site altogether. Equally importantly, good link architecture will ensure that your visitors can find the information they are looking for easily and enjoy visiting your site.

Text-based linking within your site should be intuitive. To ensure you’re building the best possible site for both better search engine rankings and the user experience, you must make it easy to find information and travel deeper within the site. If the visitor doesn’t use your sophisticated navigation system or click through to the sitemap, is there still a route through the site? If not, you may see a high bounce rate on certain pages. Similarly, a user clicking through an organic ranking, other external link, or selecting a paid advert will rarely land on the home page. If they miss this front door to the site, link architecture steps in to help them find their way from page to page.

Text links are not just for the human visitor. Keeping link architecture in mind when creating new content will also encourage the search engines to rank you a little more favorably. Using optimized anchor text, much like that used for inbound linking, is a great signal to the search engines what the next page is about. Using keywords in the text link helps them identify what they should be considering ranking the page for.

Particularly if your website does employ Flash or JavaScript based menus, use the Google Webmaster tools to check that the Googlebot is finding your newly crafted internal links.

About Footprints-SEO.com

Footprints-SEO.com is an internet marketing company whose priority is to make your organization rise above the competition, we are a group of talented and dedicated individuals with a passion for search engine optimization. We will custom-tailor marketing strategies that are right for you and your business, while ensuring top search engine optimization and web-site design.

Footprints-SEO.com has the answer to all your internet marketing needs.

Developing a Social Media Strategy for Success

February 19, 2010 at 12:42 pm Filed in:Blog | Latest News | SEO | Selling Tips No Comments

To develop any business strategy, be it marketing, sales or operational, you must ask yourself what you are doing, what kind of environment you are operating in and what your goals are. Only by drilling down to the very essence of your organization can you develop a plan for moving forwards. Developing a social media strategy for search engine optimisation (SEO) success  follows the same pattern- it’s essential you know what you are doing, how you are doing it and most importantly, why.

Millions of businesses jumped on the social media express train over the last 12 months but, many of them do not know why they have a Facebook account or why it was so important that they have a presence on Twitter. Even those companies that have dedicated personnel in-house to work on their social media presence often struggle to justify the investment – they just know that they ought to be participating in social media, often as part of their SEO efforts. This mindset means that money and effort is being extended with no means of tracking progress, measuring return or monitoring conversions.

Social media in 2010 can be much more than ‘ought to be participating’ or ‘no idea why we are on Facebook’. 2010 can be the year that your organization develops a definitive social media strategy, with a clear what, where and why. As part of this, specific goals and objectives must be defined and definitive means of tracking progress towards them implemented. This knowledge, if dissimilated through the various layers of your organization could transform something you’re already doing to something that really starts to reap rewards and makes a positive contribution to your business practices.

About Footprints-SEO.com

Footprints-SEO.com is an internet marketing company whose priority is to make your organization rise above the competition, we are a group of talented and dedicated individuals with a passion for search engine optimization. We will custom-tailor marketing strategies that are right for you and your business, while ensuring top search engine optimization and web-site design.

Footprints-SEO.com has the answer to all your internet marketing needs.

How to hire an Online Marketing Agency?

February 19, 2010 at 12:33 pm Filed in:Blog | Latest News | SEO No Comments

If, despite your best efforts, your website is not making the inroads you would hope in the search engine rankings, it may be time to consider recruiting a online marketing agency like Footprints SEO.

The job of appointing a search engine optimisation company can be daunting if you have never worked with an SEO specialist, will likely make or break your online success. For many firms, their SEO is a sales tool so you’ll want to be sure you’re making the right decision. Hiring an online marketing agency can also be difficult if your own web site optimisation knowledge is basic as you do not want to be blinded by science or thrown off course by the use of technical jargon.

As we speak to hundreds of businesses throughout the UK, Europe and USA, we’ve compiled this guide of questions to ask.

1. What new SEO related skills and services have been recently developed?

Online Marketing consultancy is a crowded and competitive marketplace, so you shouldn’t have any problems finding companies to approach. Because SEO changes so quickly, you’ll want your new agency to be on top of their game. A great opening question is to ask the SEO agency you are considering what new techniques they have added to their optimisation repertoire in the last 3 months. Although search engines like Google keep their algorithms a closely guarded secret, a good SEO company will constantly be adapting and updating their methodology and services.

2. Can they offer an SEO site review?

If possible, ask agencies to produce a brief report focusing on problems and opportunities with your current website in search engine optimisation terms prior to signing an agreement. This doesn’t have to be a detailed report, a conversation about the site will suffice. Can the SEO consultant identify possible barriers to stronger rankings? Do they approach the site in a methodical and logical manner? Do they ask questions to get some background to the site and previous SEO efforts? You can request an SEO site audit from Footprints SEO here.

3. What kind of link building strategies will be used and what is their position on link buying and link bait?

The importance of an experienced link builder cannot be underestimated, so have a detailed discussion about the SEO firm’s preferred methodology and previous experience. Be sure to check that link building and off page optimisation is included in the package quoted as some Online Marketing agency representatives will quote separately for each SEO module so you may be looking at an extra cost. All Footprints SEO packages include link building.

Look for an emphasis on relevant links and tactics to increase inbound links from sources likely to drive good quality traffic to the site.

4. What kind of reporting and analytics packages will be used to track SEO results?

You’d expect any direct hire to be able to report back to you about job progress and tasks completed, so don’t expect any less from your new online marketing consultancy. Ask for a breakdown of reporting methodology and copies of dummy reports.

5. Will competitor analysis be used in on and off page optimisation?

Keeping an eye on the competition is a must in any well-executed SEO campaign, so you’ll need to know that your SEO consultancy can bring competitor analysis skills to the table. Ask for examples and a detailed breakdown of what will be included in the competitor research. It’s also worth checking that you can specify sites yourself to be included.

About Footprints SEO

Footprints-SEO.com is an internet marketing company whose priority is to make your organization rise above the competition, we are a group of talented and dedicated individuals with a passion for search engine optimization. We will custom-tailor marketing strategies that are right for you and your business, while ensuring top search engine optimization and web-site design.

Footprints-SEO.com has the answer to all your internet marketing needs.

Optimising Your PDF Files For Search Engines

February 18, 2010 at 9:03 am Filed in:Latest News | SEO No Comments

Optimising your PDF files for search engines can lead to better visibility and increased visitor numbers, particularly if you have an e-book or technical manual useful to your target demographic. The SEO of PDF documents is relatively straightforward and has become easier over the last few years as search engine spiders have developed their understanding of the file structure. Although PDFs can be converted into regular HTML files with a little time and knowledge, not everyone will have the internal resources to dedicate to such a chore.

A PDF file can often make a greater impact than a regular web site page for documents such as catalogues and sales material as it can be branded to more closely reflect offline marketing docs. In addition to this, you will often see PDF files returned high up in the search results on engines like Google, making PDF optimisation a useful endeavour for most web sites.

Optimising a PDF document requires a similar thought process and workflow to regular optimization work.

Tip 1: Use Words, Not Pictures

As with any material you’re looking to use for SEO purposes, content is king and thought must be given to keyword use, placement and density. Standard good practise for content optimisation should be observed within the creation of the PDF document; use keywords for titles, picked out in bold, italicised and used at regular internals throughout the body of the document.

Some PDF documents are converted into PDF after being designed in an image based program. This has the same effect as using flash on site in that no information can be taken from the document as it is essentially an image. This is the last thing you want if you’ve spent time crafting a PDF that blends visual appeal with a good keyword density. Make sure your SEO efforts are not lost by avoiding programs that create PDFs from images alone.

Tip 2: Don’t Skip Document Properties

When creating a PDF document, there is a tendency to skip the document property fields. This is a mistake as fields such as ‘Document Title’ are just as important as the <title> tag of a regular HTML file. The document properties form provides important information about the file – both to the search engine and end user. When deciding on a title for the PDF, bear in mind that the information you input will normally be used as the title of the listing in the SERPs. It’s worthwhile including keywords here and spending a little time deciding upon the most appropriate title – avoid clever headlines and plays on words and stick to something straightforward, accurate and descriptive.

If you’re pushed for time, a concise title will suffice but consider returning at a later date to complete at least the Author and Subject fields, particularly if you want to establish yourself as a thought leader or opinion former in your field. This information will help users to find documents and white papers you have presented so it’s also worth sticking to the same format to establish your credentials – e.g. if you prefer to be called Bob rather than Richard or use Bob more in professional circles, make that the standard author entry on all your PDF files to be uploaded to the web.

Tip 3: Consider File Size

PDF documents can be quite weighty if they are stuffed full of high-res images. To encourage readers to wait for the PDF to load, use the Adobe Acrobat advanced optimiser tool to format the file to the correct size. You can also encourage speedier loading by activating the Fast View option, which will load download the document a page at a time. Regardless of whether or not you choose to use these file size optimisation tools provided in Adobe, always use the lowest possible dpi for images inserted in the file.

Tip 4: Include Your Web Site Address as A Link

Unlike a regular HTML page which can be emailed as a link and will direct the recipient straight through to your site, a PDF document may not guide a third party directly to your web site. PDFs can be easily passed on via email and printed off for reference in meetings or at a later date. If you haven’t included at least one prominent link in the PDF to your web site, you may miss the opportunity to capture relevant qualified traffic.

Including a link in the PDF with optimized anchor text will be recognised by the search engines and added to the inbound link count they hold about the URL.

Award Winning Online Journalists Will Research And Write Your Press Release

February 15, 2010 at 11:37 am Filed in:Latest News | SEO No Comments

Whether you have a lot to say or a little, Footprints SEO’s press release research and distribution service puts your message in front of the world’s press at exactly the right time.

Our award-winning in house team of online journalists and SEO specialists will research and write your press release. Available as both a one-off and recurring service, your press release has no word limits and is optimised for media publication.

Setting out your new product, boasting about a client win, introducing an innovative new service or announcing your presence at a major event, our press release service is tailored to your individual needs.

If things are quiet on the news front but you would like to maintain contact with the press, or even introduce your company to the media for the very first time, Footprints SEO understands news values and will present a series of ideas for your consideration.

Our team will brainstorm the best way to secure column inches for your brand and then suggest press release titles, themes and approaches. As with your own company news, these ideas can be used as stand alone news items or play a role as part of a more sustained campaign.

Walking the walk and talking the talk is easy with Footprints SEO. Just tell us about your product and service and let our team do the rest. We’ll research current trends, search out relevant facts, figures, studies and stats and wrap it all up in a media friendly package.

Presented in a custom designed press release template, Footprints SEO compiles a bespoke contact list specifically for your news item. For each item we issue to the media, an up to date list will be created to ensure your PR reaches only the most relevant of contacts.

Delivered directly to the inbox of each major national, regional and local newspaper and magazine, our news hounds will go the extra mile to sniff out specialist publications, relevant foreign press, online web sites and social media sites.

A series of press distribution sites are used as standard to ensure publication in RSS feeds – giving a wider net of coverage – and Google news alerts. If relevant, your press release will be given its moment in the spotlight at high traffic sites such as Google Base, MySpace, Facebook and Squidoo. All relevant forums and online business communities will also be presented with a copy and media requests carried out and followed up on your behalf.

Nosy by nature, our team will also track who reads the press release and where it’s published, giving you a fully accountable tracking service. Scouring the web, you’ll receive both real time notifications and periodic resumes of published links and media exposure. These are presented in a report format and can be discussed with your account manager at your convenience.

Things To Consider When Publishing A Newsletter

February 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm Filed in:Blog No Comments

Providing a newsletter for your opt-in list subscribers provides many benefits in terms of driving traffic into your site as well as boosting the sales and profits of your site and company. This is a marketing ploy that will not hugely dent your marketing budget and will not also require many man-hours in developing this project.

With a newsletter, you can inform the public about your company and products as well as services. You can keep them posted and updated about what’s going-on with your company as well as many of your promotions and offerings. With these, you keep on reminding your subscribers that you are still here and is willing to offer them good deals and services.

Newsletters also allow you to impress your subscribers. It can show your expertise and knowledge about the topic at hand and the many benefits you can offer them. When you impress people, they will become potential customers and another great thing is that they can recommend you to their friends, colleagues and family. All of them could very well be customers in the future.

If you do not have a newsletter or publishing one for your site, then you may have to consider about researching and be well informed on how to publish one. It is not as easy as it seems but if and when you get the right idea and process, it will be smooth sailing from there on. Try to take the time to learn what you need to learn and get that newsletter ready and good to attract subscribers to your newsletter as well as traffic to your site.

In the next few paragraphs, I will provide you with some things to reflect on when you decide to start your own newsletter for your site. Here are five things to consider when publishing a newsletter.

1) Make sure that the content of your newsletter pertains to and closely associated with your business or the theme of your site. Do not dwell too far on what could be regarded as your field of expertise. You have started a site and your theme for your site will always be something you are knowledgeable about. For example; if you have a site that sells auto car parts, your newsletter must contain articles or content like photos that pertain to cars, auto parts and such. You may also include content about your company and your staff.

Remember that visitors of a certain site are there because they are interested in what the site has to offer. If they sign up for an opt-in list or for a newsletter this means that they want to be updated for that certain theme or subject. Be sure that when you publish your newsletter you are providing for the need of the subscriber as well as their interests.

2) Ensure that you have well written, information riddled and content rich articles. You articles will be the body of your newsletter and that they should be able to excite your readers as well as provide information. Articles should be well written and checked for errors such as spelling and grammatical errors for it to look professional and believable. The trust of your client to you and newsletter is at stake here.

3) Fact-check your articles. Make sure that you provide true facts and figures so that your reputation as an expert and knowledgeable in that field is not questioned. If you lose the trust of your subscribers these may persuade them to unsubscribe to your newsletter. You will lose many potential sales this way.

4) Provide fresh and new articles that can provide new information to your subscribers. If you publish stale and old news in your newsletter, there is a tendency that people or your subscribers already have read and known about them. This will lose their interest in your newsletter and they wont get to read what is most important, your ads. They may not open or read any of your succeeding newsletters losing your intention in writing and publishing newsletters, to get them to visit your site and make a purchase.

5) Never use copyrighted materials such as photos and articles. This is outright plagiarism, you may get into a lot of trouble for this. You can lose your business and get sued over copyright infringement. If you do not have the time to write your own articles, there are many willing and able professional article writers that can do it for you for a reasonable fee. All your investment in writing and publishing articles will be well worth it when you see your list build up and your traffic increasing.

Building Search Engine Friendly Websites

February 13, 2010 at 10:22 pm Filed in:Blog No Comments

There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot’s job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using wrong HTML tags like <font> to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

Top Tips To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

February 13, 2010 at 10:20 pm Filed in:Latest News | SEO No Comments

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the geniuses of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.

The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad.

The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads.

Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Adsense Positioning

Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites.

If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

It is important to know that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

11 Must Have WordPress Plugins

February 13, 2010 at 10:17 pm Filed in:Latest News | SEO No Comments

WordPress has become a massive platform for internet marketers and internet users alike. The large array of themes, plugins and possible customizations make it in my opinion one of the best website/blog platforms available right now. I am going to share with you some of the best plugins I have ever come across and how they can be used for your website or blog.

1) All in One SEO pack – Many of you will have already heard of this one but it is undeniably important and effective. It allows you to specify the title, description and keywords for each post and page. You will want to enter in keyword rich titles and descriptions.  This will be the information that will be displayed in the search engines. Here is a screenshot of the All in One SEO Pack plugin:

2) Pretty Link – This plugin is excellent for tracking the click-through of specific links. You are able to create unique links with you domain name. For example, I could create http://www.footprints-seo.com/prettylink. This URL currently does not go anywhere as I have not created it but if I used Pretty Link to create that URL I could redirect that URL to anywhere I wanted and track the amount of people that click on that unique URL I created. This is great for affiliate marketers or email marketers to track the click-through of each campaign or email. This is also great just to keep all your URLs appearing as your own.

3) Disqus Commenting System – The Disqus commenting system is in my opinion by far the best commenting system available. If you click the comments at the top of this post you will see what I am talking about. This commenting system is clean and neat and allows integration of Twitter and Facebook. You are able to either comment with you actual Disqus account, your Twitter account (which will also Tweet your comment), your Facebook account or as a guest. This integration is great for both you (the website owners) and your viewers. It helps to spread the word about your site as the comments are tweeted and facebooked everywhere. It integrates social networking tools that other people use so they can maintain their persona while commenting. There are also a lot of different skins for Disqus that you can use to customize the look to help it fit in with your website/blog.

4)  Contact Form 7 – This is a great simple plugin that can be used to create contact forms. You can customize them as much as you like to gather whatever information you are looking for. An example of the Contact Form 7 plugin in use is in my “Contact” page. You will see a contact form there created by this plugin. Creation of the forms is very straight forward and the implementation is as easy as copying one line and pasting it into your post or page.

5) Page Link Manager – This plugin is great as it allows you to choose which pages are displayed in your WordPress navigation. The plugin is very basic, it simply lists all your pages in the options and you can click radio buttons to select which pages are shown in your navigation. This is great for, thank you pages after a viewer has subscribed, free gifts pages or sales pages that don’t want to be visible in the navigation. It is a great little plugin that can be very useful.

6) Google XML Sitemaps Generator – This plugin is very important to help search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo to easily find your site. The plugin creates a Sitemap with all your pages and posts. It creates a separate page where you can link to in your footer.

7) WP-Email – This is another plugin that you can use to promote your blog and website. It creates a link after your post for people to send an email to their friends about your post. This is a great way to increase traffic as it is the online version of word-of-mouth.

8 ) Ultimate Google Analytics - This plugin integrates Google Analytics with your WordPress site. It displays statistics about your viewers and where they are coming from. This is very powerful and all website/blog owners must use Google Analytics. There are a lot features and options in Analytics so you should spend some time learning about it and how it can help you to track the effectiveness of your site.

9) WP E-Commerce - This plugin allows you to convert your wordpress site into a fully blown ecommerce website with a fully functional shopping cart. There are a few other plugins that are similar but this one is by far the best. This plugin also integrates web 2.0 with your shopping cart and allows you to for example import your products into Facebook. This plugin has a lot of different features so it is great for creating a shopping cart that works for you.

10) MobilePress – This is a great plugin that is becoming increasingly popular with the rise of 3G mobile phones. It allows you to optimize your site to be viewed on mobile phones such as the ever so popular iPhone. Allow your viewers to be able to access your site from anywhere on their mobile phone.

11) WordPress Automatic Upgrade – All WordPress website owners should get this plugin. It is a set and forget plugin. It will automatically update your WordPress installation for you to always ensure you are using the latest release of WordPress.

This is a list of 11 must-have WordPress Plugins. I hope you found this useful. I would love to hear your comments and thoughts on your favorite WordPress plugins.