These plugins give us additional functionality within the WordPress software – giving us the ability to put our blogging on autopilot.

Here's my recommended… must-have list of my favorite WordPress plugins I use myself to enhance my WordPress blog (listed in order of importance):

All in One SEO Pack – This is my all-time favorite WordPress plugin.

It adds automatic search engine optimization options into each WordPress post… ultimately attracting visitors to your blog almost automatically.

I say almost automatically because there are three empty fields to fill out for each post you make:

- Webpage title

- Meta description

- Meta keywords

When you fill out these the right way, you're going to get a lot more clicks from search engine results to your blog post.

WP Auto Tagger – -This plugin automatically scans your blog post and looks for popular keyword phrases. It takes these phrases and creates a backup search engine friendly duplicate page.

Don't fret about the technical details of this plugin. All I can say is that after checking my blog stats, a large majority of my search engine referrals come as a result of WP Auto Tagger creating these tags.

Google XML Sitemaps – This amazing WordPress plugin generates a special Google-friendly sitemap every night helping you get your blog post noticed by search engine spiders and bots.

Google XML Sitemaps creates a file called "sitemap.xml" — an A to Z index listing the details of each blog post. For example, mine is found at:

http://www.marketing-ideas.org/sitemap.xml

Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo! and Bing and watch your blog content show up faster in these popular search engines.

AdSense Now! – If you're not making money with your blog, you should.

And Google AdSense is the fastest and easiest way to make money I've ever tested (when you put my AdSense secrets into action, that is).

The AdSense Now! plugin makes it a breeze to add Google AdSense revenue sharing into your blog… just install the plugin, copy and paste your AdSense code and configure the positioning settings to display your ads between your blog post's headline and content:

Top: Center

Middle: Suppress

Bottom: Suppress

W3 Total Cache – WordPress is great, but it's notoriously slow loading. It takes many many seconds just to start to see your blog content display.

In today's world, speed is everything. If your site doesn't display in a second or so, your visitor clicks to your competitor.

The good news is this WordPress plugin DRAMATICALLY improves the speed of your blog by adding page and database caching which displays your blog faster.

wpuntexturize – By default, most WordPress themes add "graphic embellishments" to your blog posts… that includes those sometimes fancy curly quotes.

You've probably seen the problem frequently… you go to read a blog post and it's riddled with question marks and other weird characters. This happens when a blogger copies and pastes content from another blogger with curly quotes.

This simple plugin prevents WordPress from making HTML entity code substitutions of single and double quotation marks with their curly alternatives.

Broken Link Checker – Search engine robots and spiders don't like it when your hyperlinks to recommended sources are outdated and don't work.

This WordPress plugin checks your posts (while you're sleeping) for broken links and missing images. If there's an issue, you're notified in your WordPress dashboard just after logging in.

Creating a great webpage title is a surefire way to attract precisely qualified visitors to any of your webpages. It's for this reason I always invest more time on my title tag than any other aspect of my webpage (and suggest you do the same).

Here are my best-kept tips and techniques to create the perfect title tags:

Turn your title tag into a new-visitor magnet
The title tag has always been (and will probably always be) one of the most important factors in gaining high search-engine rankings.

The keyword phrase used in your webpage title draws visitors to your website from search engines.

When the words placed in your page title matches a search query, you have a chance of getting that visitor to your site. No other phrase on your webpage carries this weight. Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing rely heavily on your webpage title to determine the rank of your featured listing in their search results. They reward you with higher rank when the webpage title matches the overall theme of your content.

The actual text you use in your title is one of the most important factors in how search engines decide to rank your web page. And all major web crawlers use the text of your title tag as the text they feature in their SERPs (Search Engine Result's Pages).

I HIGHLY recommend using popular keyword phrases in your webpage title… especially at the beginning. This is known as prominence. Search engines put more weight in ranking words that show up at the beginning of your title tag.

The most common mistake I see is placing a company name as the title. This is a waste of crucial space as you only have 66 characters to work with (any more are cut off from most search engine results' listings). Make every character count.

Use call-to-action wording
Just because you rank #1 doesn't necessarily guarantee clicks to your website. This is a very common problem, and the good news is it's easy to fix.

Remember, Google (and most other search engines) clone your title tag and display it as a clickable link to your site. What you want to do is encourage these searchers to not only see your link, but to visit your website. You do this by writing additional teaser copy.

For example, this link might get some clicks:
German Chocolate Cake

But I KNOW this link is going to gain a lot of clicks:
German Chocolate Cake – Best Chocolate Recipe You've Ever Tasted

Avoid long-tail keywords
You might think twice about using long-tail keyword phrases in your title.

Long-tail keywords (as the name suggests) are search queries that are longer than average… typically 5 or more words.

For example, a long-tail keyword is something like ‘German Chocolate Cake Recipe’ while a short-tail keyword is something like ‘Cake Recipe’.

Spammers typically try to game Google and other search engines by adding long-tail keywords to their webpage title… and this might work against you if you try the same.

My testing shows 3-word keyword phrases seem to be just the perfect length.

The perfect length
Most search engines only display the first 66 characters of the title of your webpage. Suggestion: Keep your web page titles no more than 66 characters so they show up in the SERPs without being truncated.

A waste of precious time
A lot of internet marketing gurus give us bad information about titles for webpages… instead referring to it as the title meta tag. The title meta tag is not the same as your webpage title. In fact in my testing, I find filling out the title meta tag is a complete waste of time. Instead of generating a meta title tag, just focus on a webpage title.

A before Z always wins
The title of your webpage also doubles as the default entry in your visitor's Favorites when they bookmark your webpage… and most web browsers sort Favorites in alphabetical order — so you might have your first word in your title tag start with the letter "A".

History
Just like Bookmarks and Favorites, browsers use page titles to label pages in the browser’s web surfing history. Having a descriptive webpage title makes it easier for your visitors to return to your webpage.

Final tip
There's no reason for you to struggle with writing a webpage title. If you're ready to write better title tags to get you more leads from search engines, you might want to grab these webpage title tips, techniques and methods.

When Google first offered to share their advertising revenue with us in the Spring of 2003, it was pretty easy to bank some nice cash when our visitors clicked on those tiny classified ads displayed on our site…

… But these days, those Google AdSense revenue payments are getting smaller and thinner… even as our traffic grows.

Most say it's impossible to make money with AdSense. I felt the same way until a few months ago.  Today, I know there's money to be made with AdSense ads… if you know the secrets which I'm about to share with you.

This short AdSense tutorial is going to reveal my best-kept AdSense secrets to DRAMATICALLY boost your Google AdSense earnings. I stumbled upon these secrets by reverse engineering some of the websites that brag about making over $100,000.00 a year.

Tweak your title for higher AdSense revenues
Tweaking the title on your webapge is often the difference between banking a few pennies per click on your AdSense ads to generating over a dollar per click.

Compare these similar phrases:

- DIY home surveillance
- do it yourself home security

Both keyword phrases seem identical… and they are in meaning. But the difference is advertisers are willing to pay 169 times more for webpages themed for "do it yourself home security" (average of $8.47 per click) compared to "DIY home surveillance" (5 cents a click).

Hit the Google AdSense "sweet spot"
My never-ending testing reveals there's a direct correlation between the placement of the AdSense ads and the resulting click thru.

When ads are placed in “content zones” (rather than in “advertising zones), you typically generate more Google AdSense revenue.

Where is the content zone? It's located just above your content. Most visitors are blind to ads placed in the traditional spots… but those same ads placed above the beginning of our content usually get clicked more often.

Introducing the perfect AdSense templates
While there are currently 12 AdSense templates to display, I find the 336 x 280 (large rectangle) ads convert better than any other format.

And don't fret about optimizing for smart phones and mobile devices… my testing shows they hardly ever click on AdSense ads.

Make your AdSense ads blend in with your content

Let's face it, our website visitors HATE ads. Most use ad blockers and their 6th sense to avoid ads.

That's why you want to have your AdSense blocks blend in with the overall appearance of your webpage. Have the background of your ads match the background of your webpage. And don't add borders… this tips off your webpage visitors that you're displaying ads.

Triple your AdSense revenues with this one addition
AdSense for Search is MUCH more profitable than AdSense for Content. It's true.

In addition to placing standard AdSense template ads, I place a Google AdSense search box at the bottom of my content… and each click averages 317% higher eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) than displayed ads.

Dumb down your webpage
A new and very interesting study reveals the way a person arrives from a search engine like Google. It helps us understand how they click on your ads.

Specifically, people who search by clicking the button on Google’s homepage are 50% more likely to go on to click ads on your page than people who search by any other Google means, according to online ad network Chitika.

Confused? I understand. Let me explain… if Joe Blow searches Google for "hard drive recovery" and completes his search clicking the [Search] submit button, Joe Blow (on average) is 50% more likely to click on your AdSense ads than if he were to search using the [Enter] key.

Why the big difference? One can only guess that sophisticated web surfers are searching without the additional effort of clicking Google's [Search] submit button (while less-sophisticated searchers are clicking the search button — and clicking on our Google AdSense ads.

Bottom line:  It appears advertising click rates are inversely proportional to the “tech-savviness” of the people receiving the ads. So tweak your webpage theme to target beginners, not sophisticated users.

Eliminate unprofitable advertisers in a click
How'd you like to delete the worst advertisers (displayed on your webpages) in just a few fast and easy mouse clicks?

Google now offers a best-kept secret way to ban advertisers who don't write profitable ads. It's called "Category Filters" and you find it by logging into your AdSense account and going here:

AdSense Setup –> Ad Review Center

As you see, Google shows you "Filtered Categories" and up-to-date results.

Google AdSense allows us to eliminate categories if they're unprofitable. For example, 8.9% of my ads display "Get Rich Quick" advertisers… nothing wrong with that, but my "% Recent Earnings" is 0.0%. That means I'm displaying ads that are paying me nothing. So I checked it off, clicked the [Submit] button… and now those unprofitable ads are no longer displayed.

Final tip
I wrote a tutorial on how to find the most profitable words in your niche… click here to read my online manual on keyword discovery.