Having the best plugins to assist you to smash your blogging goals, keep your readers coming back for more,  and sharing your content is essential! Thinktank Media are big fans of wordpress as it’s clean, simple and easy to use.

I have been searching high and low for the best plugins for this blog and by golly, at last……. I have my trusties. So soak these up and save the many hours of work I have spent plugging into the net!

Got your straw…start slurping!!!

Akismet

A must have for any wordpress blog. Its anti-spam blogging armour blocks the weaseliest little spammers!

http://akismet.com/

Google analytics

Get Google to track all your pages with this neat little plugin. Google Analytics provides you with highly advanced website tracking and management information.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress

Feedburner

Staying in close contact with your readers is a must! Feedburner is your blog promotion machine. Install this plugin to automatically feed your posts to your subscribers and more!

www.feedburner.com/

All in One SEO Pack

This nifty little pack optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines by automatically optimizing your titles and META tags.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Google XML Sitemaps

Generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

Tweetmeme

I love this plugin! Make it easy for your readers to share your posts on twitter by adding Tweetmeme. It also shows how many people have RTed the post making you look pretty popular!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/

Twitter tools

Pull your tweets into your blog with Twitter Tools. You can also create new tweets on blog posts and from within your WordPress site.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

Facebook Connect Community

Pop this little gem on your blog to encourage users to sign in from their facebook accounts. It supports comments to be sent to the users news feed, which can bring you some tasty viral traffic.

http://www.sociable.es/facebook-connect

Share This

An easy way for readers to share your blog with their social networks and bookmarking sites. They can also send a link to your post via email, AIM, Facebook, Twitter and more.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/

Digg Digg

Adds Digg, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz buttons with counters for your readers to easily vote for your posts from your page. Great for organic SEO!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/digg-digg/

cforms II

A neat little plugin that makes it easy for readers to contact you with their questions regarding your services, blog posts and more.

http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin/

Well, these are our top 11 wordpress plugins…full yet! There are heaps more yet these ones are great to power your blog up!  If there are any of your favs that I have not mentioned then please share share!

Google.  It’s just a word right, however it brings up so many different emotions in different people! For me, I get excited every time Google releases a new tool. Why, because the majority of these power platforms assist my team and I to grow, and really provide for what our clients demand.

More people use local search engines like Google (82%) than any other media to find local information.

This new tool is a must for small business and it’s a free listing! Welcome to the Google Local Business Centre.

Knowing how to establish numbers and metrics is key to all business models. Google has developed a killer tool that can help us do just that, plus it has made some updates to the way Google Local works. The new added power tool is metrics. What this means is that you can now control how you want to be defined on Google plus you can see how visitors are finding your information. Soaking up these metrics and making changes that reflect these results can be the difference that makes the difference with you and your competitors.

• Google local Business Centre enables you to:
• See who’s searching for you on Google.
•  See how they are finding you
•  See where they are coming from.
• Plus so much more. 

This information can help you make smart decisions that can bring in more customers. You can see trends in what your customers are searching for before they find you – eg. if you are a massage therapist and shoulder massages are being searched frequently, then you could enhance your services to cater for these trends. You can continuously keep changing the listings in Google based on the results you see in your dash board. Woola!

Grab some popcorn and tuck into the video. Next,  take advantage of the free listings www.google.com/lbc  .

Did you find this helpful?  I wanna know in the comments section (click comments) !