Wordpress Plugins: My Picks for Real Estate Blogs

I encourage my coaching clients to use Wordpress blogs as a “home base” for your online marketing, and so I’m often asked by agents which Wordpress plugins I recommend. I have put together a list of the ones I think are most helpful for real estate agents marketing online. But I do want to remind readers that these are tools - so pick the ones that will help you in your business. More is not necessarily better, and in fact can slow down the loading time of your blog, which could decrease readership in the long run if you’re not careful.

That being said, here are some of the Wordpress plugins I have found most helpful:

Content Sharing

WP Email - offers the option to “email to a friend”, which is a great way to let others spread your content for you.

WP Print - many people are still interested in having hard copies of information they find online, especially if it’s something they want to share a spouse or family member. Offering a printer-friendly version of your page will be appreciated by these readers.

ShareThis - there are many plugins out there designed to encourage social bookmarking and posting to social networking sites. I prefer this one simply because of how many sites it offers, as well as the fact that it scrolls through the options, instead of having a long list of icons at the bottom of each post.

Search Engine Optimization

All In One SEO - gives the ability and flexibility to add a custom title tag and meta tags to each post or page. It also lets you set a better automated structure for these tags across the blog and exclude indexing on certain areas.

Google XML Sitemap - let’s you publish an XML sitemap which is Google sitemaps compliant. It will also update and alert all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, every time you publish a post or page.

Simple Tags: allows a great deal of control and automation of tags and their use - very useful in conjunction with the categories and posts.

Site Functions

Google Analyticator - this plugin makes it quick and easy to add the code for Google Analytics to your blog - very important as it allows you to track where visitors are coming from, what posts they’re reading, and how long they stay. You can add the code to your footer if you’re comfortable with code, but this plugin makes it easy for those that aren’t interested in coding.

Subscribe to Comments - encourages interaction and community by allowing visitors to subscribe to comments. This way they stay updated if someone comments after them, so they can come back and continue the discussion.

Contextual Related Posts - this plugin automatically finds and adds links to posts that may be related based on tags, categories and content. Great for encouraging visitors to stay and read more, without you having to go back, find and include related posts.

There are lots of great plugins out there, and I use many more than this, but I feel that these are some of the most important plugins for anyone trying to make the most of their Wordpress blog. Have you found a great real-estate related plugin? I’d love to add it to my list, so be sure to mention it in the comments.