Blogs and blogging are gaining in popularity among home builders large and small, and for good reason. A blog is a publishing platform that can help a company increase brand strength and communicate with potential and current customers. They’re a great way to increase targeted traffic and they help keep a website fresh.
I hear great things about the top publishing platforms: WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Joomla, Moveable Type etc., but I’ve only extensively used WordPress because it has always been more than enough. I’d recommend it to anyone, it’s Free and easy to use and install. Best of all, a library of useful plugins makes it easy to do nearly anything with your WordPress blog – it has few limitations.
If you use WordPress, or are thinking about using it, here are 12 WordPress plugins (in no particular order) that will make your new home publishing platform better. Most of these plugins are super easy to use, but if you can’t get one to work, let me know and I’ll try to lend a helping hand.
Google XML Sitemap – An XML sitemap helps search engines find and index content on your website. This plugin generates an XML sitemap of your blog/website and submits it to the top search engines every time you publish a new post or page. This is a must have and it can improve your website’s rankings.
4.5 out of 5 stars with 1006 ratings – download Google XML Sitemap
All in One SEO Pack – All in One SEO is a great tool that lets you tell search engines more about your content. It gives you the ability to create unique titles, keywords and descriptions for your web pages. In addition, it lets you customize Page titles throughout your website. It’s a way to give search engines the information they need and a way to increase your rankings.
4 out of 5 stars with 639 ratings – download All in One SEO Pack
WP Super Cache – Google recently announced that a web page’s load time is now a ranking factor. If your website loads slow, you might rank lower because of it. The details about WP Super Cache may be hard to understand if you’re not tech savvy so I won’t bore you with them. Just know that it can dramatically speed up your web site’s load time and that it’s a great addition to any publishing platform.
4 out of 5 stars with 438 ratings – download WP Super Cache
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – HTML Sitemaps help users and search engine spiders easily find pages and posts on your website. An HTML sitemap is different from XML sitemap, because it’s main purpose is to help a human navigate your website. You need both versions on your website, this is a must have
4 out of 5 stars with 38 ratings – download Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
NextGen Gallery – Pictures sell homes and help highlight selling points in communities, they’re also a great way to make any post better. NextGen Gallery offers an easy and slick way to display your images in a Flash Gallery. We used the NextGen Gallery to highlight this new home in Houston. (NextGen Gallery is about half way down the page)
4 out of 5 stars with 740 ratings – download NextGen Gallery
Ad-minister – The Ad-minister plugin is amazing. It allows you to display in any location on your blog. You can schedule an ad to go live when a promotion ends and the system will remove it when a promotion ends. In addition, you can put ads “in rotation” so that you can test which ads perform the best. The developer claims that ad impressions and clicks can be tracked, but we haven’t been able to use Ad-minister to track impressions. Nearly every ad on New Homes Section is delivered using Ad-minister.
4 out of 5 stars with – download Ad-minister
Sociable – This plugin adds links to popular social bookmarking sites at the end of your posts. You can choose from 99 of the top social sites, but don’t choose them all. It encourages users to share you content and makes it easy for them to do so.
4.25 out of 5 stars with 624 ratings – download Sociable
Contact Form 7 – Allows you to easily manage multiple contact forms and it’s very customizable. It features Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering. Allowing your blog users to contact you is a cinch with this plugin.
4 out of 5 stars with 494 ratings – download Contact Form 7
WordPress Mobile Edition – This plugin helps make your WordPress blog mobile ready making it easy for mobile phone visitors to find and read your content. To install, you need to upload a mobile theme and the plugin, but that’s it. More and more users are accessing the web from their phones, so making your content ready for them is a necessity.
4 out of 5 stars with 56 ratings – download WordPress Mobile Edition
WordPress Popular Posts – This plugin lets add quick links to your most popular posts in your sidebar. There are tons of options making it easy for you to customize which posts you want shown and how you want to display them.
4 out of 5 stars with 40 ratings – download WordPress Popular Posts
PHP Execution – This plugin is for the more advanced users. It allows you to write PHP code on WordPress blog posts and pages – it comes in handy if you’re trying to use Ad-minister to display ads at the bottom or top of a post or page.
5 out of 5 stars with 7 ratings – download PHP Execution
I always recommend installing WordPress on a sub domain or in a directory on your current website e.g. xyzhomes.com/blog – as opposed to running the blog on the WordPress domain e.g. xyzhomes.wordpress.com or an entirely different domain i.e. blogxyzhomes.com.
See Also & Resources:
Ultimate List of Home Builder Blogs
download WordPress
I am a Managing Partner, Internet Marketer and Blogger at New Homes Section. Follow me on 
Great post and perfect timing! I was just on wordpress.com looking into starting a new blog for a company me and my father-in-law are creating. Bookmarking this page for sure.
Question, what is the different between wordpress.com and wordpress.org?
.-= Matt@New Homes Atlanta´s last blog ..Details on New Tax Credit Extension =-.
You got it Matt and we are always glad when you stop buy! If you need any tips setting up your blog Jayson is a wiz, hit him up.
Besides the all in one SEO pack, I am thankful to wordpress for having plugins like commentluv and keywordluv. They really help in the promotional activities of the blog in a fair manner.
.-= Tulsa Real Estate´s last blog ..Feng Shui Tips for buying a home =-.
Matt – I think WordPress.com is where they offer free blogs and paid services. It’s where they highlight great WordPress blogs, focus on getting more users and earning revenue.
WordPress.org is where they (the community) help current users and offer the extended features from the community i.e. themes and plugins. It’s basically the support area, there are forums on .com though too.
Tulsa Real Estate – those are great plugins too. Thanks for mentioning them.
Thanks, Jayson. I think we are going to start out with wordpress.com and switch to .org later on.
.-= Matt@New Homes Atlanta´s last blog ..Details on New Tax Credit Extension =-.
I love my WordPress plugins! I have also found a lot of value in the theme that you choose! There are many themes out there that can actually SLOW your site down. The new wordpress plugin for Diverse Solutions is pretty cool too!
.-= Ryan@Avon Indiana Real estate´s last blog ..Homes in Apple Creek – Avon, IN =-.
That’s new for me for now i just using XML sitemap and ALL in one SEO pack. Thanks for sharing!
.-= brandon´s last blog ..My Friend Audio Business Converter Product =-.
I started my first wordpress blog about 4 months ago, it was extremely easy to setup, and anything I had questions about were easy to find using Google. I use 4 out of these 7 plugins, and I can say they are a must have. Great list!
Thanks Lisa and did you get the email about the Directory?
A well-built blog is the engine of your social media program. It is so important to start out with an effective site. You covered a lot of great plugins here. Another one of my favorites is Akismet which blocks spam comments. You can see our portfolio of great home builder blogs at
Top Builder Blogs or read more about how your blog should be the engine of your social media program by reading my new book – Social Media For Home Builders: It’s Easier Than You Think available from Builder Books
.-= Carol Flammer´s last blog ..Online Marketing Budgets Explained =-.
@Matt – I wouldn’t start a blog on a WordPress domain if you plan on switching over later. I wish I would have noticed your comment earlier.
@Ryan – Great point! Some themes are really impressive and some should have never been built.
@Brandon & @ Lisa – thanks for stopping by and sharing.
@Carol – thanks for stopping back by and thanks for mentioning Akismet. It’s probably my favorite too, but it comes stock so I didn’t mention it. However, it certainly needs to be used on every blog.
I am fairly new to the blogging part of the business (real estate) and found your site searching for wordpress plugins. I plan on trying some of these out and was wondering, what is the downside of plugins? I have a php page that I am wanting to use as my website link back and some comments allow while others don’t.
@ Plano – I want to thank you for stopping by our site, however all self serving links are taken out of comments.
Superb information, some of the plugins is totally new to me.
I’m always only with Google Sitemap and All-in-one-SEO.
And recently happen to know about some others like super cache, adding sitemap html and contact form.
Good resource gathering here.
Thanks
.-= Purple Sofa´s last blog ..Purple Sofa For Your Living Room =-.
Very helpful info. I’ve never used WordPress before, think, now i should try. Thanks for sharing this great list of plugins
Great idea to layout what plugins are needed for a particular niche website. I love WordPress and cannot live without all the great plugins available. I use most of the ones you have mentioned in the majority of my websites.. They are just too handy.
Plugins like keywordluv are great, cause it helps us get the backlinks that we need.
WordPress is the ultimate website platform in my opinion. It has all of the cool features available at the click of a button.
I need to try out Ad-minister. I have yet to test out that plugin but most of what you listed, I’m fairly familiar with.