Ok, just a quick hit today. I’m going to try to start showcasing some of the free stuff I use. A lot of it will be free WordPress plugins, free WordPress themes, and other tools and sites that I really use myself.

Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about a plugin I’ve been using for about 6 months or so now called Link Juice Keeper. Basically this plugin will automatically 301 redirect any non-existant pages on your site to your home page. It’s super simple to set up, and literally starts working once you activate it.

So why is this useful? Well there are actually a couple reasons. Probably the main thing I like it for is using it with expired domains. I generally only try to pick expired domains that have a diverse link profile – at least a handful of real contextual links. Most of the time, in this case, the links pointing back to the expired domain point to a variety of different pages within the site. That means, if you do noting, and put up a brand new site, you will have a ton of nice links pointing to a 404 page… What a waste. Now, many people will use the wayback machine or cached pages in google and recreate the old pages on the site. In some cases this is worth the time, and in other cases, it isn’t. Personally, I’ve found that this works great, and is the fastest way possible to avoid having a ton of links pointing to 404 pages.

Also, another good use for this tool, would be if you were converting an existing site to WordPress. Generally, if you’ve got any kind of non-Wordpress site, it’s going to be hard to keep the exact same URL structure for every page in the site. This is a quick way to avoid a ton of 404′s from search results and keep your traffic level stable as you transition to a new site. Now this probably isn’t as useful for this application, but it would be a lot better than manually setting up 301 redirects for a large amount of pages.

So overall, this is a plugin I use quite a bit. You can add it to your WordPress via the admin if you search for Link Juice Keeper, or click on the link above to visit the plugin page and download it.

It’s been quite a while since I last reviewed a plugin here, but I’ve found this particular plugin quite interesting. I got an email last week about a new FREE WP plugin called Lockpress, had a chance to check it out, and thought I would help spread the word.

Basically, this plugin allows you to password protect certain posts on your site via the normal WP login functionality. So let’s say you had a tutorial, or series of video tutorials, or something, and you wanted to charge people to see it – you could simply install Lockpress, create a group of posts within the plugin, and password protect them so that your visitors would have to charge a subscription fee to be able to view them.

Another common example would be with an eBook download – simply password protect the download page for your eBook, and you’ve got a super simple, free solution to charge for electronic products! This will allow you to avoid using 3rd party solutions, and outside of regular PayPal fees, you’ll keep 100% of the profits.

Now these are just a couple examples, but there are literally endless options with this plugin.

Obviously, there are other membership plugins out there, but what I especially like about Lockpress, which prompted me to write this review, is the fact that its so lightweight and easy to use. Setting up a membership site, or charging for electronic products can be a real pain, and this is a great solution to get you started without having to take a week figuring out how to set it up…. And did I mention it’s free?

Click Here to download Lockpress, see screenshots and download a full user’s manual.

Creating intra-site links is a great way of optimizing your blog for search engines and controlling page rank. Then there are all your affiliate links. You’ve probably got your banners in the sidebar, but you also want to pepper your affiliate links throughout your copy as well.

Both of these things can take a lot of time away from working on more productive things. I know that there have been times when I’ve referenced other posts on this blog and haven’t even bothered to link to them just because I don’t want to have to go through the process of opening up the site in a new window, navigating to the page I want to link to, copying the URL and adding it as a hyperlink in my new post. It’s just a pain, plain and simple. Same thing with affiliate links – in fact that can be even worse.

Anyway – the good news is, there is an amazing solution - SEO Smart Links, by Vladimir Prelovac.

I’ve been using this plugin for quite a while, and I have to say it’s probably one of the most useful plugins I’ve ever seen, particularly if you’re dealing with a Blog that has a ton of content. The best part of all, it’s totally free.

Here’s a basic overview – you define keywords combined with a URL and this plugin will parse your blog’s content and automatically add the hyperlinks for you. So for example, on this blog I would set up one link like this:

WP Commerce Steel, http://www.wpcontempo.com/wp-contempo-steel-free-wordpress-theme-for-ebay-affiliate-sites/

By doing this, the plugin will automatically add that link to any instance of the keyword WP Commerce Steel in my blog.  This saves me a tremendous amount of time.

It also works the same way if I want to hyperlink words like PHPBay or Bluehost using my affiliate link.

There are also a ton of other configuration options that come with this plugin as well. Many are pretty self explanitory so I won’t go into detail, but if you’ve got questions don’t hesitate to ask.

Last week DyasonHat released WP Smart Sort and WP Smart Sort Premium. These plugins allow you to provide maximum control over how visitors can view posts on your blog. WP Smart Sort allows your visitors to sort posts however they like. For example they can sort your posts by title, date added or number of comments in both ascending and descending order. Probably the coolest feature, you can define your own custom fields and sort by them as well. For example you could allow visitors to sort by rating, and if applicable by price. The possibilities are literally endless.

WP Smart Sort Premium takes this one step further by adding a handy sorting toolbar to your blog. Your visitors will easily be able to sort posts in your blog. This is great if you’ve got a well established blog with a ton of posts. It’s sure to keep your traffic staying on your site longer, and hopefully will lead to increased revenue for you!

Overall I’ve found these plugins to be very helpful in enhancing overall visitor experience. I would strongly recommend giving the free version a try first to see if it’s right for you. There’s nothing to lose! Download WP Smart Sort Here.

I ran across a new plugin today that will put a button at the bottom of each of your posts so that readers can email the post to a friend. Check out the plugin here: Email2Friend.

At first I was very excited at the possibility of the plugin. I downloaded it and installed it here to test it out. Once I saw the finished product I was disappointed. Here’s a quick rundown of the email2friend plugin.

Pros –

The plugin adds a email2friend link at the bottom of each of your posts making it easy for visitors to share your content.

It also has a simple installation. Simply upload the php file to your plugins folder, upload and activate.

Cons –

There’s no easy way to edit the text of the link. At the bottom of every post, a small envelope icon is displayed next to a hyperlink with the anchor text email2friend. I’m pretty sure this is an easy fix within the PHP file, but it would be a lot more user friendly to less php savvy bloggers if there was an admin page where setting could be adjusted.

Once you click the email2friend link, a new window opens up for you to personalize the email. Only problem is it’s hosted on the email2friend website. I’m not much of a programmer, so I don’t know how difficult it would be to self host the entire process within my own blog, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Overall, if you’re looking for a quick way to add an email2friend link at the bottom of each of your blog posts, it doesn’t get any easier than this. In my opinion, this plugin is still very rough around the edges and I won’t be using it, however if more enhancements are added I will definitely take a look again in the future.

I just found a really nice plugin by Aseem Kishore that will post a summary of all the posts posted in your Blog over a time period defined by you. This is great because it promotes visitors to check out more pages on your blog and stay longer, and it will also give you a ton of extra deep links to all of your posts, so you’ll get a little boost from search engines as well. All you have to do is fill out the settings page and the plugin will do the rest. You can choose to post a summary daily, weekly or monthly, and summarize posts from the previous day, week or month.

Since I haven’t gotten into a regular routine with this blog yet, I’ve chosen to create a summary post once monthly of the top 10 posts from the previous month. If you’re the type who religiously posts daily to your blog, a weekly summary would probably be quite nice. Since today is the 29th, I hope to see a nice summary post in a couple days, so check back and see for yourself how the plugin works. I think this one will be a real winner.

Download the WP Best Posts Summary Plugin Here.