Online legal marketing needs to include a blog – I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again before too long (that is, unless I end up saying that blogging is dead – nah, not likely).  And if you’re serious about your online legal marketing efforts you should be using WordPress.  Not the one they host for you (that would be wordpress.com), but the one you host on your own website.

Why?  It’s free, well-supported, easy to use, free, widely used (heck, the New York Times runs on WordPress) … I’ve gone through that a few times as well.

But once you’ve got WordPress installed you need to make sure you’ve got some plugins hard at work behind the scenes.

What are they?  Those are little mini-applications that you can install to make WordPress run even better.

On the heels of this fantastic post over at Six Revisions titled 6 Critical WordPress Plugins You Should Have Installed, I thought it would be helpful to let you all peek in on the ones I use on this site as well as on my other blogs.

Akismet:  This is an awesome anti-spam plugin, made by the folks who created WordPress.  You need to go to WordPress.com and sign up for a free account; once you do, you can get what’s called an API Key to make the plugin run.  Nothing worse for your online legal marketing efforts than your prospective clients seeing a bunch of less than <ahem> respectable comments on your site.  Bye bye spammy comments!

DISQUS Comment System:  The DISQUS comment system replaces your WordPress system with one hosted and powered by DISQUS. You can organize all the comments for all of your blogs in one place, mark spam accordingly and respond to others.  DISQUS also gives you a clean output in your blog to show not only comments, but also reactions to your posts through the entire spectrum of social media sites.  In doing so, it create a more effective barometer of your online marketing efforts.

Google XML Sitemaps:  This plugin generates a standardized XML sitemap so the search engines can index your blog more easily.  If you’re not being found, you’re not marketing – you’re yelling into a black hole.

Redirection:  Once in awhile, you need to move a post from one place to another.  Maybe you need to kill off a category or change a URL slug to make it more search engine friendly.  With Redirection you’ll never get those dreaded 404 errors again.  And we all know that when Google sees a 404, it gets sad.  We don’t like to make Google sad.

Scribe SEO:  I love Scribe SEO.  Period.  Check out my previous post about it.  Remember, I do as much on the cheap as possible – and I ponied up the money for this plugin immediately.  Some of the best money I’ve spent in a long time (the money I spent on Headway is still better, but it’s so – darn – close).

WordPress Database Backup:  I will never forget when I lost an entire blog.  All that hard work, down the tubes.  WordPress Database Backup runs automatically and emails me a copy of my blog database every day.  If the site blows up I can reinstall WordPress, upload my backup and be running again in a matter of hours.

WP Super Cache:  WP Super Cache makes your posts load up to 259.1% faster (according to Six Revisions – I just know it loads way faster). The faster a page loads, the less likely someone’s going to get antsy and click away.

WPtouch iPhone Theme:  This plugin works for not only iPhone, but for pretty much any mobile browser (Android, BlackBerry, etc.).  Using this handy little plugin lets you see my blog in a mobile-friendly version rather than having to squint to see the regular site in that tiny screen.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin:  This plugin is responsible for that list of related posts at the end of this one.  It finds the other posts on this site that are on the same or a related topic and serves them up automatically.

I use a few others, but these are the kings of my plugin world.  If you’re not using them, you need to start doing so immediately.  Your blog readers will thank you.

What plugins do you use?

Photo courtesy of ell brown.