1. All In One SEO by Michael Torbert
This plugin allows you to manually define the Title, Description and Keyword tags (all of which are basic SEO practice) while adding a post or page.

All In One SEO Pack

These tags are part of the basic on page SEO that seems to get overlooked by so many sites, so installing this plugin will remind you to populate these tags for every page. Once you have installed the plugin, goto Settings > All In One SEO and define the tags for your homepage.

2. Simple Link Cloaker by Steve Johnson
I use this plugin to cloak affiliate links and also to manage my outgoing links. In order to increase my click through rates, I find its important to cloak affiliate links. Which of the following links would you be more inclined to click while hovering over a “Buy Now” button?

http://www.markboyd.co.uk/dvd-rental

or

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2605&awinaffid=76861&clickref=&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lovefilm.com%2Fdvd-rental%2F

I personally would be more likely to click the first link, therefore I tend to cloak my affiliate links. Simply install the plugin, then when you’d like to cloak a link, copy the long affiliate link into the plugin settings page then define what you’d like the link to be cloaked as. Simples!

3. WP-Ads by Nick Brady
This plugin is a godsend.  This is the bee knees of ad management plugins. Its super simple to use, you simple create a “zone” and then define banners for that zone. These banners will then rotate evenly unless you specify another weighting. You can then copy a line of code into your wordpress templates or into a page or post and thats where the zone’s banners will be displayed. If you take a look @ Nrbet.com (a site I’ve neglected somewhat!) you can see this plugin at work. There are five zones defined on nrbet: the header 468×60 banner space and the four 125×125 banner spaces. WP-Ads also allows me to monitor banner impressions, which is particularly useful if you sell ad space by x amount of impressions.

4. SEO Friendly Images by Vladimir Prelovac
Simple yet effective plugin that defines your image alt tags for you based on your posts title or the image file name. This saves you having to define the alt tag for every image you include in your posts/pages.

5. Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachold
This nifty little plugin automatically creates an XML Sitemap whenever you update your blog and it also pings the search engines to let them know of the changes.

6. Robots Meta by Yoost de Valk
A very handy plugin from the King of WordPress Joost de Valk. I use this plugin to define which pages I dont want Google to index, such as login page, privacy policy, terms and conditions and contact us pages. With this plugin installed you simply choose if you’d like the page to be indexed or not and also if you’d like google to follow the links on the page or not.

7. Custom Post Templates by Simon Wheatley
Not necessarily relevant for affiliate sites, but its a plugin that has saved me pulling my hair out at many times in the past. Its easy enough to create custom page templates, but wordpress havent made it as easy to create custom post templates and thats where this plugin comes in. Create templates in the same way you would for a custom page template, then simply choose your template of choice on the New Post page. Voila!

8. Link A Dink
Again, this isnt a necessity for affiliate sites, but I like it, so I’m sharing it! The Link-A-Dink plugin allows you to create a list of “buzz words” and if any of those words are mentioned anywhere on your blog they are replaced with a text link. For example I could setup this blog so that anytime I mention the phrase “the forums” it would add a link to Affiliates4u.

9. Contact Form 7 by Takayuki Miyoshi
Every site should have a contact form (apart from this one… I’ll get around to that one day!) and the Contact Form 7 plugin couldnt make it any simpler.

10. Smart Youtube by Vladimir Prelovac
If you want to embed youtube videos into your posts, then this plugin is for you. All you have to do is copy the URL of the youtube into your post and add the letter v – e.g. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3UL_mVHHI.

Hopefully you will have now discovered one or two new plugins worth using on your sites! I’d really love to hear your comments and more importantly, which plugins you use that I havent mentioned!