There are a lot of WordPress plugins around these days and finding the best ones for your blog can be difficult. Here are four plugins that may add a little more to your blog.

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TweetMeme Button

If you’re a Twitterer and Tweet your posts then this little plugin is a must. It adds the TweetMeme button to your posts so your readers can re-Tweet the post if they think it is worthwhile. The button is also included in RSS feeds.

There is very little setup required – just upload it to your plugins folder on your site and activate. photo credit: NevilleHobson

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Cookies For Comments

This is an anti spam plugin that works by sending a cookie when a page is loaded. If the cookie is not present then the user is not able to leave a comment.

A cool little plugin if you are getting spam that is getting past Askismet. Bots tour around leaving comments, however, they don’t take on cookies and with no cookie, there is no comment. The downside, if your reader has cookies disabled, they will not be able to leave a comment either.

Upload and activate – couldn’t be easier. photo credit: Mrs Magic

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Post Teaser

This has the potential to be a neat little plugin. It truncates your posts on the home page and leaves a teaser. You can set the number of words to the teaser (default 100 words). It places a read more option and provides post data such as word count, image count, and an estimated reading time.

There are a couple of issues to watch. If you have graphics within the teaser section, it will make a mess of your site (just look at mine here). If you set the teaser to 100 words, place any graphics outside that 100 words.

Another issue that is worth remembering is that many visitors want to see the complete post when visiting your home page. Hopefully this will convince them to click through and so reduce your bounce rate. It would have been nice to have an option to leave the first post in full and place teasers for all other posts.

Upload, activate and edit the length of the teaser – or just leave it at the default 100 words. photo credit: Andy Woo

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WPtouch: WordPress on iPhone, iPod & Android

This is a neat not so little plugin that provides a slimmed down version of your site for iPhone, iPod and Andoid users. There are a few options you can tweak including the skin. If your site is a little heavy for mobile browsing, install this plugin.

Upload, activate and edit the settings. Great for sites that include content relevant to mobile searches.

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I have installed a new plugin to see if it can improve the number of comments I receive. I may even start writing posts worthy of comments now .

The plugin is keyword luv. If you haven’t heard of it before it is quite clever. Instead of leaving your name and url etc, to benefit from the keyword luv you will need to enter your name with an appropriate keyword.

Before I go any further, I think you should think very clearly about your comment link. Most people just enter in their homepage url. This is a waste of a comment link. Find a page you want to promote and that you would like to see rank well in the search engines – remember, search engines rank pages, not sites.

Use the url for that page when leaving a comment rather than your home url. If the url is long, simply copy and paste it. Now that you have the page you want the link juice to flow to, select the most appropriate keyword for that page.

Now, when leaving a comment here or on any other keyword luv site, enter your name with the at symbol then the keyword. EG – les@keyword – then enter the page url, then leave your comment. Now you have keyword rich link to one of your pages. These links are worth far more than a none keyword link to your front page (almost worthless for SEO purposes).

Having said all this, I still moderate comments and will throw out worthless or spammy comments. Leave a good comment and it will stay. I will generally try to visit your site and return the favor. If you have any trouble with the keyword luv plugin let me know.