Don’t worry, the video is in English, and it’s about forty minutes of both entertaining and educational content. Enjoy!

1. All In One SEO Pack
   I suppose the most obvious plugin is the All In One SEO Pack. According to statistics it is the most popular plugin in the whole WordPress Extend repository. It has a robust feature set. Of all the SEO-related WordPress plugins I have tried it is, in my opinion, the best there currently is. The plugin allows you to optimize various things in WordPress for search engines including your site title, your keywords, page titles, and much more. One of the features I like the most is the ability to generate keywords automatically based on the current post. Very handy!
2. HeadSpace
   The plugin HeadSpace comes in a close second for me. It also has a great many features and is also very popular. It has some of the features SEO Pack has and many others that it does not. One of the really great features of this plugin is the ability to automatically generate post tags based off the content of the post. Being a person who sucks at categorizing and tagging my posts I really love this feature. Another feature I like is the ability to import data from other plugins like SEO Pack.
3. Google XML Sitemaps
   Having a well-defined map of your entire site is another important aspect of SEO. Google XML Sitemaps is the best plugin for that job in my opinion. I’ve used it extensively for the past few years and I have seen some good results from it. It’s really easy to use but still has a good number of features.
4. SEO Smart Links
   I like SEO Smart Links because of the automation it provides. It can automatically link keywords in your posts to their corresponding posts and pages. This really helps with keeping visitors clicking further into your site. You can also specify custom keywords and the URLs they should link to. Nifty!
5. Robots Meta
   Robots Meta is another good plugin. I like it for its simplicity. With it you can add meta tags to hide comments feeds from search engines, prevent search engines from indexing all feeds on your site, hide search result pages from search engines, hide the admin pages from search engines, and much more.

There we have it. 5 top plugins for WordPress Search Engine Optimization. Remember though, this is merely my opinion. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are in an order you would agree with. I actually like all these plugins very much. It’s pretty hard to choose what order to put them in but, I think I’m happy with how it is now.

What do you think? Do you like the order? Have I missed a really great plugin? Lets hear it!

Do you have a good idea for the next article in the Best-Of series? Drop a comment here or contact us and your idea just might be next in the series!

However, I have managed to get a hold of the plugin author and he informed me that he believes the plugin will not die. He is currently in discussions with a number of other developers to continue maintenance of the plugin. He also expressed interest in the idea of having the plugin integrated into the core of WordPress.

*UPDATE*

It looks like the plugin has found a new home. A WordPress.org user who goes by the username hallsofmontezuma who is also the plugin author of the WP Security Scan plugin as well as the SMS Text Message plugin has taken over the development of the All In One SEO Plugin. The plugin can now be found on the Semper Fi Web Design website.

I want to personally extend a hearty thanks to Uberdose who was the original author of the plugin. You can’t talk about WordPress and SEO without mentioning the All In One SEO Plugin. Thanks for deciding not to stop the project but instead, found a new home for it.

I learned about the new plugin author via the Imbloggingthat blog.

Quite often, we hear of the terms (permalinks or pretty permalinks) which can also be called SEO-friendly URLs. These URLs are not only SEO friendly, but I believe they are human friendly as well. By default, WordPress uses URLs that look like a mishmash of letters and numbers with a few question marks mixed in for good measure. These types of links are frowned upon by search engine spiders and as a human being, they are also hard to read.

Fortunately, WordPress provides a way for us to change this linking structure to something understandable. WordPress calls these Permalinks. Permalink settings can be configured a number of different ways. One of the ways to quickly configure permalinks is by choosing one of the Common Options. These common options include:

Default – http://www.domain.com/?p=123

Date and name based – http://www.domain.com/2008/01/15/sample-post/

Numeric – http://www.domain.com/archives/123

There is no sense in using the default option so choose either Date and name based or Numeric if you don’t feel like tinkering with the Custom Structure.

The custom structure of the permalinks settings area allows you to customize the way permalinks are displayed by using any combination of the following permalink tags.

%year% – 4-digit year (for example, 2008)

%monthnum% – 2-digit month (for example, 01 for January)

%day% – 2-digit day (for example, 15)

%hour% – 2-digit hour of the day (for example, 20 for 10PM)

%minute% – 2-digit minute (for example, 50)

%second% – 2-digit second (for example, 24)

%postname% – Text separated by dashes which usually ends up being the post name. (for example, configuring-wp-permalinks)

%post_id% – The unique, numerical ID of the post (for example, 124)

%category% - The text of the category name that the post is filed in (for example, how-to)

%author% – Text of the post author’s name (for example, ronald-huereca)

Example of custom structure in use:

Custom Structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/

Link Output: http://www.domain.com/2008/01/16/

Make sure that you include the back slashes at the beginning of the custom structure, after each tag and at the end. This will ensure that WordPress writes the correct rules in the .htaccess file via mod_rewrite.

For my own blog, I seem to have done fairly well in the search engines by using the Custom Structure method and using the %postname% tag. I can’t say for sure which combination would do better or worst for search engines. The only thing I can suggest is that you configure your permalinks to look whats best for you.

*WARNING*

Changing the structure of your permalinks affects all of the permalinks on your blog. This is important to know because search engines will have indexed posts on your site via their permalinks. If you change the permalink structure mid stream, you will end up invalidating all of those links.

What to do if you don’t have a .htaccess file?

If you notice that you don’t have a .htaccess file within the same directory as your WordPress installation, you can create one by first creating a blank .txt file and saving the file as htaccess.txt. Upload this file via FTP to the same folder that houses your WordPress installation. Once the file is uploaded, set the permissions to the file as 666. Next, rename the file to .htaccess. Now you should have a blank .htaccess file for which WordPress can write the proper permalink rules to.

Servers That Don’t Use Apache Or mod_rewrite.

If the webhosting server you are on does not have the apache module mod_rewrite enabled, you can still use the permalink settings in WordPress by placing index.php in front of any custom permalink tags.

For example: /index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/

Equals: http://www.domain.com/index.php/2008/01/16/

Using index.php in this way eliminates the need for a .htaccess file.

I hope this little primer on how to configure your permalinks within WordPress was helpful. I’ve seen too many blogs out on the net that have yet to take advantage of this awesome feature. As I’ve said before, using any sort of permalink structure is better than the WP default. Not only is it beneficial in terms of SEO, but it also makes it easier for human beings to see at a glance, what a particular link is pointing to without having to visit the page.

If you use the custom structure aspect of permalinks, I’d be very interested in knowing which configuration of permalink tags you have chosen to use and why.